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Pictures of the Complex Weavers Awards 2010

Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version. Or, right-click (Mac: Option-click) and choose "Save Target As..." or "Save Link As...". to download a WIF or pdf if available. Pictures are listed in page number order. Note that only those drafts which are marked WIF have a wif available.

Click on the caption to see a reference to the CW Journal. These awards were shown in the February 2011 CW Journal. Page numbers are for the article in the CWJ.

Award Gallery:  [ 2010 CW Awards] [2009 CW  Awards] [2008 CW Awards] [2006 CW Awards] [2005 CW Awards] [2004 CW Awards] [2003 CW Awards]
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Source of Pictures

Listed Alphabetically

• Nicki Bair, Eye Dazzlers, HGA Convergence, Page 5 Beetles of Thailand

  With its high humidity and warm climate, Thailand has thousands of species of beetles in a plethora of colors and varieties. My goal for the Eye Dazzler Exhibit in Albuquerque was to create an entire collection of beetles from Thailand in the southwest colors of New Mexico with a bit of sparkle to dazzle the eye. This piece was woven in one piece in a technique called taquete using a sixteen shaft Ashford table loom and lots and lots of sewing thread. Although fiber is not normally framed, my beetle collection - Beetles of Thailand, like all beetle collections, is stored under glass.

• Adele Bassett, Philadelphia Guild of Handweavers Celebration of Fibers, Page 6 Honeycomb Pillow Covers

  From a course on pattern drafting, I remembered mention of using "outlining wefts" in plain weave. I found the solution I sought in Sharon Alderman's discussion of the honeycomb structure in her book Mastering Weave Structures... Following Alderman's pattern, two shots of my handspun yarn in plain weave (1-3, 2-4) were followed by enough shots of the thin weft (1-3-4, 2-3-4) to achieve a decent sized cell for the first block. Then two more tabby shots of the handspun yarn were followed by as many picks of thin weft for the other block (1-2-3, 1-2-4) as I'd used for the first block. Fortunately, my multi-colored, lumpy handspun -- secured and corseted by the cotton carpet warp -- waved around the sturdy solid-color cells, making a decorative and durable fabric, though not a particularly complex one. Perhaps it just looks that way.

• Fran Boisvert6, Burlington Handweavers and Spinners Biennial Exhibit, Page 7 Caribbean Memories

  I used all 50 pattern shafts on my drawloom to commemorate a fantastic island vacation. The warp was handpainted and the weft was immersion dyed for this able runner. Yarns were 20/2 mercerized cotton sett at 50 epi in a six-end satin threading on the front harness. As the warp colors drift in depth from blue to green to turquoise it reminds me of the sun dancing on the waters of the Caribbean Sea.

• Julia Daniels, Michigan League of Handweavers Biennial Fiber Show, Page 7 Piecework

  Six different green threads (8/2 cotton and rayon cotton blends with thick 'n thin and slubs) were used for the warp sett at 24 epi. The weave structure is an undulating twill. Since I didn't have enough fabric to make an entire jacket, I combined it with faux suede to modify a design used earlier in a jacket workshop. The front was arranged to use as much handwoven fabric as I could. Sleeves were also modified and there was enough fabric for only one cuff so the other had to be made of the faux suede. Trish Lange was my inspiration for warping and construction techniques were from the recent jacket workshop. The garment is fully lined.

• Anne Dixon, London Guild of Weavers Diamond Exhibition, Page 8 Water Diamonds

  The scarf was woven using one of my favourite types of threading -- advancing twill. I love the watery edges of the shapes that this technique creates. When I first discovered this threading about 12 years ago it was in an attempt to be able to weave wide diagonal stripes in 3-1/1-3 twill using 60/2 silk. Then I realised that first a meandering treadling draft and then working with other twill tie-ups expanded the possibilities, even on the same threading, into infinity -- I don't really like ever repeating identical items. I have the great good fortune to have an electronic dobby so lengthy treadling drafts are no problem.

  Download cwa1009.pdf to see the threading and cwa1010.pdf to see the treadling.

• Suzanne Furness, Weavers Forum Exhibition 2010: To Great Lengths, Page 8 Influences

  This woven shibori textile consists of two blocks of four-shaft twill woven on an eight shaft computer controlled loom. One of the interesting effects that a weaver can achieve with shibori is the interaction of the various layers of colour that occur with the gradual take up of all the draw threads over a number of dye and discharge cycles. The final indigo dyeing acts as a unifying agent providing a cohesive whole. The warp is 60/2 silk, threaded at 48 ends per inch. The weft is a mulberry silk yarn about 20/2 in size.

• Christine Gauthier, Les Tisserands du Québec Annual Congress, Page 9 Journée d'automne

  This scarf is the result of my participation in a weaving study group of La Maison Routhier. Our study subject for 2009-2010 was four colour twill double weave which is the technique adopted for this scarf. I started by creating a 16 shaft network that I adapted to the four colour twill double weave technique. The two warp colors are sundance and truffle; for the weft I used bordello and winter sage. It was interesting to see how the colours interacted with each other, creating new colours.

