Spinning, folding, felting and an exhibition

My beloved double-treadle Lendrum wheel is nearly thirty years old so I don’t take any chances when transporting it.

Spinning

In July, I packed up my spinning gear and four (maybe five?) fleeces to begin an artist residency at the Central branch of the Calgary Public Library. Since then, I’ve been at the library twice a week engaging with visitors and working on some yarns for weaving. It is hard to believe I am now more than half way through and will be finished mid-September.

The residency has involved many demonstrations of spinning on the wheel along with the creation of steadily-improving, fine worsted samples for weaving. I had planned a little more work for the residency, but have realized that I may as well embrace the many opportunities for conversation and engagement with fibre-curious folk - and there are many.

Something about the wheel and the gorgeous natural-coloured fleeces draws people in. More often than not, they will share a story about their aunt, grandmother or daughter-in-law who also works (or did work) with fibre in some way. I’ve heard stories about spinning monks in Ethiopia; a grandmother in Serbia who used to weave for her family; and a young woman who recently moved to the city looking to connect with a local fibre artist community. In short, it is feeling really special to meet all of these curious people and connect with them through textiles.

Table in my residency studio with fleece, handspun yarns and spindles - notice the little purple one painted by my daughter as a Father’s Day gift.

Tonight I am teaching my first spindle spinning workshop at the Crowfoot branch and will be teaching two more - one at the Central Library (Thursday August 21 from 6-730 pm) and another at the Shawnessy Library (Saturday August 23 from 2-330 pm). I believe there a re a few spots left in the workshop at Shawnessy. Register HERE with your library card.

Can you tell I am focusing intensely on my posture while trying to ignore the fact that spinning with shoes on is very distracting?

September 6, I will also be making an interactive presentation “Where Does Your Wool Come From?” with Tara Klager of Providence Lane Homestead at the Central Library. I am looking forward to sharing my passion for local wool along with my favorite co-conspirator. If you havent already subscribed to Tara’s newsletter you should definitely check it out. This weekend I am also collaborating with Tara on a grass cordage workshop at her farm for Open Farm Days 2025. Follow this link to learn more.

Mandy Vocke wrote a feature about my residency at the library that you can read HERE. It has been a true gift to spend time spinning in the beautiful downtown public library. I am grateful for the conversations and connections made so far. I highly recommend this residency to any artist who enjoys teaching and demonstrating while they work.

Folding

In June I finished weaving a series of small cloth pieces experimenting with acrylic spray paint on a very fine silk organzine warp set at 60 ends per inch. The structure allows for two wefts to appear distinctly on either side in a two-faced cloth. If a weft is omitted the warp painting is revealed. If the single weft is very fine, transparency is possible.

Sketch for a floral pattern used in “Folding vernacular (bedsheet)”

While weaving these pieces I was thinking around textile pattern vernacular and how it may be redeployed as a kind of affective abstraction. As I worked, I intentionally avoided looking up specific patterns and instead relied on memories of specific scraps of cloth from my grandma’s sewing cupboard, sheer curtains in a nearly forgotten apartment and kitchen towels. Painted onto the warp with spray paint, a very soft image appears in the cloth, fading and emerging at once.

Two pieces on the loom showing transparency.

From the start I decided on some kind of folded presentation for these experiments. Initially this was because of the unique character of the two sided cloth and not wanting to hide the reverse. Choosing a “good” side was next to impossible. As I worked to finish each panel, the notion of folding became something more - linked to the experience of cloth as a mutable, textual object. Cloth may be folded, crumpled or draped. Each state change is enacted through touch at once mundane and intimate. What if there is a quiet language of folding cloth that could inform my composition in these works? For example, in folding a towel my hand lays the first fold flat before making another. The automatic nature of gestures that fold then unfold - or even the way we reorient our body during dressing point to the sort of thing I am thinking about here. See also Sharon Blakely and Liz Mitchell’s essay “Unfolding: A multisensorial dialogue in ‘material time’” For now I am going to leave this all a little unresolved until I’ve had more time with the work.

