Barbara Schutzgruber – Storyteller & Weaver

The theme for the May meeting of the Ann Arbor Fiberarts Guild  was “Celebrating Member Fiber Explorations”. This is our final meeting of the season and members are invited to share fiber art projects they’ve been working on all year, and workshop participants are welcome to show their unique responses to the Guild workshops they attended. This was my chance to actually wear the dress so I packed up the collection for the show & tell.

Besides myself the November 2023 virtual workshop with UK paper artist Jennifer Collier [see March 2024 blog] inspired 2 other members to create full size wearable garments. We had a great runway show with Trish Ritchie wearing her kitchen apron made out of pages from Cooking Light Magazine and Carolyn Michaels wearing the pinafore apron Helen Welford made using paper grocery bags. 

Also on display in memory of long time member Marion Marzolf was the dress she created for the 2015 guild recycled materials challenge woven using chenille yarn for warp and strips of mylar balloons and plastic for weft.

Creating the Couture Cartography Collection was challenging
but also fun and exciting.
I will not be wearing the map dress again any time soon.
The paper is fragile and it’s not very comfortable.
One does not bend nor sit if wearing it.
However…. it is wonderful to twirl in!!