Donna was demonstrating spinning at the Alameda County Fair thirty years ago. She took a break and walked into what was then Young California Building where there were a couple of ladies demonstrating bobbin lace. She did not have a clue what that was but fell in love with it. That fall she signed up for a class and was hooked.
Donna will demonstrate how to make bobbin lace and will bring samples of her work.
Our speaker for the guild program on January 16th will be Kathy Hattori, longtime Black Sheep member. She has maintained her membership even though she’s lived in Seattle for many years.
Kathy will give us an update on her business, Botanical Colors, and some of her other ventures. In particular, she will talk about the work she does in the natural dye “sector” with brands and commercializing natural dyes.
An example is that Kathy has worked with the Eileen Fisher clothing line to re-dye clothing that the merchant buys back from customers. After Kathy re-dyes these pieces, they are repaired or re-styled by seamstresses and then sold at a discounted price. This reduces the pollution that results from working with chemical dyes and produces a desirable product that might have otherwise ended up in the waste stream.
We look forward to hearing Kathy’s presentation. Please visit her website for more information about Kathy’s work, helpful insights to mordanting, and using natural dyes: https://botanicalcolors.com/our-story/
We will meet at our usual location (Gold Star Room, Redwood City’s Veterans Senior Center). We’ll begin setting up at 5:30 PM, with dinner at 6:30 PM.
After dinner, we’ll have a gift exchange. Gifts should be items that another “fiber person” would enjoy, priced at no more than $15. If you have the time, a handmade gift or a small gift purchased from another fiber artist is especially appreciated. We will use a lighthearted poem to guide the gift exchange. Betsy Blosser has agreed to be our leader again.
Marilyn fell in love with paper when living in Japan many years ago. When she retired from teaching, she began experimenting with making paper in the studio she sets up in her back yard each summer. Several years ago she discovered botanical printing and has added that to interests she pursues in her outside studio. She has taught paper making to her calligraphy guild, Pacific Scribes, The Nature Printing Society, and the Sonoma Mycological Association where the paper fiber is mainly fungi. She also enjoys sharing paper making with friends and small groups while working in her back yard.
Several years ago she was fortunate to be able to tour Japanese paper making villages with Hakoni Paper, a paper importer based in Southern California. She was delighted to find the traditional Japanese life still existing in the small rural villages.
Please join us for a viewing of the 1997 prize winning film, “Textile Magicians of Japan”, featuring the creations of five Japanese contemporary fiber artists in the cedar forests near Kyoto, Japan.
With: Masakazu Kobayashi, Chiyoko Tanaka, Jun Tomita, Naomi Kobayashi, Hiroyuki Shindo
Mark the date! The Black Sheep Handweavers Guild is meeting the second Thursday of June for the annual raffle, auction and sale. Your yesterday’s yarn might someone’s dream-come-true!
Are you ever puzzled by – or a little shaky on – reading weaving drafts? Then set aside some time on Saturday, April 27, to focus on drafts.
Our own Kathleen Dickey will be giving a workshop to help you out. It will be at Amazing Yarns, 2559 Woodland Pl, Emerald Hills, CA 94062, from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM.
Please bring along a draft or two that puzzle you. You may also want to bring your copy of Marguerite Davison’s A Handweaver’s Pattern Book, or Mary Black’s New Key to Weaving if you have one.
To get an idea of how many of you will take advantage of this workshop, please let Betsy Blosser (bblosser [at] sfsu [dot] edu) know by email if you plan to be there.
This workshop is the first of some within-guild workshops we’re doing to focus on the interests and needs of our members. Stay tuned for more offerings!
Local entrepeneur Supriya Pradhan recently started Sofold, a clothing company with friends and family in India. Their first products are organic cotton dresses, hand spun and woven, naturally dyed and sewn in India. They are made of khadi cotton, made famous by Gandhi and currently promoted by the Indian government. https://www.sofold.com/
Surpriya will talk about starting this business and bring samples of the dresses, as well as shawls Sofold has added to its emerging product line.
Black Sheep member Barbara Shapiro will share images and objects from two recent trips to Japan highlighting textiles and baskets she encountered. On a Longhouse Reserve tour to the Beppu area in Oita Prefecture in the south of Japan, known for thermal baths and hot springs, she visited museum collections, saw artisans working in bamboo and stayed in a tiny mountain village where young people live simple lives working in sustainable textile practices far from the bustle of Tokyo.
On the 11th International Shibori Symposium tour to Yamagata Prefecture in Northern Japan she had amazing experiences exploring bast fibers, sashiko stitching and natural safflower harvesting, processing and the dyeing of four colors from a single plant, which the area is known for.
Workshop and museums completed the experience in this mountainous area with long snowy winters. One highlight was a prehistoric weaving device for a twined bast fiber fabric that predates loom woven cloth.
These two very different tours, led by Yoshiko Wada, explored Japan’s rich cultural textile heritage.
We are delighted to welcome John Marshall to Black Sheep. He will be talking about Japanese textiles and will be bringing some of his own samples to share with us.
John is an internationally known textile artist working with techniques of paste resist dyeing. He produces a wide range of sophisticated and colorful designs, many of which show the influence of his years of study in the Orient.
