Saturday, May 30, 2015

Weaving demonstration day at the Handspinners and Weavers Guild

Our small group of tapestry weavers was invited to be part of the weaving demonstration day at the guild rooms in Carlton today.
Congratulations to Amber and the 0809 weaving group for this wonderful day. Not only was there a lovely exhibition of various woven items, there were all sorts of looms set up, ready for people to have a go.



Joy Smith kindly warped up a tapestry loom with various thicknesses of warp and had various yarns available to use with them. It was great to have her there, she is a fount of information and has great technical expertise.

There were a lot of visitors to the demonstration and the happy buzz was most energising. Lots of people who had no connection to the guild turned up, lots of demonstrations were taking place.

It was a lovely relaxed atmosphere. Plenty of interesting questions too.
I had a go with an inkle loom and have decided that tapestry is definitely my go - and not any other sort of weaving. Tapestry weaving may be slow but it didn't look as fiddly as some of the other setting up of warps, working to intricate patterns, etc. To each his (or her) own.

2 comments:

Michelle said...

Wow, that looks fun! Unfortunately, the South Australian Handspinners & Weavers Guild aren't so adventurous ... maybe one day!!

Mary said...

Michelle, I think it was just the work of one enthusiastic group, not the guild as a whole. But the guild provides the meeting place, the classes, the teachers, so we can have our groups functioning. So hooray for guilds!

The ladies in the group put in a lot of work - they meet monthly and actually have a theme each month, about different sorts of weaving. They meet at the same time as our very relaxed, unthemed, tapestry group, so we often overhear them. AND they have samples they have been working on in between meetings. They are a very enthusiastic group. So it was all their hard work that paid off.

Who knows, maybe our small group will be inspired to at least have a theme for us to work towards - but I won't be holding my breath, we are more a social group than a working group.

I was wandering around, looking at this and that and got talking to one of the rostered shop people and was given some invaluable information about an idea I had - there is just so much knowledge in guilds, but you have to ask the right question, of the right person, at the right time. She had nothing to do with the demonstration and my question was about using silk tops in machine embroidery - just a fortunate happenstance that we had the discussion. As I said, hooray for the opportunity for like-minded people to meet and share knowledge. Even if it doesn't have anything to do with the current reason for being there.