WGRI Programs 2021-2022
Submitted by Cathy English
Vice President, WGRI
September 11, 2021
Location: Meeting and speaker via Zoom.
Guild members can meet at the New Hope Chapel, Carolina, RI to view the meeting as a group.
Echo and Jin
This lecture illustrates how extended parallel threadings -- known as "Echo" threadings -- offer weavers unlimited options for designs, textures and color palettes, just by changing your tie-up and treadling and varying your weft yarns and sett. Echo and Jin designs take weaving "off the grid," allowing weavers to create flowing lines, circles and unique shapes. These techniques can include networked threadings and treadlings, which will also be discussed.
Denise Kovnat teaches, writes and lectures internationally focusing on Echo threadings, collapse techniques, painted warps and deflected double weave. Her garments have appeared in Convergence fashion shows since 2008 and have won national awards. Most important, in her view: In 2002, she helped found the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center in Rochester, NY.
https://www.denisekovnat.com/p/gallery.html
October 2, 2021
Location: TBD. Speaker is local and willing to present in-person or via Zoom based on COVID.
Leaver’s Lace
The presentation will emphasize the visual aspect of Leavers Lace. What drew me in and why I wrote and photographed the book.
Steve Mason is a Rhode Island based Commercial and Fine Art Photographer. Steve received his BFA in Photography from Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara CA. Steve does assignment work for such clients as Merck, General Dynamics, CVS and more. He exhibits locally at the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative, Attleboro Arts Museum, Hygienic Art and many others. In recent years Steve has put his efforts towards individual projects such as his photo essay on Rhode Island entitled ‘3 mile radius” and his project on the last remaining lace factory in America called “The Leavers Lace Project”. Steve has now published a book on this Rhode Island lace company.
November 6, 2021
Location: Meeting and speaker via Zoom. Guild members can meet at the New Hope Chapel, Carolina, RI to view the meeting as a group.
Kumihimo
This program will include both a live demonstration and a PowerPoint presentation of braids. During the live presentation Brenda will describe the marudai (the round Japanese braiding stand) and show how the groups of fibers are attached to the marudai. She’ll then demonstrate the movements that create a round braid and a flat braid. If time allows, she’ll also demonstrate a square braid. During the presentation Brenda will show braids she has made, what she learned from her mistakes, and the considerations involved in making braids for various outcomes. There will be time for questions.
Brenda Osborn has been weaving on looms since 1976. She was intrigued to learn kumihimo in the early 1990s and met Rodrick Owen (well known for teaching and for having written a number of books on kumihimo) in the mid-90s, when she began to braid quite seriously. She taught kumihimo at Newark Museum, which has an extensive Asian textile collection, for several years in the early 2000s before moving out of the area to settle in CT. While she loves making braids, she continues to be challenged and intrigued by how to use braids in non-traditional ways. Brenda makes braids on both the marudai and the takadai.
December 4, 2021
Location: In-person meeting (New Hope Chapel, Carolina, RI)
Holiday Party
January 8, 2022
Location: Meeting and speaker via Zoom. Guild members can meet at the New Hope Chapel, Carolina, RI to view the meeting as a group.
The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World
Textiles are one of humanity's oldest and most influential technologies, but nowadays most people take them for granted. Drawing on her widely praised new book The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, author Virginia Postrel will take us on a tour of some of the innovations--in fiber, spinning, weaving, and dyeing--that gave us today’s textile abundance and the ways textiles shaped civilization as we know it.
Virginia Postrel is an award-winning columnist and a research fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University. Her most
recent book is The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World. Her previous books include The Power of Glamour, The Substance of Style, and The Future and Its Enemies. During her research for The Fabric of Civilization, she learned to weave and is now the program co-chair for the Southern California Handweavers' Guild.
www.vpostrel.com.
February 5, 2022
Location: Meeting and speaker via Zoom.Guild members can meet at the New Hope Chapel, Carolina, RI to view the meeting as a group.
Great Weave Structures for Color and Texture using Novelty Yarns
Perhaps you have walked into a yarn shop and been fascinated with stunning novelty yarns. But as a weaver, it can be a challenge to figure out how to incorporate them into weaving projects in order to showcase the yarns without breaking the bank. Or you may have been inspired by the fabric used for a Chanel-style jacket that was created by Linton Tweed, Lesage, or Bernat Klein and would like to understand how these fabrics were created so you can design and weave your own. In this program, Robyn Spady will share a small collection of weave structures that let you take advantage of fun and exciting yarns and to add new dimensions to your weaving.
Robyn Spady was introduced to handweaving as a baby with her handwoven baby blanket woven by her great-grandmother. Inspired by her blankie, she learned to weave at a young age and has been weaving for over 50 years. She completed HGA's Certificate of Excellence in Handweaving (COE-W) in 2004 with the specialized study Loom-controlled Stitched Double Cloth. Robyn is fascinated by the infinite possibilities of crossing threads and loves coming up with new ideas to create fabric and transform it into something new and exciting. She is committed to turning the weaving world on to double-faced fabrics, four-shaft weaves, uncommon and advanced weave structures, and passementerie techniques. Robyn is also the founder and editor of Heddlecraft® magazine.
March 5, 2022
Location: In-person meeting (New Hope Chapel, Carolina, RI)
All attendees must be vaccinated and boosted, and wear masks.
