January Guild Meeting–Tuesday 25 Jan 2022, 7:00 p.m. on Zoom (link to be provided by Kathy)

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Guild member Penny Lacroix will present “The Abbot Worsted Company; The Business, the People and the Community”

In 1855, a partnership was established in Graniteville, Massachusetts “under the name of Abbot Worsted Company by John W. Abbot, John W. P. Abbot and Charles G. Sargent, special partners, to manufacture fine worsted yarn braid and upholstery yarn, employing 20 hands.” For the next 100 years, the company would operate multiple spinning mills in Westford, forever changing the character of the small farming community.

This presentation will report not only the evolution and growth of the company, but also how it drove the social and economic structure of the town. Becoming the largest manufacturer of carpet worsted yarns in the world by 1916, it provided low cost housing, medical care, and social and recreational opportunities for employees and their families.

This program was originally presented at the 2021 Weaving History Conference hosted by the Thousand Islands Art Center.

NVWG Meeting Tuesday, October 26, 2021

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Our October speaker is Mickey Stam, past President and member of the Weavers and Spinners Society of Austin, in Austin, Texas. She is the author of the book Innovative Weaving: A Guide for Study Groups, published in 2016.
https://www.amazon.com/Innovative-Weaving-guide-study-groups/dp/0692657339

Mickey is a weaver, a spinner, and a dyer and is Zooming in to talk about how to have, and be a member of, a successful study group. She has a master’s degree in the History of Decorative Arts from the Smithsonian Institution/Parsons School of Design and the Certificate of Excellence Level I from the Handweavers Guild of America.

With many of our members still feeling more comfortable “Zooming” into meetings, the guild is looking for more ways to engage our membership. Some other local, and not so local, guilds are now sponsoring study groups as one way of doing this. What are they all about? How do they work? What is my commitment? Lots of questions. Weavers and Spinners Society of Austin has had many successful study groups over the years. One of the study groups Mickey led was a study group on Innovative Weaving. Then she wrote a guidebook for other study groups to do the same.

This should be a great way to learn about how we can all move our weaving forward, in person or on Zoom, with our fellow guild members and other weaving enthusiasts.

NVWG Meeting September 28, 2021 at 7:00 PM

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NVWG Meeting

NVWG Meeting September 28, 2021 at 7:00 PM

  • L’Ecole Provinciale des Arts Domestiques 1930 (Provincial School of Domestic Arts)
  • Exhibition of products woven in the Searle Grain weaving program.

Oscar Beriau and the Canadian Handicraft Revival.    

On Tuesday, September 28, 2021, Mary Underwood, Front Porch Textiles will be the featured speaker for the NVWG meeting. Oscar Beriau and his contributions to the revival of weaving in Canada during the 1930s and 1940s is the subject of Mary’s presentation. Mary is in the process of writing a book on Beriau and his contributions to the weaving community and no recording of this presentation is allowed per agreement with her publisher.

This meeting will be a hybrid of in-person and Zoom. The business meeting will begin at 7:00 PM and our speaker is scheduled to start via Zoom at about 7:30 PM. The in-person meeting will be at the Congregational Church of Harvard, 5 Still River Road, Harvard, MA. This is right next to the Harvard General Store, and right across from the Harvard Common.   The meeting room is on the second floor.  There is an elevator.

Masks are required in all hallways, entries, the elevator, bathrooms, etc. Masks in the meeting room if unvaccinated, or as comfort level dictates. 

25May Meeting: The Fabric of Civilization

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Co-Sponsored with the Boston Area Spinners and Dyers
Presented by author Virginia Postrel, 7pm via Zoom
Textiles are one of humanity’s oldest and most influential technologies, but nowadays most people take them for granted. Drawing on her widely praised new book The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, author Virginia Postrel will take us on a tour of some of the innovations–in fiber, spinning, weaving, and dyeing–that gave us today’s textile abundance and the ways textiles shaped civilization as we know it.
Virginia Postrel is a Los Angeles-based author, columnist, and independent researcher whose latest book is The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World. She is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. Her previous books include The Power of Glamour, The Substance of Style, and The Future and Its Enemies. During her research for The Fabric of Civilization, she learned to weave and is now the program co-chair for the Southern California Handweavers’ Guild.