• Ellen Heimlich, Florida Tropical Weavers Guild Annual Conference, Page 9 Blue Eyes

  This fabric was woven with 8/2 Tencel with an echo weave threading and an advancing twill treadling. I used a blue and a purple alternate threading in the warp. I wove several scarves with different colors of weft. This scarf uses a shade of blue in the weft which is different from the warp color. I used a green weft in one scarf in which the eyes looked like peacock feathers but this scarf is brighter so I thought it would show more effectively. I used PCW to design the pattern and wove it on my 16 shaft computerized Toika. I have been working on enlarging the patterns and creating more flowing designs in my weaving. Thanks to a workshop with Bonnie Inouye, I am making progress toward that goal.

• Heather Hubbard, Colorado Weavers Day, 2010, Page 10 Floatwork Scarf on 20 Shafts

  There are two reasons I wove this pattern. First is that this is a pattern that is almost lost to current weavers since it is in an out of print old edition. Even if Manual of Swedish Hand Weaving is still currently published, I wouldn't have had access to this lovely pattern if I hadn't come across this old edition of this book and really taken the time to look at it. ... The second reason I wove this pattern is for the lovely ogive, or pointed arch, pattern. I have often admired this type of pattern in Turkish and craftsman-era textiles, among others.

• Lois Larson, Handweavers, Spinners & Dyers of Alberta Annual Show, Page 10 Silken Elegance

  This piece was created to welcome a new bride into the family. The draft produces a pattern that appears quite complex, but it is not difficult to weave. It is based on a shawl in the Handwoven Design Collection #19, pg 28. I wove the Silken Elegance shawl on my AVL-24 shaft workshop dobby loom using a 20/2 Bombyx spun silk sett at 24 epi. Straight, point, and broken twills are combined with plain weave in the threading. I prepared a mini-album of all the steps and presented it to the bride with the shawl.

• Penny Peters, Blue Ridge Fiber Show, Page 11 The Pinwheels Project

  The final piece was about nine yards long, the colors shifted gradually and repeatedly. Three yards were devoted to play, incorporating the same motif in different designs (not shown). Submitting work to any show means photographing it. How do you photograph six yards to show that color change? We finally just hung it over the railing of my second floor deck taking the picture from below. It was not the best angle, but we were submitting the actual yardage for judging and not the photo.

• Wilda Postel, Mountain Spinners and Weavers Gallery Show, Page 12 OP-ART Carry-All Bag

  This piece was woven on eight shafts on a J-Made floor loom. The threading and treadling blocks were planned to produce the op-art pattern. I wanted a colorful carry-all bag for traveling and 10/2 mercerized cotton sett at 40 epi makes a very sturdy fabric. The bag is lined with purchased, quilted fabric, the straps (handles) are purchased cotton webbing, and the zipper is a heavy duty, two- way zip. The warp was sett at 40 epi and the weft was almost 40 ppi in a turned taquete structure. Both the fabric and the bag were original designs.

• Jo Reeve, New Zealand Spinning, Weaving, & Woolcrafts Society National Exhibition, Page 12 Incendio

  Incendio is the Italian word for blaze and this scarf was inspired by a huge fire that destroyed native bush near our home in February 2010. Many hours were spent at the computer designing an echo weave draft that would represent the red and yellow of leaping fames, as well as the surrounding blue sky. Echo weave is a fascinating weave structure that gives the weaver the opportunity to create a 'drop shadow' effect in the weaving with amazing colour effects. At first, red and yellow were used in the warp and blue in the weft which didn't give the 'hot' look I was after. But a simple switch to yellow and blue in the warp and red in the weft, gave the desired result.

• Lynn Smetko, Dallas Handweavers & Spinners Biennial Show: Dallas Weaves, Page 13 Quercy le Vert Hydrangeas

  This scarf is one in a series of pieces inspired by a 2008 fall trip to the beautiful Quercy region of southwest France that kept my camera busy then and my loom busy since. I enjoy the challenge of representing visual images on handwoven fabric to the best of my non-jacquard ability. The autumn hydrangeas at Hostellerie le Vert, my hotel, were wonderful in their color range from dusky coral to pink, and they gave me ideas for a pattern.

• Jeanne Steiner, Northern Colorado Weavers Guild Fiber Celebration 2011, Page 14 Midwest Landscape

  This piece was inspired by driving through Iowa in the summer on the way to my parents' home in the northwest corner of the state. Seeing the rolling hills and corn fields meet the sky filled me with the kind of anticipation that only comes from returning to old, familiar places---in this case, the home my grandparents built. I had just been reading about the process of woven shibori, and it struck me that I could capture the essence of the Iowa landscape through a combination of double weave, painted warp yarns, and supplementary warp and weft shibori techniques. During

• Diane Totten, Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild Members' Exhibit, Page 15 Blue Jay

  Several years ago I attended a woven shibori workshop given by Catherine Ellis. A comment she made about heat setting synthetics started me thinking about the possibility of weaving ribbing for the sweaters I was making at the time. When I gave it a try, I really liked the outcome. One thought led to another and soon I was thinking about how I could use the technique for an entire garment. What are the possibilities? The more I sample, the more I think the answer could be "endless" as each project brings several more ideas to try. I call the resulting fabric "crimp cloth."

Requests for the award or information about the award should be sent to the CW vice president, vicepres1@complex-weavers.org, preferably by email or with an email contact.

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