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
Mini #4: Introduction to Tapestry Weaving and Tactile Collage:
Make a mini wall hanging
Jessie Mordine Young
Let’s Weave! In this workshop, you will learn the basics of frame loom weaving from warping the loom, to drafting a design, and to learning basic tapestry techniques. Your instructor will demonstrate how to build imagery as well, and will help you develop your piece through every step of the textile-making process. A brief presentation of history and inspiration will be given. You will leave this class with a small wall-hanging or “woven drawing”.
Weaving is a tactile and sensory experience; students are encouraged to use class time to play and experiment on their looms; to explore material, texture, color and pattern in an effort to develop their own visual language. Alternative materials such as dried botanicals, beads, rope, shells, branches and rocks will be available for students to use. All materials will be provided and you will take home your frame loom so you can continue with your weaving practice.
Participants should bring: Scissors. All other materials will be provided, but students are welcome to bring additional material that feels personal to them that they would like to incorporate into the piece.
Materials fee: $15 or $30 ($15 for students who bring their own frame loom) ($30 for students who will be given a frame loom by the instructor.
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They will be able to take their loom home.
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The instructor needs to know who wants to be provided with a frame loom 3 weeks prior to the workshop). Yarn is provided.
Class size: 16
Afternoon Program: A Woven Year: Making Memory Tangible with
Materials in Mind, Jessie Mordine Young
Jessie Mordine Young, a Brooklyn-based artist and educator, will share her weaving practice, highlighting the evolution of her daily projects like the “100 Day Series” and “A Woven Year”. She will unpack her unique approach, which she describes as “tactile collage”. Additionally, Jessie will discuss the interplay between her research, writing, and art, particularly the significant influence of the Bauhaus weaving school on her work. Jessie will also share the progression of her natural dye practice, what informs it, and how she incorporates it into her woven artworks. Jessie will also discuss the significance of her textile teaching profession and how she hopes to share weaving on a frame loom with the world.
Artist bio:
Jessie Mordine Young (b. England, 1993) is a Brooklyn-based artist who researches, writes about, curates, makes and teaches textile art. She believes that textiles can be carriers of empathy, memory, and lived experience and that they are evidence of humanity. This sentiment is at the root of her art practice. In one of her more recent bodies of work, she embarked on a project of creating daily artworks, which she calls “woven drawings” or “thread sketches”. These pieces directly connect to her experiences in nature, where color and textures become tangible references to sites, sounds, and forms she finds when immersed in the landscape. Jessie is also enamored of the alchemy of the dye vat; she often paints her yarn and woven fabrics through a natural dye process and by thoughtfully sourcing plant matter.
She earned her BFA in Fiber and Material Studies and Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and an MA in Material Culture, Design History and Object Study from the Bard Graduate Center in NYC. She is also a part-time faculty at Parsons School of Design. Through extensively researching various craft histories in her academic and former curatorial practice, she has developed an appreciation for slow, thoughtful acts of making as an act of autonomy.