The Fibre Guild ran a number of classes and held a meeting at the recent Guilded Symposium. For those who couldn’t make it, here’s what we did! Read all the way for a delicious show and tell at the end. 😎
Guild classes
Incan Textiles Presentation
Mistress Rohese de Fairhurst gave a really interesting and well-prepared presentation on Incan Textiles. She has kindly made the PDF of the notes available for download.
Wet felting
Mistress Tigre d’Argentona held a workshop in wet felting, overflowing with attendees (and suds!). We took woollen fibre (tops, some dyed), water, soap and enthusiasm and produced felt! Much fun was had, and we were all rather clean in time for lunch.
Understanding 2/2, 1/3 and 3/1 Twill using Draw-downs
Lady Eleonora Rose (that’s me) ran a workshop on understanding weaving patterns, focusing on twill. We created patterns for weaving balanced twill (2/2) and unbalanced twill (1/3 and 3/1) and drew diagrams to see what the cloth would be like (i.e. “draw-downs”). For those who attended this class there is a survey for feedback here, if you would be so kind as to help improve this class for next time.
Winding Narrow Warps
Lady Eleonora Rose went through various ways to wind a warp that don’t involve chair legs or measuring individual pieces of string. I demonstrated winding a warp using a warping mill, with a bunch of tips for making and counting the cross, securing the warp and getting even tension. This class will likely run again (probably at Fields of Gold and/or next Festival).
Hands-on Sprang
Mistress Rohese de Fairhurst gave several lucky folks the chance to try out Sprang using a PVC pipe loom. One student even finished their project the following day! I didn’t get to attend this class myself, but I did score the handout, and this class was packed with information.
Guild Charter
Fru Ragnhildr Freysteindottir charged Her Excellency, Helouys le Poer with the safe delivery of the Guild Charter into the hands of the new Guildmistress, Lady Eleonora Rose. This presentation was made with a little ceremony between removes at the feast on Saturday evening. The Charter is now home safe with the new Guildmistress.
Guild Meeting
We had a really productive Guild Meeting, with twelve attendees:
Rohese de Fairhurst
Sara van den Hove
Juliana de Northwood
Tigre d’Argentona
Clara Bone-Aventure
Tomas van den Hove
Mathild de Lilburne
Vigmar Vifill
Igulfridr Magnusdottir
Robyn Spencer
Mabel Pine
Eleonora Rose
I was delighted to announce that Countess Mistress Margie of Glen More has kindly agreed to be our Guild Patron. Our patron will encourage us in our craft and will be a public advocate for the guild. At the meeting we discussed ways we could involve our patron, including presenting our work to our patron in a show case, and commending worthy guild members to the notice of our patron.
We discussed guild rankings and heard about different ways that other guilds manage their ranking systems. The Guild of Defence allows people who’ve achieved a specific rank to assess work at that rank (to prevent burn out and scope creep). The Performer’s Guild allows people to self-assess with guided criteria. The WCOB rankings are based on how many techniques the person has successfully submitted (1, 3 and 5 at each level) with Masters doing the assessment. There is a question of how we bootstrap our system if we require ranking in order to assess.
We briefly touched on criteria for rankings: how do we know what makes a piece “Novice” or “Journeyman” or “Master”? The WCOB has a checklist to facilitate this. We want to keep the burden of assessment low (so it’s not a major chore to assess work).
We want to find out who last held the post of Librarian so that we can recover the list of people who have historically achieved rankings. ➥ Tig is going to chase this.
➥ We proposed have a specific meeting on the topic of our rankings and on criteria. Members who are interested in contributing to the discussion can email the Guildmistress (fibre@lochac.sca.org) with suggestions.
Next we discussed activities for the guild. We proposed having a show case at Festival, perhaps with a dedicated area for the Fibre Guild to live in for the duration of the event (a “Fibre Corner”). We’d love to be able to have a dedicated spot to run Fibre-related classes, to allow people to have-a-go, have a hang-out zone, and to display our work.
➥ I will talk to the A&S Coordinator and the Baron and Baroness of Rowany about options for dedicated space we could get hold of at next Festival.
It seems feasible that we could have a hanging display of work at Festival even if we can’t manage a dedicated space. Tig suggested we could attach our work on curtains that fit the Great Hall windows, making good use of space. Or we could attach work to sheeting that gets hung in the Great Hall.
We thought we could all contribute to a display, accompanying our items with a page of information: historical context, techniques, etc. This information could be added to a flip-book catalogue associated with the display.
Show and Tell
A meeting is not complete without some show and tell! We had to scramble through this section as the weather was closing in. Next time we’ll allocate more time to appreciate the show and tell.
We spent a little time discussing the “2-hole corner” technique that Clara described for her tablet-woven band. This involved four ends threaded in opposite corners of a tablet, with each corner having two holes (I think). You rather need to see a diagram to understand this, and I don’t think I’ve done the technique justice with this summary!