Felting

Laying out Combed Border Leicester fleece for mounting the “Folding vernacular” pieces.

After some sampling, I devised a plan for a backing material that I will use to mount the “Folding vernacular” series. Handmade wool felt is perhaps not the most time efficient choice. But, the particular felt I can achieve with this beautiful Border Leicester fleece is unlike anything else I might find elsewhere. The plan is to mount each folded work on its own panel fo felt which itself will be presented on a birch panel.

Felt in process after wetting out the fibre.

Nearly-finished felt will be rolled a bit more then steam pressed.

An Exhibition

“Drawn” is coming to Mohkinstsis (Calgary)! My solo exhibition originally shown at the Discovery Gallery at the Alberta Craft Council in Edmonton will soon be installed at the craft council’s space at CSpace. I am thrilled to be able to share this work along with the new “Folding vernacular” series in my hometown.

The exhibition runs from September 6 to November 1, 2025 with an opening reception September 13 from 2-4 pm and artist talk September 27 from 2-330 pm. If you are planning a visit, let me know and I’ll try to meet you there! CLICK HERE for more information including gallery location and open hours.

Prehistoric textiles, leftover wool and a new loom

Fibre, gesture, twist and structure are all enmeshed in handmade cloth. I have always been fascinated by the fundamental principles of cloth construction. This has drawn me towards ancient cloth and the people who made it. Since January I’ve been working away on an online course exploring prehistoric textile techniques taught by experimental archaeologist Sally Pointer. It has been really exciting to think around textiles at this early stage in human and non-human history. I’ve even managed some rudimentary antler needles thanks to the provision of some flint flakes by friend, archaeologist and flint-knapper extraordinaire Jason Roe.

My research of all things ancient textiles had me travelling to Iceland last May to weave Shelter/In plain sight at the Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós. (Read more about the project HERE.) Perhaps the most exciting thing about this adventure was the opportunity to experience a wholly different approach to cloth construction. I combed locks of Icelandic wool for hours. My arms ached as I worked on a fourth, then a fifth fleece. “It will be worth it”, I told myself as each wavy tog lock was drawn from the fuzzy soft pthel.

The soft fibres were spun into weft yarns and the long tog locks sorted by colour. These were then knotted into the warp in a pattern prescribed by an image of Icelandic turf - a scheme I questioned often as the weaving progressed. Sorting several shades of tog locks and arranging them according to a digital diagram took far longer than I anticipated. Would a landscape, or at least the feeling of one be manifested in the finished textile? I sure hoped so.

Original image of Icelandic turf used in Shelter/In plain sight in the centre. At the right is a reduced/digitized version using shades of Icelandic tog. At the right is the same image separated into thirteen columns - each row of knotted tog required thirteen double-ended tufts. You will note within each column there is often two shades which required combining black/grey, grey/brown and blends of each for lighter or darker shades.

Weaving the Vararfeldur or “Shaggy Cloak” tested both my physical and mental endurance with every five centimetres of weaving taking at least an hour - not counting the time combing, sorting spinning and knotting. I truly love to weave, and yet it would seem that one can have too much of a good thing. The work was finished just in time when my husband and daughter - themselves on an epic Icelandic road trip - came to collect this weary weaver.

Johanna Palmadottir regards my weaving as the residents met for a farewell coffee at the culmination of the May 2024 Os Residency. (Thank you Anie Toole for the photo!)

