Our March meeting was led by guild member Jennifer Jay.  Jennifer was awarded a scholarship to attend CNCH 2023 and her choice of class was one led by Polly Giacchina - The enhanced twined form".  After Jennifer had practiced the various techniques she had learned in the class, she challenged herself to share them with guild members.  Jennifer brought two techniques to the hands-on-class.  Coiled basketry and knotless netting.  She made little kits for everyone in the class with materials suitable for learning the basics of both of these sculptural forms.  ..read more

This year's party was especially welcome since we had to cancel the one last year because of bad weather.  We also changed our gift policy from a raffle basket(s) in which just one, two or three people won a basket full of gifts, to an old fashioned exchange in which everyone who brought a gift, received a gift.  For this year's gift exchange, the theme was to bring a handmade fiber gift.  You didn't need to have made the gift, as long as it was handmade.     Anni tries on her new knitted cap, made by Shereé.   Paulie's gift was made by An ..read more

  Reno Fiber Guild members were treated to a dye workshop with Diane S. (former co-owner of the Just Our Yarn Company).  Diane showed us the methods she used when dyeing skeins for her former company.  The skein she is holding up in the photo  at the left isn't her method.  Instead she showed us how to paint a few different colors on each skein in a more random pattern.  The photo to the right is the array of dyes prepared for us to use.  There were so many choices, it was hard to pick just a few.   These are skeins painted by Anni B.  They w ..read more

 It turns out that a turned beiderwand threading will give you lots of options.  You can do turned summer and winter and its variations and double weave on your beiderwand warp.  And, you can also change the ratios of pattern to tie downs by changing your tie ups.  Here are a few more photos of some of the variations Karen's students woven in the workshop and also several links that may be of interest to our readers. https://chgweavers.org/turned-beiderwand-with-karen-donde/  https://www.weaversguildmn.org/news/learning-turned-biederwand  https://karendondehandwov ..read more

 Here is a collection of photos from the Turned Beiderwand Workshop given to Reno Fiber Guild members by Karen Donde.  Each weaver is represented by their first name only to protect their privacy. Turned Beiderwand Ratio 1:3 woven by Deb   Turned Beiderwand Ratio 1:2 woven by Diane Turned Beiderwand Ratio 1:2 woven by Joan Turned Beiderwand Ratio 1:3 woven by Karen Turned Beiderwand Ratio 1:3 woven by Kathy   Turned Beiderwand Ratio 1:4 Woven by Maggie More photos in the next post ..read more

Note - This article was written by Suzanne W. of Reno Fiber Guild.  The photos from the workshop will be posted in Part 2 on this blog.  You will read about how each weaver handled the two warps that were required to weave Turned Beiderwand and other turned tied weaves possible on the same threading in this workshop.  Warping was probably the most difficult aspect of the whole workshop.  TBW will be the abbreviation for Turned Beiderwand in this article. Turned Beiderwand with Karen Donde was an excellent weaving workshop.  Karen taught us so much more than what the T ..read more

https://www.jillaltmanndesign.com/   ..read more

Mary and Polly holding up Polly's grand piece that was resisted around a piece of pipe.  Every so often, Reno Fiber Guild has a dyeing day.  This year the program committee decided on a resist day, in which interested members learned how to resist the items they wanted to dye and the follow up day in which we had four indigo vats at our disposal so that the indigo could work its magic for us.   Jen generously offered her garage for the event.  She and Suzanne made two 1-2-3 vats using fructose as the reducing sugar, Karen made a banana vat with the pulp of ba ..read more

Anni B. is interested in weaving for clothing.  Recently she put on a long warp and wove it off in a variety of  different fabrics, all in the same colorways, so that she could combine them in garments.  The yardage in the photo to the left might be a top or skirt.  Anni hasn't decided yet. The photo below shows off the different sides of another piece of yardage.  This could be a lovely way to have a jacket with one side of the fabric showing and make the lapels with the reverse side showing.  Hopefully, Anni will have something sewn soon so we can feature her ..read more

 In February or March, Reno Fiber Guild had Denise Kovnat lead a class in Deflected Double Weave for Collapse Fabrics.    This was an online class that was spread over more than a week.  The participants had ample time to work on many different samples using a large variety of different kinds of threads.  It was a blast, expecially when we wet finished our pieces and could see how the weave structure deflected and distorted the surface of the fabric.  Work from that class is still being presented at Sage Weavers and we had two lovely pieces at our last meetin ..read more