Barbara Schutzgruber – Storyteller & Weaver

June kicked off with a fabulous “Yeah! We are back in person!”
weekend of workshops from the Michigan League of Handweavers.

Because life is still slowly moving past the infamous Covid-19 hiatus, the course selection was smaller than in the past with 6 offerings.

Fabulous Felt Sampler Workshop – 3 Wet Felted 3-D Projects in 3-Days with Dawn Edwards
—Come and learn the basics of wet-felting, or expand your knowledge, in this fun-filled three- day workshop.

Contemporary Embroidery: From Surface Design to the Stitched Mark with Jennifer Gould
—This workshop will strive to have students look at stitching on fabric, not as decorative, but as an expression of themselves—pulling something new and different from inside onto the cloth.

Weaving in a Parallel Universe on 8 or more Shafts with Linda Hartshorn
—Parallel threadings are incredibly versatile and can be used to weave a variety of structures including echo weave twills and jin (polychrome turned taquete).

ONE WARP, FOUR FABRICS: Weaving with 60/2 Silk on 4 or 8 shafts with Denise Kovnat
—Take the fear out of weaving with fine silk, using plain weave and turned twill along with a variety of weft yarns to achieve surprisingly different results.

Project Colorway – for Weavers Who Would Rather Die than Dye with Ruby Leslie
—Learning how to blend color while working with already dyed yarn is a different beast than learning how to dye specific hues.

SPLIT-SHED WEAVING on 4 Shafts with Deborah Silver
—Weave curves and blend colors using continuous wefts on a 4-shaft loom with no special equipment.

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I’ve taken several simple dyeing workshops to know that dyeing is not ‘my thing’ so I chose Project Colorway – For Weavers Who Would Rather Die Than Dye!
Ruby brought lots of samples for us to see and touch…

Several PowerPoint presentations to discuss color theory and blending…

We played with grouping colors into different combinations…

I had a lot of “Oh…. I get it now!!” moments.

On Saturday we all had a chance to see what the other workshops were doing.
As always…. my interest has been peaked for other workshops to take!

Some of the “Oh… that’s a good idea!” I gleaned over the weekend are:

This last idea motivated me to take stock of my stash.
Time to start planning some projects!!!