Hot off the loom Trish conquered Saori in the recent Book Club Saori workshop.

This was the first workshop in my new studio and once again incredibly rewarding. On arrival at a workshop I go through all the basics and let everyone know that each of them will produce a very different textile to the person weaving next to them. It seems a bit of hype because it’s hard to believe that it’s possible. And yet just a few hours later at the end of the day…it is!

This particular workshop was planned long ago so I think the participants must have dreamed their designs beforehand. Such different colour aesthetics and styles. In a day workshop we usually get enough cloth to make a cowl or neck piece. Sometimes the work is more intricate as though each insertion is one of intense respect for the technique and becomes a smaller piece such as Melissa’s weave.

Often weavers choose an unusual variety of fibre texture types in the same weave too. This makes for exciting cloth design which has an instant ‘live’ vitality to it. Ruth experimented with soft mohair and weavers wool and cottons working with a skip technique to link it together. This produced a lovely transparency in some sections of the cloth against a denser opacity in other areas.

A variety of simple techniques were used during the day and the simplest one of just inserting threads or wool sliver was bought to a wonderful cloth by Helen. She was aiming at a unique table piece. This type of unique celebration combined with serving food to others has great potential and has been a favourite throughout history. We can really ramp it up with the Saori approach.

Faye’s cloth was an array of exciting colour blends and textures. It had a very lightweight handle and shimmered with an element of transparency and lots of improvisational clasped wefts.Everyone starts out together feeling a little “what will I do”, but it all comes together and leaves us thinking about the possibilities of our next cloth. Thank you so much to Trish, Melissa, Faye, Ruth and Helen!

I’ll leave with a link about on-demand knitting development which has a nice story about how textiles can link us to the world, especially when everything seems so harsh or clinical. By Mark Miodownik.
“When my son was born he had trouble breathing and went into intensive care. On visiting him, I found him in an incubator wearing a small purple cap. The hat was doing more than keeping his little bald head warm; the colour and the wool were a material link to the world of our everyday lives. It made him part of society even though he was surrounded by machines and tubes.”