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.