Winner Warping Ways of Scots & Swedes

Description

Instructors: Becky Ashenden & Justin Squizzero

Pronouns: she/her/hers, he/him/his

Date: Sunday, September 26th, 2021

Times: 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM EST, lunch included

Location: 80 Bassett Road, Shelburne MA 01370

Cost: $175 – $245 sliding scale

Materials Fee: Warps will be weighed during class and charged separately

# of Students: 10

Experience Level: All are welcome

Becky Ashenden’s (she/her/hers) 1981 introduction to the wealth of the Swedish textile world at Sätergläntan Institutet för Slöjd och Hantverk, a school renowned for weaving and other traditional crafts since 1922, gave her the motivation to pursue weaving as a life passion as well as a career. The following 13 years of production and sales added experience to her initial high-level training to build a unique set of complementary skills in both the theory and practice of weaving. Her use of equipment and techniques that have withstood the test of time adds to the value of what she has been offering her students at Vävstuga since 1991. Becky has also worked on a series of publishing projects for her own Vävstuga Press, which includes translating weaving books from Swedish to English and republishing Swedish weaving books that have gone out of print. She has also been the technical editor for several Swedish weaving books that have recently been published in English.

Handweaver Justin Squizzero (he/him/his) challenges modern definitions of progress by creating functional textiles that celebrate the natural world and the dignity of human labor. Echoing a time when utilitarian objects were entirely handcrafted, his work connects material, maker, and user across time and place. Squizzero’s venture, The Burroughs Garret, draws on the textile traditions of his northern Vermont home, marrying natural dyes and fibers with a reserved aesthetic rooted in early New England. Produced on his 19th-century farm using 200-year-old hand looms, Squizzero’s textiles examine the role of handcraft in a post-industrial society, questioning the human experience in a digital age.

Program Description

Justin and Becky have had extensive training in two neighboring rich traditions of hand weaving. Winding a warp is one of those tasks that can have many twists (so to speak). This session will acquaint you with various pieces of equipment used for this process, and techniques that have stood the test of time. Join us for this educational and entertaining session with delicious Scottish and Swedish snacks mixed in.

Students will have the opportunity to observe these various techniques from the Scottish and Swedish traditions in addition to trying their hand at winding their own warp on a mill to take home incorporating their choice of skills introduced in the morning session.

Justin will demonstrate a technique for winding a warp with a 1/1 lease using any number of ends and special considerations including: 

• How to create a lease for threading and a lease for beaming
• Working with single direction stripes, mirrored stripes, and complex stripe repeats
• Strategies for using this technique at home without any special equipment

Becky will demonstrate special methods for winding warps on the Vävstuga warping mill including:

• Holding multiple ends in hand for repetition of a stripe using  only one cross
• Winding a warp half the width and twice the length
• Designing on the mill

Please contact us with any questions at office@fabric-of-life.org.

Our sliding scale fee allows us to keep these programs accessible to a wide range of individuals. The ‘admirer’ option covers the cost of the instructor fee, program support, marketing, and administration. The ‘friend’ option covers all of this and allows for a small profit margin to be contributed towards sustaining Fabric of Life programming for next year. The ‘enthusiast’ option covers all of this and allows for us to begin to sustain Fabric of Life programming for generations to come.

FOL will refund 90% of your fee if you cancel more than 30 days before the beginning of the program. 10% will be retained for administrative services. Cancellation with less than 30 days notice will automatically be rolled over as a credit for another program of your choice within the next year from the date of the original program. FOL will maintain the funds and carry them forward once you determine what program you would like to utilize them for. If there is a balance after paying for the second program, it will not be refunded. If a program does not run due to circumstances beyond our control, participants will receive a full refund of the fees paid.