Once again the Sashweaver attended the St Boniface, Winnipeg annual winter celebration, the Festival du Voyageur. The sash, an important article of clothing for the men who transported trade goods into and out of the Great White North in the days of the Fur Trade, the sash still holds significance to Canadians. Snow sculptures at the entrance to Voyageur Festival Park depict voyageurs portaging their canoe, and the voyageurs always wear a sash And another snow sculpture I’ve been busy with fingerweaving workshops and demonstrations: Stationed in the temporary museum at Festival Park, I talk with the public about weaving and other skills commonly practiced in the early 1800’s weaving at Festival du Voyageur
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More photos from that visit to a local school:
The Winnipeg Public Library requested a series of workshops for interested members of the public. The first one was held on Thursday, Feb 5. In two hours, participants mastered the basic technique, and learned to finish off with a fringe. The workshop will be repeated Saturday, Feb 7 and a third time on Saturday March 14.
Local schools who have invited me for the month include École Saint-Joachim, École Héritage Immersion, Viscount Alexandre, John Taylor Collegiate and École Sainte-Anne Immersion. The University of Winnipeg, Materials Culture Class will host me on Friday the 13th where I’ll talk about distinguishing loom woven from fingerwoven. On Louis Riel Day, Febr 16, I’ll give a fingerweaving workshop in Maison Chaboillez, inside the Festival du Voyageur park. I will be attending the Society for Arts in Healthcare annual convention in Buffalo in late April. It occurs to me that the Great Lakes Region was a hotbed of fingerweaving two hundred years ago. I’m scouting out possibilities of visiting sashes in collections along the way. Already I’ve contacted the Royal Ontario in Toronto, Lundy’s Lane in Niagara Falls, Rochester Museum and Science Center in Rochester, and the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society. I’m still in the planning stages, but have to firm up plans soon. At present I’m still open to suggestions for places with interesting sash collections, fingerweaving and sprang.
Bruce Middle School hosted me last week. I brought along my display of sashes to help explain the variety of patterns. Students then were given the opportunity to practice the basic method in fingerweaving, each creating for him/herself a ‘wrist sash’. Photos thanks to the students of Bruce Middle School.
The fingerweaving method tends to create a tangle of threads at the lower margins of the work. This is commonly called the ‘false weave’, and a person can spend many hours per sash periodically untangling this mass.
Occasionaly people have said to me, “Too bad you can’t use that somehow.” I have spent some time thinking about this. My work with sprang teaches me that it is possible. Indeed, sprang was done alongside fingerweaving in certain parts of Quebec in the 18oo’s. Whenever I travel anymore I try to scout out as many examples of sashes as possible along the way. I’ve met with some success requesting permission to examine sashes and record data. Over the past few years I have come upon some spectacular fingerwoven sashes, and five very loosely woven ones. The loose ones intrigue me. How does a person weave that loosely and at the same time keep it even. I have some experience dealing with the ‘false weave’, creating ‘art pieces’ which incorporating it as part of the work. More recently I have conducted experiments, working with the false weave. Working on a 12 ft sash, I sat myself on a high chair and pushed the false weave as far down, close to the floor as possible. Using this method I’ve been able to pack as many as five repeat patterns before untangling. It seems that, if you start out with the threads knotted together to keep them even, that a mirror image of the sash pattern is created. a mirror image pattern can be seen in the falseweave At one point I took my weaving to the Manitoba Museum and compared the false weave with a loosely woven sash there. They matched up quite nicely. Travelling last Summer, I examined sashes in Edmonton, Alberta, and found three that my data would declare to be in the loosely woven category: fine thread comparable to 2/8 worsted wool, and fewer than 7 threads per inch lengthwise. The sash of a local hero, Elzéar Goulet, is preserved in the Musée de St Boniface Museum, a few blocks from my home. It is an example of such a loosely woven sash. There is interest in a reproduction of the Goulet sash, and I am intrigued to explore a technique that would yield such a loose weave. Last Fall, I made a successful proposal to the Manitoba Arts Council for a Craft Grant. Subsequent to receiving approval I have proceeded to match yarn and dyestuffs to the original. Last week I made up a sample to verify my success at matching the colors. The curator snapped a photo of my sample alongside the original. sash color comparison You will notice that my sample, the one on the left, is wider than the original. The next step is for me to re-spin the yarn, eliminating its ‘fuzziness’ and compacting it down. My calculations indicate that this final step will allow me to make a very close copy of the original. The respinning will occupy me (along with a few other projects, like the local Winter carnival, Festival du Voyageur) for the month of February. In early March I will measure out an extra long warp. I will then set myself to weaving a sash. The false weave I will push, row by row, to the far end of the warp. If all goes as expected, I will weave two sashes at once, one a nice tightly woven sash, and one the falseweave, packed into a replica of the Elzéar Goulet sash. I’ll keep you posted. December was spent on a list of personal and family projects. I worked on some woven rugs I promised myself long ago. I am finishing a sweater I promised my husband a while back. And I dabbled in twining and tablet weaving.
