Archives

Fabric Design Challenges (Formerly known as Designing Fabrics)

To promote discussion, we choose a yearly theme or challenge (2024 challenge is Traces, 2025 will be Counter Change), more abstract than technical. Each member is encouraged to consider their personal response to the theme, working up a design concept to be developed into a woven piece, maybe based on research, photographs, sketches, and/or an emotional response, and then contributes an article related to the topic. Sometimes it leads to a finished piece, but the main interest is how we got there.

The group meets quarterly on Zoom usually in March, June, September, and December. Each member selects a quarter in which to present their study/article followed by group discussion. Topics/questions of interest to the group will be welcomed.

Fabric Design Challenges welcomes weavers of all levels of experience and with any kind of loom – from rigid heddle to jacquard. If you are interested in exploring the challenges of designing, this group may be for you.

Double Weave

The featured image is a window pane design with a black background and multicolor panes.  It is woven in 10/2 Mercerized Cotton, black from Webs and colors from Lunatic Fringe’s Tubular Spectrum.

“Double Weave” is a study group with approximately 30 weavers.  Most of the group describe themselves as intermediate level double weavers, the rest divide between beginners and advanced. Members of the group have looms from 4 – 16 to more shafts.  We are open and welcoming to weavers of all experience levels. All that’s required is enthusiasm!

Each year a shared topic is chosen. The group exchanges messages, drafts, descriptions and photographs through a Groups.io site. Margaret and Alice lead discussions to choose projects with guidelines, ideas, and objectives for those projects.

Weavers need to have access to a computer and online services along with weaving software that can produce drafts in a WIF format.  Participants are required to contribute drafts and cloth scans electronically four times a year. Because of the continuous open dialogue between all members of the group we have no formal newsletter.

Beyond Plain Weave Garments

The Beyond Plain Weave Garment Study Group has been going since Fall 1989. We have been sharing fabric swatches, which are in some sense “beyond plain weave,” and are intended for garments. While experimental samples may be of value, most swatches are for actual garment fabric and we prefer pictures of the garment with the swatches. We are also interested in design information, technical problems and successes, the type of garment planned – in short, copious notes.

A “Mystery Critic” is chosen each time who, in return for a set of samples, critiques the samples in the set.

The group is unlimited but we hope to not have more than twenty members  for each sample, to keep the work of preparing samples within reason. Members opt in or out for each sample.  This plan has worked very well for the members of the group, and some splendid and inspiring samples have been produced. Members have acquired collections of lovely and valuable samples which spark their creativity in further projects and which they share with their weaving friends.

The garments of several members have been featured in Weaver’s and Handwoven. It is a pleasure to actually own a sample of the fabric illustrated in one of these magazines! Like other study groups, we have provided the archives with copies of our samples so that all Complex Weavers can enjoy them.

The study group communicates through its Yahoo Group, where pictures, messages and files are posted and archived. A group email list makes communications easy.

Dues:$7.00 US/CA/MX or $9 US-equivalent (international) to be sent in with each set of samples submitted. This will pay for postage and necessary phone calls. (Send checks in $US or contact the chairman about using PayPal.)

Swatches: ~3″ x 3″ due twice a year. Expectations are to prepare up to 22 copies of your samples, depending on signup for the samples. The participant sends enough copies so that copies also can be sent to the Archive and to the Mystery Critic. Send samples on a data sheet detailing threading source, sett, epi, yarn info, threading/tieup/treadling, length & width, etc, and notes on sewing processes and challenges. Participants are encouraged to include notes on designing, technical problems, style of garment, size, pattern number, pattern sketch or photocopy, construction or finishing hints, and a photo of the finished garment. Participants agree to honor the distinctive quality of each garment and not to copy it without special permission.

Due Dates: Spring and/or Fall.

Bateman Weaves

Dr. William G. Bateman left a legacy of manuscripts he wrote while exploring new weave structures/systems in his retirement years. After his death, his daughter recognized the importance of his work. Virginia Harvey took on the task of publishing his work which resulted in six monographs published in the 1980s by the Shuttle Craft Guild. This work remains largely unknown and unexplored in the weaving world, and CW has heretofore not had a study group devoted to the Bateman Weaves. Linda Davis and Wanda Shelp formed the Bateman Weaves Study Group in 2010 as co-leaders. The group began in 2011 with Monograph Thirty Seven, Park Weaves, and has subsequently studied all additional six monographs.  The group continues and will again cycle through all six monographs.