Fibre blending workshop with Katie Weston

Sunday, June 8th.
Today we had an excellent session with Katie Weston, of "Hilltop Cloud", learning how to use a drum carder to produce vibrantly coloured batts of fibre.  We were pleased to welcome several of our friends from other guilds, some of whom were coming to see Katie for a second time - which shows how good she is!
Katie gave up teaching sciences at a secondary school a few years ago to set up her highly successful company, and now trades worldwide and travels the UK with her wares.  She has recently had to buy a large van to carry her stuff (as well as taking over a static caravan at the family home). 
She started our day by giving us a visual tour of her home-cum-office-cum-workshop, and showing how she uses the surrounding countryside as a source of inspiration for the colour she puts into her work.  She then gave a clear and concise demonstration of how to choose and blend coloured fibres, stressing the importance of making small samples with hand-carder and drop-spindle before progressing to larger scale production using a drum carder.
Then we were let loose on Katie's stash of dyed merino, silk, novelty fibres, and naturally-coloured Shetland and Blue-faced Leicester tops.  Using a favourite photograph as a starting point, we selected our colours to harmonise and contrast, with 50% of natural fleece to meld the whole together, not forgetting a bit of sparkle or silk to add lustre to the finished yarn.  We learned quickly that what you see at the beginning is not what you get at the end:  after three passes through the drum carder, dividing and redividing the batts, we were all surprised and delighted to have produced gorgeous and unique coloured batts for spinning. 

After the first pass:  lurid pink seems to dominate, but....

....after a couple more passes through the drum carder, a pink-purple heather mixture appears.

 Very many thanks to Katie for such an inspiring workshop, for her patience and good humour, and thanks to all our visitors for joining us.

 http://www.hilltopcloud.co.uk/  Katie's website, and a photo of Charles Rennie Mackintosh too!
http://www.worldofwool.co.uk  (for commercially dyed fibre in a wide range of shades)

AC.

Sunday March 10th: silk and fine felt with Helen Melvin

Another excellent workshop, this time with our very own Helen Melvin, who showed us how to use "prefelts" to make beautiful textiles.

Helen has evolved a very effective technique using a variety of silk fabrics, commercially made prefelt and other bits and pieces which she dyes with her own natural dyestuffs to produce the most beautiful range of colours:

The prefelts, which as the name suggests are pieces of partially felted merino fibre, are manipulated, cut and reassembled with layers of silk. The assemblage is then carefully hand-felted using olive oil soap solution.  Stitching and other embellishing techniques can be used to finish.  Helen is making a line of "wearable textiles" to complement her bags and landscape pictures, and her work can be seen at Fiery Felts .
We all made at least one piece of colourful fine felt - it was lovely to have the opportunity actually to finish something! And I, for one, am very pleased to have been introduced to the use of fine plastic dust sheet instead of net to hold the pieces in place while felting.

AC

Spinning Art Yarns with Ann Campbell

A full house on Sunday for Ann Campbell's wonderful session on spinning art yarns! 
There was a good attendance by our own Guild members, and we were pleased to welcome lots of visitors who were drawn by Ann's fully deserved reputation as an excellent teacher and textile artist. 
Ann brought a delicious selection of dyed merino and silk fibres for us to choose from, and showed us how to create colourful and textured yarns.
We used drum carders to form batts of wool and silk in our choice of colours; spun them "thin and thick" and then plyed them with spun silk caps. We also created an "insertion" yarn with twists and knots of silk, and plyed this with commercial yarn - a great way to use up all those bits of fibre or yarn, and those cones of yarn which seemed such a bargain when we bought them.... 
Ann's useful tip to counteract the unwanted twist in an unbalanced yarn:  soak the hanks in very hot water with a tiny amount of detergent, spin gently and dry with a little weight at the bottom.
We were so busy that, once again, no-one took any photographs! (I promise to add some once my yarn is dry enough to photograph.)
Many thanks to Ann for her inspirational teaching.