SOUTHEAST FIBER FORUM

The Southeast Fiber Forum was held at Arrowmont School of Crafts in Gatlinburg in early April.  I attended and took a weekend class in Turned Beiderwand taught by Karen Donde of Sutherland Studios.  Karen is a great instructor, very well organized with lots of information ranging from fairly straightforward to deviously complicated on this old weaving structure.  By turning the Beiderwand structure, it can be woven with one shuttle, which makes the weaving progress much faster.

However, in weaving turned beiderwand, two different yarns are required for the warp and they are taken up differently during the weaving. The pattern warp has much   longer floats and therefore ends up looser on the warp beam.  So it is necessary to either use a second warp beam or do what most of the class did - jerry rig a secondary warp with a piece of wood pretending to be a secondary back beam and weighting the warp to  provide the tension.  This is a technique that can be used any time a supplementary warp is required.  I have read about supplementary warps for other weaving structures, but wasn't sure how to go about this without a second warp beam.


Attached are some of the other student's samples of work created during the week.  We sampled a wide variety of turned structures, including Turned Beiderwand at 1:4, 1:3, and 1:2. I was using 8/2 cotton for the ground warp and weft and a 5/2 cotton for the weft.  Most of the rest of the class was using a 10/2 yarn for the ground warp and weft.  This meant that my sample had very long warp floats, especially on the 1:4.





The other weave structures that we turned were:

• Summer and Winter
• Extended Summer and Winter
• Even Tied Overshot
• Uneven Tied Overshot
• Paired Tie Weave
• Half Dukagang

  The photo to the left is of our class assistant Dana's work.  Dana brought a borrowed Baby Wolf 8- shaft loom to class, just like my loom.  The person she borrowed it from, offered it up for sale and I bought it immediately.  I have been looking for a loom to take to Montana, so I don't have to drive one out and back on every trip. Dana used a pink supplementary warp on a green weft and not only did I get the loom, but she also left her remaining warp on the loom, which I have been weaving off with a burgundy tencel as weft using a Turned Extended Summer and Winter draft.

 It is hard to put an additional warp beam on a Baby Wolf because the back beam is not square - it comes out from the loom at an angle.  This makes it difficult to attach another back beam using clamps.  Once I got back to Brevard, Gary made a creative solution for the Baby Wolf by building a frame with a secondary back beam that slips over the original back beam leaving a space of about an inch between the two warps.  The supplementary warp can be run over this beam and weighted using water bottles and S-hooks.

ARROWMONT SCHOOL OF ARTS AND CRAFTS

I am headed to Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts for the Southeast Fiber Forum - a three day workshop on a variety of weaving, spinning and dyeing topics.   About a year ago I took a week long workshop at John C. Campbell Folk School and I am hooked.  A workshop junkie.  I will be taking Karen Donde's class on Turned Beiderwand.  Karen's weaving studio, Sutherland Studio, is located in the River District of Asheville.

Arrowmont is located in downtown Gatlinburg and was built as one of the settlement schools in the 1920's to educate and provide work skills to theresidents of the rural Tennessee community of Gatlinburg. The craft training has continued and the original school is now a public elementary school.

Emma and Gary are coming along to spend the weekend in Gatlinburg and enjoy the Great Smokies National Park.  It's Emma's spring break and so the three of us will have an adventure in the Smokies.  We have rented a cabin about 10 miles outside of town.  They have plans for hiking, fishing, visiting the aquarium and seeing the sights of Gatlinburg.  We plan to come in the back way via Cosby to avoid Pigeon Forge and Sevierville.  We don't want Emma to see the Goofy Golf, Go Kart Tracks and all of the distractions before getting to the National Park.  Of course Gatlinburg is not free from tourist traps, but they tend to be not as big or as flashy as the ones on the highway into Gatlinburg.

The focus of the workshop is Turned Beiderwand, a very old weave structure comparable to overshot.  A Beiderwand draft typically uses a ground weft and a heavier pattern weft yarn.  This weekend we will turn the draft.  A turned draft is one that uses the weft for the warp and the warp for the weft.  Instead of using 2 shuttles for the weft, the turned structure uses only one and uses the two different yarns as warp.  Because the warp yarns are different sizes and would perform differently under tension, the turned structure uses a second warp beam.  I don't have a second warp beam on either of my looms, so we will be creating an alternate secondary warp beam using a raddle as the warp beam and water bottles as weights.

I will be using a 3 block profile which uses 8 harnesses.  The background warp is an 8/2 variegated cotton in purples and pinks and the pattern warp which will be warped on the "fake" secondary warp beam is a 5/2 white perle cotton.   I will try a variety of wefts, all 8/2 including the same variegated cotton used in the warp, and also a red, black and blue.