27April Virtual Show and Tell!

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A few of our Guild members took a 3 Dimensional weaving workshop with Sally Eyring, back in February.  Please join us for a Virtual Show and Tell, to see some of the pieces that we made during and after the workshop!  Didn’t take the workshop?  Bring your COVID Creations to Show and Tell, too!  This meeting is a fun way to see what everyone’s been working on.

The meeting will take place via Zoom, with a link to be sent out on Monday, the 26th.  All members should automatically receive the link.  If you aren’t a member yet, you can send a note to chair@nvwg.org to request the Zoom link information.  The meeting will start at 7pm, on 27April2021.

Yarn, the Movie

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Did you know that we have the DVD of “Yarn” available in our library? ‘Tis true! A few years ago, the Guild sponsored a screening of the movie at the Harvard Library. It was open to the public, and it generated much interest from locals.  As part of the licensing agreement, we are permitted to have the DVD in our Guild library to lend to members. According to imdb, the documentary reveals how “international artists and knitters take a simple skein of yarn to create their extraordinary ideas and stories.”  Calling it a documentary makes it sound serious, but it really is a fun movie to watch, if you’re into yarn!

If you’d like to borrow the DVD, you can contact Kathy, our multi-talented librarian, to arrange a socially distanced pickup. Alternatively, you can stream the movie through a link on its imdb listing for a small fee.

By the way, you can view everything in library by clicking the LIBRARY tab above!

23March2021 Meeting, Photographing Handwovens

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Join us via Zoom at 7pm for a presentation by professional photographer Joe Ofria.  Joe has been photographing fine art for almost 40 years. He will talk about what makes a good photo, how to use what equipment you have, and editing the image following the guidelines for entering shows or competitions.  He will also answer questions about setting up a “studio” and lighting options.

Not a member?  Send an email to chair@nvwg.org to get the Zoom link and join us for a visit!  (Please send your request before 5pm on 23March.)

February 23, 2021 Meeting

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Laverne Waddington has been learning to weave on simple looms with indigenous teachers in South America since 1996. In her home in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, she draws on ethnic design influences from around the world to create pieces on a backstrap loom using the various techniques and structures she has studied in South and Central America as well as with backstrap weavers from Vietnam and Mayanmar.
Since 2010, she has published eight instructional manuals on the various woven structures and finishing techniques that she has studied and produced a dvd on Operating a Backstrap Loom.
Her articles on backstrap weaving and indigenous textiles have appeared in Handwoven magazine. Shuttle, Spindle & Dyepot and Spin Off as well as in the published proceedings of the 2012 and 2016 Braid Society conferences.
She has shared her skills and experiences with many visitors to Bolivia over the years and now reaches a global audience with her weaving tutorials and travel tales on her blog. She provides online advice and support to weavers through forums such as Ravelry and teaches and speaks at guilds and textile conferences around the world.

26 January 2021 Meeting

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What is sprang? How exactly does it work, what evidence do we have of sprang in the past, and what can you do with it today?

Carol James, aka The Sprang Lady, will be joining us live (on Zoom) from Manitoba, Canada for our regular meeting at 7 p.m. on Tuesday 26 January 2021 to answer these questions.

We begin with simple definitions and live demonstrations to help you understand how every row of work yields two rows of cloth. A variety of stitches lend themselves to this type of work, some even look like woven cloth. Diverse  techniques transform simple rectangles into hats, socks, mittens, vests and more. We will see this played out in a series of images of sprang through history. The presentation offers photos of actual sprang artefacts, ancient artwork, and Carol’s sprang replicas taking us from the bronze age to present.
The presentation finishes will focus on ways to make sprang shirts. The ancient Persians and pre-Columbian Americans made shirts, so why shouldn’t we? History suggests a variety of approaches. Trial-and-error suggest a few more. Carol has made more than 20 sprang shirts, and shares what she has learned.

For more information on Carol and her work, see https://www.spranglady.com/.

If you are not a Guild member and wish to visit, please email Chair@nvwg.org to request the link to the Zoom meeting.