Krokbragd
Krokbragd, a traditional Norwegian bound weave on three shafts, is used for rugs and wall hangings. Although it is a simple weave structure, it looks complicated because of the use of color and varied motifs to produce the traditional Scandinavian designs. Before starting to weave a rug or wall hanging your project should be worked out on paper. This project is large, time-consuming and expensive, and details should be decided before ordering yarns. We will look at woven examples, and discuss designing and suitable yarns. Most of the morning will be spent designing on graph paper, using 3 and 4 shaft threadings. Materials needed: bring graph paper, 8-10 squares to the inch is best, at least 5 colored pencils or markers, and an eraser or white-out.
Norma Smayda, master weaver, teacher and author, established the Saunderstown Weaving School in 1974. She learned to weave in Norway; Scandinavian design, colors and weave structures continue to be an important focus of her work. She also specializes in the contributions of William Henry Harrison Rose and Bertha Gray Hayes, and is coauthor of Weaving Designs by Bertha Gray Hayes. More recently she has immersed herself in weaving with fan reeds and has written Ondule Textiles: Weaving Contours with a Fan Reed. She received the Weavers’ Guild of Boston Distinguished Achievement Award and the New England Weavers’ Seminar Weaver of Distinction. She is a Past President of the Handweavers Guild of America.
April 2, 2022
Location: Kate Barber’s Studio, Exeter, RI. (Directions to follow)
New Works in Pleated Weaving / Studio Tour
Kate Barber has graciously offered to open her studio to the WGRI for a tour.
Kate Barber – I make sculpture with a textile sensibility; textile materials and techniques are the foundation of my creative process. As I weave, stitch, print, paint and collage I use a variety of materials, including thread, fabric, buckram, wax, metal leaf, and wire. I coined the phrase “practiced play” to describe the way I work. “Practiced” references hard-won and well-developed skill; “play”, on the other hand, references a looser way of working where freedom to experiment with materials and techniques brings creative breakthroughs. For me, both are crucial to making art that is well constructed, innovative and fresh.
It all started with handweaving, my first textile love and my focus for many years. I sharpened my skill as a weaver during five years at the Silk Weaving Studio in Vancouver, British Columbia where I designed and wove small-production scarves and shawls. I expanded my toolbox of textile techniques when I studied for two years in the textile program at Capilano University in Vancouver.
In 2012, I began making non-functional textile art. In 2016, I had my first solo show, “Forward Folding” in Providence, RI. Since then my work has been exhibited regularly in galleries across the country. I am currently co-curating “Luminous”, an exhibition featuring artwork by 5 Rhode Island artists, scheduled for fall 2021 at the Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport, MA.
https://www.katebarbertextiles.com
May 7, 2022
Location: In-person meeting (New Hope Chapel, Carolina, RI)
Negro Cloth - South County’s Sad Little Secret
Back during the time when manufacturing success was largely dependent upon the energy supplied to a mill or factory by a water source, South County, a place that abounds with rivers and streams, albeit small ones, was at a serious disadvantage with communities to the north with much larger rivers, which in turn supplied significantly more energy to work with. Realizing that they could not compete with the larger broadcloth mills on major rivers in northern RI, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, South County mill owners had to come up with a different business strategy, they had to find a niche product line that they could make their own and ensure financial success for themselves, their families, and their communities. In many cases that niche product turned out to be negro cloth; textiles designed, manufactured, and marketed in the south for slaves.
Tim Cranston can trace his Rhode Island roots back to 1637. It was then that his ancestor John Cranston, a young boy of 12, left Scotland traveling aboard a sailing vessel bound eventually for Rhode Island. Cranston would later become colonial Governor and his son Samuel would one day marry the granddaughter of Roger Williams. The Cranston family eventually went on to settle in North Kingstown; in the villages of Wickford and Swamptown. Today that long standing lineage, and inherent Rhode Island sense of place, is personified by Tim Cranston, self-proclaimed arbiter of all things “Swamp Yankee,” and local historian of Ye Old North Kingstown and South County, and all of Rhode Island. His popular local history newspaper column has run in the South County Independent for more than twenty years, and has won two RI Press Association “Spirit of RI” and three PreserveRI Education Awards. His work as a historian and preservation advocate through his non-profit corporation “Swamptown Enterprises” has garnered education and advocacy awards. The South County Tourism Council awarded Tim its South County ‘Starlight Award’ for his entertaining and educational walking tours and guided bus tours of the region and the NK Arts Council honored his work as the inaugural recipient of its Skog Award. The Town Council of North Kingstown honored Cranston by naming him the Town’s very first official town historian. The culmination of Tim’s efforts to learn about the details of the history of the village of Wickford, once the RI Colony’s second most important seaport, is the “Walking in Olde Wickford” guidebook series, a four-volume set of handbooks to the history of this critically important South County village. All told, the histories of more than 225 buildings are in these pages. Additionally, Tim has partnered with Historic Wickford Inc. (HistWick) to create innovative signage in the village of Wickford that is designed as a self-guided walking tour. Swamptown Enterprises and HistWick are now jointly engaged in a project to move all four of the Walking in Wickford books into the virtual world on the HistWick website. The Walking in Olde Wickford guidebooks along with his groundbreaking recent book, We Were Here Too – Stories of Black History in North Kingstown, as well as his newest book a historical fiction book for young readers, The Day The Bay Froze, can be purchased in shops in the village itself or all on line bookstores. Tim is now wrapping up work on We Were Here Too, Vol. 2 – Stories of Women’s History in North Kingstown Also available is the Arcadia Publishing Company book North Kingstown 1880-1920, written by Tim and featuring the photo postcards of 19 th century Wickford pharmacist Elwin E. “doc” Young.
June 4, 2022