Freestyle Weaving Workshop - postponed until January

I've been having such a great time doing "freestyle" weaving - where there are no mistakes, and I want to share it with everyone. I've decided to start teaching weaving workshops. I did some teaching after my own weaving teacher retired, and with the popularity of all kinds of fibrearts right now, this seems like a good time to start again.

 11:30 - 6 pm at
Another Space, 1523 East Pender Street, Vancouver, BC.
$160 including the use of a Beka rigid heddle loom and all materials and supplies.
Sign up with a friend, and you'll both get $20 off the price of the workshop.

This workshop is for you if you've always wanted to learn to weave, but thought it was too complicated 
or fiddly, or if you thought looms take up too much space.

You'll leave the workshop with a finished weaving that will be a completely original work of art.

Weaving in Finland

While I was in Finland, I stayed with a textile artist who organizes the Kuusisto Art Manor every summer. I offered to do a talk about freestyle weaving while I was there. I took a small rigid heddle loom in my suitcase, and we invited visitors to the manor to give it a try. The long banner was woven by many people from both Vancouver and Finland.

Weaving on a rigid heddle loom in Finland

My host with the finished banner

Article about my weaving in a Finnish newspaper.
In the photo, I'm wearing a top that I made for the trip. I call it "Kuusisto".

Weaving in Estonia

This past summer, while I was traveling in Europe I visited a SAORI weaving studio at Loovala in Tallinn Estonia.

More weaving

After taking the SAORI workshop, I was inspired to dig out my own rigid heddle loom and start weaving. I had put it away, half warped when I was pregnant with my first child. I had been planning to weave a gift for my midwives, but I decided to take their advice and just let some things go.

Over the 17 years that my loom had been waiting for me, the warp had  been "aging" - the threads had become tangled, stretched and broken. The whole thing was a big mess and I thought about ripping it off the loom and starting over but I kept the SAORI philosophy "there are no mistakes" in mind and persevered.

It was a short warp, which was probably a good thing because it was almost impossible to wind it onto the loom as it was. I ended up with enough fabric to make the back of another completely unique one of a kind original top that I called "Mid Main" after the location of my midwives' clinic.

"Mid Main" back

I wove more fabric using similar colours for the front panels:

"Mid Main" front

SAORI Weaving

I studied weaving with a master weaver for about 10 years, and then I got pregnant. My loom sat, untouched and 1/2 warped for almost 17 years. Then, quite by accident, I came across a SAORI weaving workshop offered by Terri Bibby of SAORI Saltspring. I was intrigued and signed up right away.

SAORI weaving starts with the belief that "there are no mistakes". This is very different from the precision and attention to detail that are important in other types of weaving. In SAORI weaving pretty much anything goes, wavy selvedges, dangling threads, lumps, bumps and holes just add to the beauty of the fabric.

First SAORI weaving

I was hooked. I made myself a completely original, one of a kind top that used up all the fabric that I wove at that first workshop. I call it "Semiamhoo" after the workshop location.

"Semiamhoo"