January

UnFinished Objects

What's keeping us from finishing some craft projects? This month we want to begin the New Year by finding new incentives to finish unfinished objects in our stash. The workshop will be focusing on working together to clear the hurdle to finish at least one unfinished object.

The only requirements for this workshop are at least one UFO and a slight desperation mingled with a speck of enthusiasm to finish it in a month's time.

Febuary

Blending colours and fibres

Using the fleece in the three primary colours and black and white, spinners and felt makers will learn to blend their own colours from an inspirational image of their choice. Knitters, crocheters, weavers, embroiderers, etc., will be challenged to mix their yarns to achieve interesting colour combinations. Everyone will be bringing life to their creations.

March

Medieval dyeing

April

Sewing Handwovens

The aim of this workshop is to take away the fear of cutting your handwoven cloth and making garments from it! Working on a length of your own handwoven fabric and a pattern of your choice, the process of sewing with handwovens will be demystified and you will learn techniques and skills for sewing well-made clothing from handwoven fabric.

The workshop does not cover basic dressmaking skills so you should already have some sewing experience. A simple garment should be well on the way to being finished by the end of the workshop. You will need to have a length of handwoven fabric, a pattern, sewing machine and general sewing supplies.

May

Silk Spinning

This workshop will show you how to deal with the range of silk fibres available to spinners. If you have ever wondered about how to use, say, carrier rods or what to do with throwster’s waste, this workshop will help.

There will be a brief account of the silkworm’s lifecycle, focusing on what sort of silk is produced by which stage in the lifecycle, and which moth produces particular fibres.

June

10th Anniversary Challenge

July

Annual Guild Discussion Week

A time of evaluation for the Online Guild. This week features an open discussion in which all members are encouraged to participate.

August

Holiday

A free month with no scheduled workshop or programme, offers time to catch up on Guild projects and just chat.

September

Sustainable crafts

Sustainability is everywhere. But how can we incorporate sustainability into our crafts? The workshop will focus on two projects worked from the stash and offer lots of information about fiber backgrounds and alternatives to commercial craft supplies.

October

Designing knitwear

This is a re-run of the workshop from 2004. We will be looking at how to design your own knitted or crocheted items, whether a simple bag or hat or a complex jacket.

If you are a competent knitter you may want to have yarn ready for a big project. If you are new to the game, you can learn a lot with odds and ends of commercial or handspun yarn of almost any thickness.

November

Deflected Double Weave

After the inspiring workshop on Double Weave in June 2010 this workshop gives you the opportunity to explore Deflected Double Weave. Technically this is a double weave: two independent layers are at the core of this fabric. However floating threads create a new dimension compared to traditional double weave.

Another characteristic is that the fabric on the loom can look completely different from the fabric after finishing. Some fabrics really go bump. You can either try out given examples in this technique or get inspired by the design grid to create your own fabrics.

The main part of this workshop will require a loom with 8 shafts. However some options are given for 4 shafts. Having more than 8 shafts will enable you to explore the design possibilities to the fullest. Next to your loom you will need tools to design your weave. Excel or weaving software is very useful. However for low-tech solutions design paper will be supplied. In that case pencils in two colours will do.

The aim is to have a workshop for every interested weaver from just beginning to more experienced. By sharing my experiences in this very versatile technique I want to invite every weaver to join in.

December

Festive Exchange