Fiber at the Speed of Life

Influence In this episode we discuss our fiber stories and influences. Erica is very much influenced by history and historical textiles, especially 7th C Persian textiles, such as taquete, samitum and damask. Taquete photo of pillow  (photo above). Samitum cuffs Michelle is really influenced by her friends and family. She had a good example of someone who crafts in her mom (Hi Mom!) and enjoys being able to do crafts similar to those around her so she can chat about them with her friends. FOs: Erica Erica's finished all 11 swatches of handspun yarn. These are the knitted sample for her colour management study, overall these samples use only 2 different colourways, but just look at the variety of swatches! Woven swatches to come (probably much much later). The swatches have now been washed and blocked! Michelle Michelle bought a summer membership to a local pool. She needed easy projects to work on when the girls were in lessons and at the pool if

Erica's Projects Erica finished up a big spinning study. She started a spinning color study in December. This study used all the color management techniques she has learned in Felicia Lo's BluPrint class and Sara Lamb's Spin to Weave book and video. She talks more about this process in this post on Weavolution . Erica has wound all 1,400 threads for her next Drawloom warp. She looks forward to studying drawloom weaving with JoAnne Hall this summer! Erica has sampled weft possibilities for her handspun scarf. She is weaving along with the middle weft, which is a medium grey. She feels this allows the focus to be on the beautiful handspun war. Michelle finished needle felting the sorting hat. She's pleased with how it turned out. She'd have liked to make the hat have more folds around the back of the hat but is afraid of messing it up. Michelle experimented with needle felting and wet felting a bowl. She needle felted over a hat form and a