The week at John C Campbell

Spending a week at John C Campbell Folk School was great fun and helpful to me in understanding techniques of weaving and building and correcting on the skills that I have.  There were 9 of us in the class with an instructor,Susan Morgan Leveille and her assistant Christie Rogers, so lots of one-on-one assistance in making sure the process I use, will get the desired results.

Lori and Janet sleying the reed

One of the things that I did not know till I got to class was Susan's family history is deep in weaving in Western North Carolina.  Lucy Morgan, Susan's Aunt was the founder of the Penland School of Crafts  and Susan learned to weave at the age of 9 from her aunt, Lucy Morgan.  In class she brought drafting notes and samples from Penland in the 40's, some of which I used during the week.

The week was designed to focus on Scandinavian kitchen textiles, towels, hot mats, table runners in a variety of weaving patterns.  I used rosepath, but others in the class used Monk's Belt, Krogsbrad, Halvdral, and twill.  Most of us were weaving with 8/2 cotton and the supply of yarn at John C Campbell allowed for lots of variety in the projects contemplated during the week.  The other benefit of the week was the library - a wealth of weaving books to spend time pouring over during the session.

Our photos of the week are here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/thomson.pat/JohnCCampbell?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCJLg0LjC4MCx-QE&feat=directlink

Susan brought in some of her textiles to help inspire us.  Most of us made kitchen towels, two or three during the week.  I joked that the cost of the two towels I made was about $300 a piece.  Some of the class came from Seattle, upstate New York, Illinois and so their towels might have cost about $1000 each.

My $300 kitchen towel in Carhartt brown

The weaving studio also gave me access to 30 looms, from 5-6 different manufacturers, to see what I liked in different looms and what I might like to modify on my loom or what features I'd like to have on the next loom.  I spent most of the week at a Schacht Baby Wolf, a loom I thought I might like to buy.  After the week was over I decided it was just too small, I was sitting too low at it and felt like my knees were up around my ears.  I still think that I might like a Macomber or a Leclerc and definitely want at least an 8 harness loom.  The other need is one that does not require the skills of a contortionist to warp.

Weaving Class Projects

Gary spent the week in a woodturning class and also thoroughly enjoyed it.

Phil Colson - woodturning instructor

During the week, there were 15 different sessions going on with a Scandinavian theme, including knitting, ceramics, wood carving, enameling, blacksmithing.  My favorite was the needle felting class that made incredible creations by the first day. Friday afternoon, all of the classes got to show off their stuff and it was great fun looking at the production during the week.