June is the last formal program for the guild year and it will be another Zoom meeting. The usual raffle, auction and sale will have to wait until we can meet in person.

Art in the Time of COVID

Black Sheep member Barbara Shapiro will share the productive burst of artistic output inspired by moving her studio in January 2020 and by current personal and political events. The sequestration that Covid forced upon us all brought forth lots of new work in several series. Unfinished and abandoned projects from years ago were seen with new eyes and finally finished. Newly discovered materials inspired different ways of working. And as always, Indigo colored her materials. Barbara hopes to inspire you to look at your own work in new ways as you enjoy this saga of 20-21 in her studio in the time of Covid.

Mathemagical Design – Geometry in Textiles

Since ancient times, human beings have observed the world around them and found recurring patterns in nature. The Golden Proportion, the Fibonacci Series, symmetry movements, tessellations and fractals are some of the mathematical ideas that have found their way into art and architecture for thousands of years. In this slide show we will see examples of how these ideas have been used throughout history, various cultures, and particularly in contemporary fiber art.

From the first time that Jennifer sat down at a loom, she was drawn to the orderly universe of colored threads and the rhythmic repetition in the process of weaving. Because of her background in piano and pipe organ, she felt an immediate affinity with this new stringed instrument whose patterns flowed from her hands in the form of color and design rather than sound.

Jennifer has developed new methods of setting up and weaving doubleweave and made it accessible and understandable for all weavers. Her techniques and systems for working in doubleweave can also be found in my book The Weaver’s Studio: Doubleweave and in her online courses.

Totally Twill – The Basics

Twills are one of the most versatile weave structures and the possibilities are amazing! The breadth of weaving twills can be a bit daunting, but so much fun! In this program, Robyn will cover the basics from straight draw and point twills and then move on to broken, undulating, M&W, Dornick, plaited, and turned twills.

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.

In 2016, Robyn launched Heddlecraft®, a digital magazine for handweavers. She believed there was a void in educational resources for the intermediate-to-advanced weaver (and adventure-seeking beginners).

Sampling is Not a Dirty Word!

Are you a member of that illustrious “full-size sample” club, feeling guilty that you should have sampled first…but there wasn’t enough time, yarn, or money available, and you were sure your weaving software would figure out everything for you? Listen up! The aim of sampling is to acquire information, not cause guilt or pain! Stop treating sampling as a dreaded disease – sampling IS weaving and can significantly improve your textiles.

An inveterate sampler, Ruby has always tried to extract as much information as possible from each warp. After years of being a closet sampler, she wants to dismantle the negative ideas that the word “sampling” invokes and turn it into an easy habit to embrace. Sampling is more than weaving or not weaving a sample at the loom before embarking on a project. It is a design tool – an easily acquired way of thinking about how to weave and create cloth. There are techniques and strategies for how to extract a maximum amount of information from a surprisingly small investment of time, money and/or yarn.

Ruby Leslie maintains a full-time weaving and teaching studio in northern Vermont, where she designs her own line of handwovens as Ruby Charuby Weavings. Boundless enthusiasm for sampling and experimenting, especially with color and its interaction with structure, has guided Ruby’s creative endeavors from the beginning of her weaving career 30 years ago. Handwoven magazine’s invitation to become a contributing member of their ‘Color Forecast’ series, creating swatches on a regular basis, was the impetus for Ruby to streamline her design process. This fueled her desire to share her insights about how to successfully integrate color, structure and yarn in weaving without having to dye yarn or rely on recipes. Ruby has taught above the Arctic Circle in northern Norway and Greenland, as well as at Convergence, regional conferences and guilds throughout the US. She was one of three weaver/designer teams invited by the Handweavers Guild of America to create a collaborative runway ensemble for the second Design Fashion Challenge at Convergence 2010 in Albuquerque, NM.

The rhythms of her looms inspired her children to produce the music video Getya Loom Goin’  for their “Ma, the Weava.”