Weaving courses in the UK

I am currently researching spinning courses of two or more days so that I can publish details in YarnMaker, it's going to be a new part of the "Events for your diary" section. However, for the time being it will be only spinning, not weaving or dyeing and only courses of more than 2 days as there is not space for all the short courses and tutors to be listed.

Weaving courses I can list here - and there are some excellent tutors and superb opportunities. These are just a few...

If I had not gone into publishing, I would have been very keen to study with Janet Phillips and especially interested in her Weaving Master Class.

Stacey Harvey Brown offers a wide range of classes at her studio in Staffordshire, and she has a wonderful collection of looms there including a restored Jacquard loom.

Alison Daykin has an established business weaving for interior design and teaches a regular evening class in Leek for new weavers, it's worth contacting her if you are interested in other types of course as she is setting up a new studio for her own weaving and teaching.

I know these three tutors through us all being members of the Online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers, which runs a few online weaving classes each year, in 2013 there will be one on rigid heddle weaving and another on network drafting. In the past I have enjoyed courses with this guild including lace weaving, twills and double-weave. In 2012 there was a deflected double weave course, which unfortunately I didn't have time to participate in, but I did enjoy reading the teaching notes and seeing the photos of work.

For people interested in basic weaving, there are some fun courses for new weavers each year run by Janet Phillips at the Threshing Barn, near Leek. I met someone who had attended a rigid heddle class at The Threshing Barn, bought a loom and went on to set up a business making wall hangings. Don't underestimate the possibilities of simple looms!

There are a number of interesting courses offered in London at the Handweavers Studio and Gallery, some weekly and some short courses catering for all kinds of weaving.

Hiliary Charlesworth of The Loom Exchange who is writing a series on beginning tapestry weaving for YarnMaker runs various courses including tapestry and peg loom weaving.

There is also a list of tapestry weaving tutors on the British Tapestry Group website.

One of my weaving friends very much enjoyed a course with Snail Trail Handweavers a few years ago with a beautiful blanket woven double width on the loom of her own handspun yarns to show at the end of it.

And... not forgetting (as readers of YarnMaker will already be aware!) 2013 sees an Association of Guilds Summer School, in Wales, at which there are various week long courses including weaving. You don't have to be a guild member to attend, but guild members get a discount.

Braids 2012

My commitment to YarnMaker meant I was unable to partcipate in the workshops at Braids 2012, the Braid society conference held in Manchester a couple of weeks ago, but the organiser kindly took a booking from me for the conference dinner and so I was able to pop down to Manchester (less than an hour's drive) and meet old friends - some of whom I have known for years over the internet but not met before in person. It was a super evening and gave me an insight to how much I was missing out on! The workshops sounded fantastic and the opportunities to talk and exchange skills and make friends were greatly enjoyed by everyone.

The next Braids conference will be in 2016 in Seatle, so popping in for dinner won't be an option for me.
Link to Braid Society website, link to Laverne Waddington's blog post about the conference.

One person I met at the dinner was the person I sold my first Marudai on to, when up-grading from this acrylic stand to a wooden replacement, and I recalled that I hadn't got around to posting up photos of the acrylic stand. Although not so nice to work with as wood, it was lovely for photos and good for a beginner as you can see exactly what is happening.

These can be bought in the UK from The Carey Company, Jacqui Carey who runs this business with her husband is also author of the most useful beginners book I have found - Japanese Braiding: The Craft of Kumihimo, I couldn't see this on her website, so here is a link to Amazon UK. 

 My new Marudai was second hand, found on eBay with 16x 100g weights. The maker was Leanda, no longer trading, but Carey Company also sell wooden Marudai, and so does Michael Williams.

Here are a few simple braids -

Even warp tension

I'm going to have lunch in 15 mins, it occurred to me I can use that 15 mins for one of my quick blog posts.  I took these photos a couple of weeks ago when setting up my little Greg Meyer Oonagh loom to take along to a Cheshire Guild meeting for people to try multi-shaft weaving.

How to wind a good warp and get it on the loom without tension problems is something every new weaver needs to learn.

I use weights, as they are always around whereas I don't always have a friend handy to hold the warp for me. In some respects weights can work better, as a person has two hands and can hold up to two bundles of warp separately, but you can tie weights on every few inches of warp threads.

Here are my weights, attached to the chained warp.  They are tied to hang slightly above floor level at the start.

I have tied them on with a medium weight linen warp yarn tied in a simple slip knot (or half hitch, depending how you look at it).

When I have wound on enough warp to raise the weights to table height, I stop and re-tie them.

Something I forgot to photograph is the warp winding on the beam with sheets of strong paper, wider than the weaving width, going under the warp threads as they wind on. On my larger looms I have wooden slats for the same purpose. These (paper, sticks, or some people use card) are very important to make sure the warp winds on evenly.

The path of the warp as I wind it on to this loom is over the top of the beater and though the shafts (not at this stage through the reed and heddles, I thread heddles and sley the reed last). On the left hand side you can see a green tie around the warp that I put on when it was on the warping board to keep the threads together, I'm just about to remove this tie.

At the back of the loom the threads are separated alternately over and under the lease sticks (they were prepared for this by making a "cross" on the warping board" and then they are spread out to the width of cloth I am going to weave by the raddle, which on this loom is a permanent feature of the back beam.

That's all for today, 15 mins are up and I will go over time now as I post this to the blog. I hope some new weavers will find this helpful.

EDIT 1st August 2012

...to add a link to Charlotte's blog Atellier Stellaria so you can see the ingenious 'Weaver's Friend' (besten Freund) invented by Andreas Moeller (see Charlotte's comment on this post).