Handwashing Day

Hand washing some of my thrift store finds and successful bids at auction houses.
2 fine wool shawls, one with beautiful, woven, floral border

Wool blanket - well used but laundered carefully over its life time so no sign of fulling.

Piece of old silk velvet in blue and gold - a little fragile but washed up well.

A friend found this treasure for me at a garage sale - a heavily metal embroidered, Indian made evening purse.

It was rejuvenated after a light vacuum and spot clean.
It is now in my closet because I'm going to enjoy using if for awhile.

Strip Woven Blanket

A friend gave me this lovely blanket. She has a much larger one displayed on a wall and it looks magnificent.
We are both curious to find out any information about this style of blanket.
It is woven in long strips then sewn together. The fibre is coarse, like goat hair.

The yellow and red colours here are woven in.....

...while the spots of colour are stitched in after the weaving is done.

The back shows the carrying of the thread as each area is stitched.
The stitched areas appear to be worked in a much softer fibre, like wool.

Does anyone recognise this style of weaving and can tell us anything about it?

Briggs & Little

While in New Brunswick we stopped in at Briggs & Little, Canada's oldest woolen mill.

This is their new mill, built after a fire destroyed the original.

They still use vintage machines...

...and continue to make the same products, well loved by knitters and weavers throughout North America.

Alberta College of Art + Design

On the last day of our residency in The Banff Centre, we all drove back to Calgary in the morning. Ingrid & ReBecca weren't flying home until the next day so once we had unpacked the cars, we walked over to the Alberta College of Art + Design campus. Fortunately we caught the Fibre Department's Fibre Fort-Night Exhibition. There we ran into Annamaria Zutko who is a final year fibre student. She had set up a loom for a community weaving project she had initiated. ReBecca, above, is an experienced weaver so she had no difficulty in adding to the cloth. Donna & I had never woven before so Annamaria had to give us a lesson before we could produce anything.

As we left the campus we went via the graffiti stairwell. This is the sign on the door before one enters 'The Stairwell'.

And this is what it looks like. It is a fascinating trip down the stairs.

Mashru Cloth, Patan, India

Our tour group watched as Mashru cloth was woven with a pit loom

Skeining the hand dyed rayon & cotton thread

The double woven cloth is starched to make it smooth & shiny

Patan Patola, India

I didn't finish telling you about the master weavers who make double ikat silk textiles. Here father and son (an architect) work side by side ...

on a traditional silk sari pattern that they can weave 8" to 9" per day.

This sari took 5 people 6 months to make. No wonder the family members travel all over the world to demonstrate their amazing skill, www.patanpatola.com

A visit to a natural dyer of Australian merino wool.

A 2-year old indigo pot.

Pit loom weaving.