Saori weavers meet and inspire!

An inspiring day at the studio!
Weaver Fiona came for a weaving session to learn some new techniques to go beyond the stripe-she felt that she had got into a little pattern of reverting back to stripes when weaving so we had a play with some Saori techniques to create texture and interest in your cloth, to go beyond the stripe :)

Fiona brought in some of weavings including this fantastic purple coat, all made from rectangles pieced togerther using wools, fancies and cheniles - a really clever little feature is that it has an extra zip up the centre, which Fiona uses to zip her fleece into for when it get especially cold, making it double layered, genius :) 

Ang from Weird Weave came along with her great new hats made from shetland wool mmmm and some lovely clasped weft pieces in gorgeous colours, looking forward to seeing what they turn into :)

Later in the week an inspiring mother and daughter come for a weaving session - Love the textured weaves.
Thanks to all for a wonderfull weaving week :)

Saori workshop @ studio

Sharon from 'Taylor Made Yarns' came to the studio for a weave. She is a pro spinner and spins these AMAZINGLY gorgeous gigantic skeins of art yarns using beautiful fibres and lots of luscious wensleydale locks.She's been weaving on a knitters loom and wanted to have a try on a Saori loom. Completely, joyfully hooked on Saori :) Thanks for an inspiring morning.

LUSCIOUS LOCKS :) Can you imagine these beautiful skeins woven? mmmmm :)

Some of what Sharon makes from her Art yarn.

Inspired by birds exhibtion

I have a collaborative piece with Kally WoollenWood and Zoe WeavingSpace in an exhibition at Norwich Castle from now until the 31 st August.
We went for the preview evening the other night and got a sneeky peek at all the lovely work 'Inspired by Birds'.

 

With this Doodlebird dwelling we doodled in yarn taking a thread for a walk rather than a line. We have created interchangeable sacred spaces based on the social weaverbirds nests.

Birds build nests for shelter, protection and nurturing young, like wise human communities who build organically, create structures which are sympathetic to their environment, grow, are torn down and rebuilt to serve the needs of the community.

The Doodlebird dwelling has the same potential to change and be rebuilt after the exhibition as it encounters more doodling weavers who can bring their own skills and experience to take the dwellings into new environments changing spaces and creating new perspectives - please get in touch if you would like to get involved.

 This was my part of the Doodlebird dwelling as it came off the loom. I wove it flat with hanspun yarns with wensleydale and felted tufts add ins. I then cut and sewed it into nest shapes.

 The evening had such a turn out it was hard to get to see everything, so I will need to go back for a better look. These were some of my highlights-

 Jasmine with Kallys 'Resourcefulnest' - Amazing nest crocheted using handspun yarn made from a whole, entire yellow pages, all 808 pages of it :)

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 Textiles bird house with birds eating buttons :)

and a stunning felt hat:)

Kally is also selling cards of the works on her Etsy shop - WoollenWood

Sheep highlights from Woolfest 2014

Heres a few of the gorgeous sheep that were at Woolfest this year :)

 Freshly shorn alpacas

Herdwicks

Lovely wensleydale

Jacobs

And ......the fleece sale - highly dangerous! I resisted this year as my shed is full of fleece, but there was an amazing selection of tasty fleeces to tempt :)

 Thank you Woolclip for another fantastic Woolfest, we had a great weekend of fibre fun :)

Woolfest 2014

We took the looms for a trip to Cumbria, for Woolfest 2014.
It was a spectacular event as always, bringing together fibre enthusiasts, crafters and sheep from all over the UK :) A huge array of yarns fibres to tempt and a lovely turn out of rare breed sheep.

 Saori woven banners on the animal stalls.

 Visitors having a try at some freestyle Saori weaving, much fun had by all!

 The 2 banners that were woven at Woolfest by visitors - One was raffled at the end of the weekend and the winning ticket was....

Congratulations, a banner is on its way to you soon :)

WSD National Exhibtion - Part 2

For the family fun day at the Weavers, Spinners and Dyers exhibition there was a huge variety of woolly activities for everyone to try. There was also some Ryeland sheep on the green in the Cathedral grounds :)

Visitors had a go at some giant knitting on broomstick handles and some arm knitting - a follow on from finger knitting!

We had 2 Saori weaving looms set up for everyone to have a weave -  from the very young to the more experienced weavers, it was lovely to see so much enjoyment and concentration from all!

These 4 girls created a great system whereby everyone had something to do - 1 was controlling the peddles, 1 was passing the shuttle while anther caught it and some one else beat the reed :)

The finished banners :) ......

.....banners turned into a dragon :)

Big thanks to all the fantastic weavers on the day, if you would like to see them in full they are on display in the Studio in Diss.

WSD National Exhibition @ Norwich Cathedral Part 1

We were amazingly lucky to have the National exhibition of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers at Norwich Cathedral this year. There was a really high standard of work exhibited in this brilliant space, here are some of my favourites-

Bags made by guild members from around the UK.

Norfolk and suffolk guild banner on lovely driftwood.

The Wall of Wool - A fantastic display of skeins of yarn spun by spinners around the Eastern region using fibres from East Anglia, ranging from a huge variety of different breeds of sheep to suffolk punch horse hair, dog, camel and feathers!