Elaine Duncan

Beautiful surroundings for a wonderful workshop experience

This past week I had the pleasure of teaching Tapestry at the Maiwa Textile Symposium on Granville Island in Vancouver, BC.

Maiwa netloft was perfect for 12 students, one teacher and one assistant

The workshop included students from as far away as Alberta, Victoria, Kamloops as well as Vancouver and the surrounding areas.  We met for four days to learn to weave tapestry or to enhance our current skill levels.  The participants were keen, asked really good questions and had a spirit of adventure and cooperation.  It was a wonderful combination!  And also really good energy.   We started the class out with warping copper pipe looms using Cotton Seine Twine Finnish #15 at 8 epi, total of 33 threads.  For exercises to begin with we played with lines, gradually increasing the number of lines so we had a progression of colour.  We practised slit, weft interlock and warp interlock techniques and then started to work on shapes.  Everyone had their own ideas and the students were encouraged to follow their hearts and do something they were interested in doing. The students wove with naturally dyed 100% wool 2 ply that was mill spun from Romney sheep. Everyone commented that the natural colours helped to make the choice of colour easy  These are some photos of the progress that was made in the course.

Evelyn's sampler top left, her inspirational photo bottom right, and her woven tapestry rop right.

Evelyn made a colour study before choosing her final yarns.

Jane decided to weave an image from a photo...it is Arbutus tree bark.

Barbara is learning to build shapes, creating the negative space first

Catherine worked on geometric shapes at first, then chose a photographic image of a flower for her project

Sophena played with geometric shapes inspired by images from Mexico

Avyn chose to weave intuitively, letting her mind choose the next step after visually acknowledging what had gone on before

Mardel's sampler and tapestry...building shapes, birds maybe? or triangles

Virginia wanted to study geometrics, shading, depth perception..this was her inspiration

Virginia used traditional French hachures to practise colour blending. She managed to get lots into her 4 inch wide sampler.

Shannon initially started out weaving from the front, then changed to weaving from the back which she decided was easier for this geometric design.

the right side of her tapestry viewed from the back of the loom using mirrors to see her work.

Colene worked on shapes discovering where to start her new shape in order to be in the correct shed

Michele wanted to weave a bird and she did!

There are two others from our workshop that I unfortunately do not have photos of…one is Bonnie who arrived each day, bright and cheery, staying to the end.  Bonnie had some challenges getting her fingers to work due to some health issues.  Her sampler was the smallest, but there was so much positive energy emanating from it.  She loved being in the group learning from the others.  Thank you Bonnie for being there!  The other very important person was Myrna, our workshop assistant.  Myrna helped the students with their weavings as well as helping me getting comfortable with the space.  Thank you Myrna!

Thank you also to Maiwa which holds a symposium in the fall of each year.  It was a pleasure to work with the owner, Charllotte Kwon, and the rest of the staff at Maiwa.