May 17, 2025 STATE MEETING
Open: UpCycle, reCycle and rePurpose: Embracing Sustainable Practices in your Studio, Dawn Hettrich
Join a presentation on UP-cycling and GREEN sustainability practices in the use of FIBER, from artists to new science initiatives and practices emerging from the textile industry. There will be a presentation and experimental samples to share at the end of the presentation. Please bring your own recycled or upcycled pieces to add to the front table - a showcase to inspire responsible studio practices!
Mini #1: Bobbin Lace for Weavers and Knitters: Demonstration and Using Leftover Yarn, Sumiko Tray
This workshop is a combination of demonstrations, and students trying some basic skills.
The teacher will show how to use leftover yarns to make a bobbin lace scarf and bobbin lace landscape tapestry. Students will make sample bobbins using dowel and wooden beads. Each student will make 4-6 pairs of bobbins to practice stitches. Students will learn how to make bobbin lace’s basic stitches (2 stitches).
The teacher will demonstrate how to make a styrofoam pillow and cover it with cotton fabrics. Styrofoam will be provided for students to try.
Participants should bring: Scissors, notebook, a box of pins with glass or plastic pin heads 3-4 mm, and left over yarns students want to use at least 2m each long. The instructor will bring lots of yarns to share also.
Materials fee: $15 Class size: 10.
Mini #2: Follow-up to Origami Class, Sharon Northby
This is a follow-up class for the people who took the origami planning class in March 2024 who are getting ready to cut their woven cloth but want to use commercial fabric to make a sample first. People will cut and baste the sample cloth in this class.
Participants should bring: Commercial cloth already cut in the width and length their woven fabric will be along with pins, needle and sewing thread to baste their fabric together. Scissors are also suggested. Bring your handouts from the 2024 class.
Materials fee: none Class size: 13
People must have attended the March 2024 HGC “Planning an Origami Top” mini workshop.
To register in this class, you must contact the registrar at registrar@handweaversguildofct.org.
Online registration is not offered.
Mini #3
Charting Figures in boundweave on a 4-harness loom
Rebecca Arkenberg
Have you ever wanted to add a pictorial element to your weaving? This workshop will take you through the steps to create a charted figure. We will use graph paper and colored pencils to “sketch” a figure, then the process of how to transfer it to your loom will be demonstrated.
Participants should bring: Colored pencils (The instructor will have some, but since people are using the same colors, it will be helpful to bring your own: blue, pink, black, red, brown). Idea for charted figure (If you have an idea for a charted figure, bring images. Be aware that they need to be symmetrical and capable of being simplified.)
Materials fee: $5 includes
Folder with postcards, bookmark, and copy of the article written for Handwoven
Class size: 14
Afternoon Program
Harriet Hanson Robinson and the American Industrial Revolution
Dr. Jamie Eves, Interim Director / Senior Curator / Co-Windham town Historian
The Mill Museum, Willimantic, CT
The American Industrial Revolution began in 1793 in Pawtucket, RI, quickly spreading to Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. It focused on the manufacture of textiles using imported British technology powered by falling water. There are a few first-hand accounts about what it was like to work in these early factories as "mill girls." The best and most complete is Loom and Spindle, a memoir written by Harriet Hanson Robinson, a doffer, spinner, and "drawing-in girl" at the big textile mills in Lowell, MA, in the 1830s and 1840s. While working as a "mill girl," Robinson joined with other young female operatives to produce the Lowell Offering, the first periodical publication in history to be entirely edited and written by women. Although Robinson wrote her memoir decades after she left the mills, it is the most complete and accurate account of life as a "mill girl." This illustrated talk uses examples from Robinson's life to illustrate the birth and reality of the early textile industry.