The September Black Sheep Guild program will feature Carol James, expert in sprang and the would-have-been keynote speaker from CNCH 2020. She’ll talk about the fascinating structure that is sprang. There will be a live demonstration and examples of the tremendous variety of clothing and other items that can be made with the versatile technique. She’ll include examples from history and modern applications.

Carol James has been playing with strings for a long time; she learned to embroider and to crochet before she entered kindergarten. Since the 1980s she has been exploring a wide, flat, braiding technique known in North America as fingerweaving. In the mid 1990s she was introduced to sprang. She is now a world-recognized teacher. She has spent the past 20 years rediscovering textile forms that had been considered lost, resurrecting these ancient techniques and making them accessible to everyone through her publications, books and workshops. Carol believes that textile creation is part of our human heritage. Textile is an amalgamation of threads interconnecting with each other, just as humans work together in order to create the fabric of society. The method used to create fabric in disparate communities around the world is often quite similar. This is a common language of humans: the construction of fabric. Woven together we are stronger.

Carol James’s website may be found at
http://www.spranglady.com/

Carol writes about the image on the right: “I made myself a new sprang shirt, using a 5/2 mercerized cotton from Lunatic Fringe, leftovers from other projects. Inspired by the stitch pattern in a Ukrainian belt, I made vertical stripes in the body. I inserted a weft along the shoulder where front and back meet, it gives stability to the  shoulder, bearing the weight of the sleeve.” More information about this piece is on the blog at Carol’s website.

Karen Donde weaves garments, fashion accessories and home textiles for sale and teaches beginning-advanced weaving classes and assorted workshops for guilds and conferences. Teaching credits include HGA’s Convergence 2012, 2014 and 2016 and 2020, Southeast Fiber Forum, the Mid-Atlantic Fiber Association’s Workshop Weekend, Midwest Weavers Conference, Intermountain Weavers Guild Conference and Florida Tropical Weavers Conference. In Asheville, NC, she has taught at Sutherland Handweaving Studio, Friends & Fiberworks, Local Cloth and her own studio.

Photos are used with the kind permission of the copyright holder, Karen Donde.

Take a look at Karen’s website:  https://karendondehandwovens.com

Long-time Fibershed source of inspiration, color-grown-in cotton developer and
biodynamic grower since 1982, and shepherd and farmer Sally Fox is our speaker for May, 2020. Sally will be presenting to us about her farming life, developing strains of colored cotton over the past four decades.

Check out her website at

https://www.vreseis.com/

This presentation  is postponed.

Due to public health concerns, we have canceled our March meeting and will postpone Janette’s presentation on wedge weave to a future date. As the folk dancers say, now is the time to do what we do best, and take care of one another.

What is wedge weave and why is it so much fun? Janette Gross will talk about her growing love for the technique and share some of the many ways it can be played with. Open slits, closed slits, traditional zig zag design, little scalloped edges, big scalloped edges, in combination with other techniques and more. She will also talk about how she develops a design from the initial idea or theme to sketches, color choices, sampling, final project calculations and then what happens on the loom. Pieces of Janette’s and others will be available for touching and discussion. If you have a piece you’ve done, bring it to share.

                                                         Ice Break 34 X 27″    – Photo: R. R. Jones

Ice Break and Vanishing Glaciers are currently in the IMPACT show at the Mills Building in San Francisco until mid-March.

Janette began weaving in 2003 after retiring from 30 years of full-time employment in the business world. She fell in love with weaving on a trip to New Mexico with a workshop at the 2002 Taos Wool Festival. She followed up with weaving classes and workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2005, she moved to Santa Cruz, California. She sought out and met the well known rug weaver Martha Stanley, who became a dear friend and mentor. For over ten years, she has been weaving at least once a week in Martha’s studio under the redwoods in Watsonville, California. There are now five other weavers who dye yarns in an outdoor dye area and weave together in the studio. The group supports one another through encouragement, critique and friendship.

Janette’s passion for the Navajo (Diné) style of weaving called wedge weave has kept her engaged for many years. She enjoys exploring the many ways she can push wedge weave and yet stay true to the technique. Two of her pieces are currently included in the IMPACT tapestry show at the Mills Building in San Francisco and another has been accepted to the American Tapestry Alliance’s ATB13 to be shown in Massachusetts this summer and at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles in the fall.

When she is not traveling or weaving, Janette also derives a lot of pleasure out of working with weavers who are blind or visually impaired. She has been involved in the Santa Cruz guild’s program for the weavers for many years. She is a member of the Santa Cruz Textile Arts Guild, Tapestry Weavers West, the American Tapestry Alliance and the Textile Society of America.

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/