Shortly before my family arrived, the May 2024 Os Residency artists met for farewell coffee. I was excited to show Johana Palmadottir the finished weaving. She is the shepherd and project manager at the Icelandic Textile Centre who provided wool for the ground weft and pile. I remember how she looked at the cloth I had just cut from the loom - it was like she recognized each of the sheep woven into the piece. I’m not sure many people will ever see this piece the way she does. I think that sometimes we think about the audience for our work in a really abstract way. This brief interaction reminded me that someone who encounters your work may also be seen as a collaborator or even co-conspirator - someone to make the work with. I consider Johanna’s profound knowledge of her animals and their keeping to be a part of Shelter/In plain sight, both literally in that the quality of the wool is a direct result of her work, but also in a conceptual sense when we think about the reciprocity in crafting objects using agricultural materials.

Apron cloth at the Icelandic Textile Museum. The yarn for the apron cloth was spun by Ingibjörg ﬁór›ardóttir of Hof in Svarfa›ardalur, and woven by Sigur›ur Jónsson of Brekkuger›i in Fljótsdalur. around 1900.

Shelter/In plain sight was part of my exhibition Drawn at the Discovery Gallery at the Alberta Craft Council in Edmonton, Canada along with other recent weaving. In September 2025 an iteration of Drawn will open at the Alberta Craft Council Gallery at CSpace in Calgary. Because this gallery is larger, I have the opportunity to add some new work to the exhibition. Inspired by an exquisite roll of wool apron cloth at the Icelandic Textile Museum in Blönduós, I am weaving several small (approx 40 x 70 cm) panels with Icelandic wool on a fine silk warp. Using the frequency of the natural coloured wool stripes in the checked apron cloth as a jumping off point, I plan to compose and weave horizontal bands of Icelandic wool in different natural shades.

Handspun Icelandic pthell in shades of black and brown or “mórautt”

The structure for this weaving will afford a double-sided cloth with a different sequence on each face. I found the structure drafted in Ragnaheidur Bjork Thorsdottir’s excellent book Listin að vefa (note the book is in Icelandic but contains beautiful, clear illustrations and diagrams for anyone keen on contemporary Icelandic weaving). Typically used for firm, hardwearing wool textiles, this structure affords an insulating weft-faced cloth. In contrast, I will use the same structure for something much lighter and weave translucent cloth that hides and reveals patterns on the reverse face depending on the density of my beat and the relative thickness of the weft threads used. I am not entirely certain how this one will turn out but am hoping for something that has the feeling of the apron cloth laid over a moody Icelandic/Canadian prairie landscape. I plan to stain the silk warp before weaving in a manner similar to my Tissue/lake series. For some reason I am thinking to title the new series “Slough” but then titles usually arrive later when the work is complete.

Once my current weaving project is complete, I will be converting my Glimakra Standard loom to a countermarche setup with a Myrehed Single-Unit Drawloom. I have some weaving planned with this new equipment and look forward to sharing more very soon.

THANK YOU for subscribing to my studio newsletter “The Fell” - it is a real privilege to share my love for textiles with you and I hope that you will be encouraged to join in conversation with me. If you have questions or comments you may leave them here, (CLICK HERE to access comments for this post and scroll to the bottom of the page) but you may also reach me by email HERE.

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The Fell... coming May 2025

I am starting a studio newsletter this spring to engage with fellow makers and lovers of craft, textile histories and material culture. Initially I will focus on my own textile-based research projects, but also hope to share the work of others. Submissions are welcome.

Like a lot of other artists and makers, I have found myself exhausted by social media in its various forms and yet very reticent to abandon it wholesale. I have friends across Canada and around the world with whom I’ve formed real connections. Your art, activism and community care inspires me. I am hopeful that in the coming year we will all sort out new ways to connect and share with each other away from corporate social media. To continue with a status quo of crass monetization, harassment of vulnerable minorities and the extraction of culture for the sake of rampant greed is no longer tenable. We can do better.

The Fell will be issued in February, May, August and November. If this sounds like something you would like to see in your inbox, consider subscribing on my CONTACT page.

*The “fell” is the leading edge of a woven cloth as it is constructed on the loom - pictured here in a marvellous illustration that accompanied a mid century pamphlet for weaving equipment made by Nilus Leclerc in Quebec, Canada.