Sunday 29 November 2009

November Meeting in Two Parts

First part of the 2009 Year-End Meeting of Marlborough Weavers took place in Annie's Cafe on State Highway 1 yesterday. We had a lovely brunch, followed by a Show and Tell of our 2009 bag project. There were some spectacular bags, and we will be showing them to you in the next few weeks. (Alas, yours truly did not have one.) And then we went around the table reporting about our individual projects. While most of us had one goal, with different results, Joan set four goals for herself and finished two.

Then we visited Peg Moorhouse in Sunshine Bay and viewed her recent work, and had a nice cup of tea and Christmas mince pie. We started to talk about the 2010 goals/projects as well as possible topics for our meetings. These will be finalized during our first meeting in January.

We'll show you some of Peg's recent works in the coming weeks as well.

Next meeting is around the third week of January 2010.

by Meg Nakagawa

Friday 13 November 2009

Bags To Be, by Meg Nakagawa

Every year Marlborough Weavers have a theme or a project that members work towards during the year, and show results to the group at the end of the year. This year one of the projects has been bags, hence Win's beautiful pieces.

I, having belonged to Marlborough Weavers for three years, start thinking about these projects with gusto every February but somehow have not managed to come up with tangible results for the first two years,. So I would love to be able to show at least one bag at the last meeting of this, my third, year.

I was surprised, and impressed, that Win planned a whole weaving project with bags in mind, because I have been thinking all year about bags made of end-of-warp swatches, a kind of recycle/salvage project. Unfortunately most of my fabric pieces are extremely soft, because that is what I aim for when I weave my scarves and shawls, but I do believe there is a bag, or two, in my swatch pile somewhere.

I've exactly 14 days to come up with one!

by Meg Nakagawa

Tuesday 10 November 2009

The Bags, by Win Currie

These little numbers have proved to be truly multipurpose. I had been planning to make myself a small bag of similar design to one I had bought many years ago, big enough for a change purse, comb and lipstick, car keys, wear over the shoulder so your hands are free. Then our Weavers group decided to have ‘Make a Bag’ as the year’s challenge, and the group had a stash of fine cotton. So here is the result. The hardest part was making the initial paper pattern so that I got all the folds and fancy yarn parts in the right places. I was very pleased with the result though. I still have to devise an improved closure design. I welcome suggestions.

by Win Currie

Friday 6 November 2009

The Baby Blanket, Or Don’t Always Depend on the Rules, by Win Currie

I have always used the 3:5 rule when making rugs. That is more or less 3’wide by 5’long, the measurements I work to. So I made this baby blanket about 37"wide and about 60"long. When I took it off the loom and spread it out to get the overall effect it looked just... AWFUL. It looked out of proportion and just too long. How to fix it? As luck would have it the block construction was such that I realised I could just chop off the end blocks, zigzag the ends and crochet around the whole lot as I intended to do anyway. Problem solved!! But I still don’t know why the magic formula didn’t work!!

by Win Currie

Sunday 1 November 2009