I’m just back from tutoring a workshop at Alston Hall for the Bradford and District/Bowland/Craven Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers.  It’s always a pleasure to go to Alston Hall, the accommodation is lovely, the staff are delightful and the company on the Retreat is wonderful!

This year I was lucky enough to have been asked to tutor, as the last time I was there was in 2002 on a Twisted Braid course and before that in 2001 on a Theo Moorman course.

My 15 students included one man, Pete, and an elderly lady of 92, Betty, who you would never have believed was that age.  All had been rather worried about the design aspect, but once they had gone through the processes, all admitted they would not have been able to produce the yarns they did.  So rather than describe everything, here is a slide show of everything they did!

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On Friday 10 June, I drove down to Stratford upon Avon to talk about Design for the Terrified followed by a Creative Spinning Workshop on the Saturday.  I was made very welcome by Gwenda, who was to be my host for the week-end, and who then took me to the local collage where the Guild meets.

There was a good turn out by members of the Guild, for the talk, and even a couple of guests from the Birmingham Guild who had attended a Creative Spinning Workshop there, last year.

As a result of the talk, Chris from Birmingham, brought her picture with design notes which had been inspired by my talk.

Chris's design notes

On the Saturday the weather was very mixed, sunshine and heavy showers, but inside the College everything was sunny, including some of the lovely images there were brought to the workshop as inspiration!  Everyone worked really hard, produced some lovely yarns and tried out some new fancy yarn techniques.  The images below show the results of the day.

 

 

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We have had a third wonderful year in The Netherlands. This time Jane taught Whacky Fibres and Alison taught Colour and Weave in The Hague and we both taught design in Zeeland. We had the opportunity to teach design to Helen Melvin’s felters, and the exercise was considered a huge success – it is so satisfying when people learn the basic exercises that help them to demonstrate their innate creativity.

The yarns  were created in The Hague by Djoke, Marion, Karen, Lisette, Attie and Elspeth at Dineke de With’s atelier, de Spinners

Last Saturday I drove up to York to give a talk about useful spinning techniques and using fleece characteristics in Creative Spinning to the York and District Guild.  On the Sunday I taught a workshop on Creative Spinning to a packed hall.  The Guild were very responsive and below are the impressive results of their endeavours.

Sorry about the few that are a bit blurred, I get so excited when I see the spectacular results!

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Saturday morning saw me driving up the M1 and M62 to Bradford Industrial Museum to give a talk on Colour and tutor a workshop on Colour Blending for the spinners in the Bradford and District Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers.

They are a lovely, lively group who really took to the workshop producing some lovely yarns from just the primary colours, black and white!  Take a look at some of the work that was produced in just a few hours in the slide show below:

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Today I was invited to the Birmingham Guild where we had a lovely day spinning creatively!  The images they brought with them were lovely and couldn’t fail to inspire beautiful yarns.  Here are the results:

I’m sure you’ll agree with me that these yarns are really beautiful, especially as some of the spinners have only been spinning a few months!

Alison

Just look at these gorgeous yarns designed by my students on the Creative Spinning course in The Hague, at de Spinners. De Spinners is the studio of Dineke de Boer and is an absolute treasure trove for anyone with textile interests and we all had a wonderful time, playing with fibres! 

More Fancy Yarns

Funky Fancy Yarns

Here are just a small selection of wonderful yarns produced at the Funky Fancy Yarn workshop organised by Alet Tienpont, owner of Textielwerk Wol en Zo in Zeeland, Netherlands.

Jane Deane, Amanda Hannaford and I were invited to the Netherlands for two, 2 day workshops.  In The Hague Jane tutored a Creative Spinning Workshop, Amanda tutored a Woollen, Worsted and Cotton Spinning Workshop and I tutored a Natural Dye Extracts Workshop for Dineke de Withe of De Spinners.

We then travelled to Alet’s studio where Jane tutored a Silk Spinning Workshop, Amanda tutored the Woollen, Worsted and Cotton Spinning Workshop again and I tutored the Funky Fancy Yarn workshop.

Some fabulous yarns were created over the 2 days in Zeeland which you can see below.

I wish we could show more of these beautiful yarns, but there just isn’t enough space!

Alison

Last week-end I was invited by Kent Guild of Spinners, Dyers and Weavers, to tutor a workshop for their annual members day.

The workshop started at 11.15am and finished at 3.30pm and with lunch there wasn’t a huge amount of time for the participants to get their head around Creative Spinning from an image as their source of inspiration!

However, those who took part really rose to the occasion and produced some lovely yarns using colour blending techniques and some fancy yarn techniques.

Some of the results are shown on the left and the inspiration ranged from images from costumes,

Images of landscapes,

Images from greetings cards

Images from postcards,

And images from gardening magazines.

By the way, I drove down on the Friday evening and stayed with Kent Guild member, Valerie Selden and her husband John, who own a lovely B & B in Mersham called Glebe Place.  So if you’re wanting to explore Kent or stop off on the way to France their hospitality is worth sampling.

Dineke's inspiration, yarn and some design work

Alet's inspiration, yarns and some design work

This past week has been busy and exciting. I have had two Dutch friends, Dineke and Alet, studying creative spinning with me and they both produced some gorgeous yarns.

We started with an image – one each – and then I asked them to undertake various exercises: isolating the colours, making a collage, then we photocopied th e original and collage or drawing in black and white. This helped enormously with structure. By the end of the second day we had some stunning yarns.

All this activity took place in my studio at the Duchy Square Centre for Creativity in Princetown. On their day of rest (!) the ladies did a monoprinting course with David Lister, another Duchy artist, and they have more ideas about design. Then a day admiring Lesley Prior’s gorgeous fibre animals, Bowmont sheep, angora goats and cashmere goats, then then another day spinning and finally they joined in with an indigo workshop that I was running.

 

Jane