January 2009 has been jam-packed with activity. For those of you eager for fingerweaving instruction, I’ve hired someone to help, he’s filming for a DVD. Hopefully it will be out soon. As well, I’m working on that french translation of the book Fingerweaving Untangled. Perhaps by May 2009. Test pieces for another sash were created and submitted to the individual offering the commission. The next sash will feature two arrows on a red field. samples for the next commissioned work Following tips given to me by other weavers, I’m using rug warp from Halcyon yarns, hand dyed to just the right color. I made a presentation to the board of directors of Manitoba Artists in Heathcare, outlining my work representing the organization in the St Boniface General Hospital. Everyone entering a health care facility has a ‘right’ to feel stressed. Matters of life and death are common place there. It is my conviction that every corner of the facility must needs be equipped with ’stress reducing’ and ’stress absorbing’ resources. I see my weaving as my contribution to Artists in Healthcare attempting to help fulfill this requirement. To top it off I’ve been working with area schools to teach children the basics of fingerweaving. Angus McKay, Ste Agathe, Steinbach, and Bruce Middle School have all provided me with most eager students. Each one completed a friendship bracelet of one sort or another. The lovely thing about fibers is that there is no ‘bad’ way of doing things, only different manner of individual expression. I’ve been wanting to try something more than straight long pieces with this fingerweaving. To this end, I borrowed my daughter’s dressform, measured out lengths of wool, laid them over the shoulders and started weaving. Voilà the end result! A seamless garment! No shoulder seams, no sideseams. Next time, I’ll start with longer lengths so it will extend beyond my middrift. Nevertheless, I declare this attempt a success!
In other news, at the invitation of the Social Studies Teachers Association, I attended a teacher inservice day. I was invited to teach teachers to weave. What fun! I met a woman who had purchased my book last Summer, and was well into weaving her sash. So, you see, it is possible to learn using only the book Fingerweaving Untangled! That bit of sprang that I started for the Viking Weekend in July 2008 has been sitting there, calling to me. So I finally finished it. Having learned from this experience, I’d do the next one a bit differently. The tablet woven band was wider where I left the weft for the sprang, and tightened up when I began weaving them separately for the ties. Next time I’d have two wefts going while I’m leaving off lengths for the sprang. I’d have one weft of a very fine thread (to hold the tablet weaving tight, and a second one to be shooting from one band to the other, making the warp for the sprang.
Joining the two tabletwoven bands at the back of the neck was another challenge. I am thinking that that fine weft would also help me to make this join. Trying to demonstrate the variety possible in this arrow sash genre, I began playing with acrylic yarn, and created several short pieces. Calling them neckscarfs, I’ve been selling them locally, encouraging folks to ‘design your own sash’. I was invited to the Canada Revenue Tax Center yesterday for their Aboriginal Awareness Day. I put up my display of sashweaving, and sold several books. Nice to know that the folks who collect your taxes have a human side to them. I’d like to think they have hobbies, relax, and are sensitive to cultural awarness issues. A friend came over today and we spent the afternoon with her tablet weaving, troubleshooting her problem with a brocading technique. At long last success! Come to find out, the problem was the direction of the threading in the cards, not with the brocading picking at all. I got the pattern working, then we got to chatting, and my attention wandered, and the pattern got a bit muddled. I went from using the two upper threads, to a single upper thread, and back to the double threads in the brocading. Quite interesting, and a nice change from the fingerweaving and loom weaving.
The current ‘Beginning Fingerweaving Class’ is about to end. Students are keen to set up their own sashes and start weaving away. It looks like they’ll continue to meet at the Musée de St-Boniface, so I’m thinking this is a great opportunity to start up a Fingerweaving Club. Anyone out there in the Winnipeg area is welcome to bring your sash and join us on Sunday afternoons, 1:30 to 3:30 PM. I received word yesterday that my next Mega-Project has been approved for funding by the Manitoba Arts Council. I’ve been intrigued by sashes I’ve seen, 4 of them now, all indisputably dating to the 1800’s and very loosely woven. How would someone weave that loosely, was my question. I am now going to test out a theory. This is my ‘two in one’ project. I will set up an extra long warp and fingerweave a sash, never un-doing the false weave. I’ve got the perfect extra long studio, the atrium of the St Boniface Hospital. I’ll shove every row of false weave all the way to the far end, causing the build-up of a second sash at the far end. All this is scheduled for the New Year. I’ll keep you informed. |
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