Elegant Threads Show and Sale 2012

Our annual guild show and sale took place in Qualicum Beach from Nov 30 to Dec 2nd this year.  This event inolves all the guild members.  It is a chance to show off the creative efforts of the past year.  It is also an opportunity to earn just enough money to justify spending way more money on yarns and fibres.  Most of us have given up any pretense of "breaking even".

The sale committee never knows how many items will show up or what they will be.  Dressing the display can be a real challenge.  Part of the fun is discovering what other members have been up to or how they have interpreted an idea.  I love the bags that are an inventive use of small pieces of woven cloth.  They are the collaborative effort between a weaver and a sewer.
The items reflect our different interests in working with yarns and fibre so one can expect to see items that are knitted, felted, woven, or twisted.  The materials use can range from yak to kelp.  If it can be worked with a knitting needle or our hands or woven around a warp then we will use it.

Some of the pieces involve an incredible investment in time.  Take for example some of the garments knitted out of hand spun yarn.  Fibres were dyed, blended, prepared for spinning, spun then plyed then knitted.  It is no wonder that it can be difficult to part with our creations.  In many ways they are like puppies that we have nurtured and grown attached too.  We know their special attributes and we want them to go to a good home where they will be appreciated.  We want the new owner to read the washing instructions, refrain from wearing the tea cozy as a hat (inside joke) and actually use the tea towels.
Many of our items will be wrapped in fancy paper or stuffed in Christmas stockings.  I was told the tea towels are easy to pack in a suitcase and won't break during shipping.  Hand spun yarn will give hours of pleasure.  Hats and mits are always needed.  Sweaters, wraps and blankets are a cozy reminder of the person who gave them.

At this time of year the weather can have a large impact on attendance at the sale.  Living on the wet coast of Canada we can anticipate precipitation of some kind.  It can range from intermittent light showers to torrentail and never ending rain and even wet road clogging snow.  This year we were blessed with intermittent torrential rain but still folks managed to make their way to the show.  We thank them and hope they enjoyed visiting with us and will enjoy their purchases. 
Here we have a satisfied customer sporting her newly acquired Hapi Wrap.

Fun with Flowers, Fruits and Rusty Nails

We all seen our favourite piece of clothing fall victim to a food related stain.  Oh the disappointment, as we rush to wash out that spattering of black berry juice or watch the cranberry sauce spread across the table cloth.  Who ever thought that deliberately crushing black berries into a silk scarf would create something beautiful!

Our guild recently held a dye workshop that would have horrified my mother.  It went against all those lessons about how to avoid splashing the beet juice while peeling beets, removing grass stains from the knees of pants and adding a napkin underneath the bowl of cranberry sauce to avoid spills.  The pigments for the dye workshop came from the woods, the garden, the pantry and the shed.  The sources included leaves, flowers, berries, vegetables, fruit, and tea bags.  Rusty nails, pennies, alum and assorted other metal items (including sometimes the dye pot itself) provided the mordants as well as creating distinctive colours and patterns.  Add some salt to the mix and you can create magic.

 

 

In the pictures shown, silk scarf "blanks" were used but some members used cotton with equal success.  The silk blanks were pretreated with alum.  The dye materials were layered onto the cloth then the cloth was folded and rolled using various techniques.  Finally it was tied to keep the dye material in contact with the cloth.  The bundle was heated in a dye bath containing salt, more dye material and more metallic objects.  Everyone created their own dye bath so no two finished pieces were the same.

This picture shows a selection of the scarves that resulted from the workshop.  The colours were subdued browns, gold and rose.  The dark lines in the right hand scarf are due to rusty nails.  Where copper pennies or other copper items were involved the scarf often had a blue green cast. 

The photo to the left is a close up of an open cotton cloth showing a pattern of red and purple. 

 From the workshop we learned that the method for folding, rolling and securing the undyed cloth would effect how the pigments in the dye bath penetrated the cloth and how even the colours would be.  Many of the techniques from shibori dyeing could be applied here to create distinctive patterns. 
Although green leaves and other materials that appeared to be green were used very few of the pieces showed the typical greens that we are familiar with from other natural dye sources.  Possibly our plant materials reacted as they did because they were collected late in the year.
Such is the mystery of natural dyes and the variability that gives natural dyeing it much of its charm.  You never know what the final result will be.

 

For what is left of November our guild is counting down the days and madly finishing off pieces for our annual show and sale, Elegant Threads.  This event is our once a year opportunity to show off our works.  It is also our major fund raising effort as a percentage of the sales goes towards guild activities.  We will be at Rotary House in Qualicum Beach from November 30 to December 2nd.  Rotary House is located on the corner of Beach and Fern in the downtown area.  We would love to see you there.