Weaving for the young

This unusual opportunity to try your hand at weaving on a floor loom is good idea because a floor loom is really fun to use! You get to throw a shuttle back and forth and beat with a big hanging beater. Each participant can expect to take home their very own rag rug and handwoven towel or napkin. There will also be time allotted on our band looms. A group project of making a tablecloth from scratch on one of our biggest looms will be raffled to benefit future weaving weeks like this one.

Projects

• Weave on a really big floor loom
• Make a rag rug
• Make a towel or napkin
• Weave on a band loom
• Weave on a replica of a Viking loom
• Natural dye yarn
• Spin wool

Viking loom

Weaving on an old Viking style loom (a warp weighted loom) is an experience never to be forgotten. The swinging loom weights that weight the warp threads, the big stick you pull back and forth to open the shed, and the big wooden sword you use to beat in the weft are all very tactile and memorable experiences.

Food

• Bring a lunch for our adventurous picnics
• Enjoy snacks with local food eaten on table linens you just wove yourself

Noontime adventures

Who can resist a picnic? Each day our picnic lunch will offer new experiences, adventures, and old-fashioned games. We may roll hoops one day and dance with handwoven ribbons around a Maypole the next. Our handwoven napkins will be used to wrap lunches, tie them to a stick with the a handwoven band, and over the shoulder and away we go into the woods to a beautiful private spot to enjoy our lunches in the fresh summer air.

Stylish afternoons

Our afternoon snack time will be served on a new and beautiful table setting each day featuring various locally grown foods and handwoven tablecloths. Our week culminates with a grand feast Friday afternoon, when we invite parents to join in the fun with our “candlelight dinner”: we will pull the shades, dress the table with all of our newly handwoven goods, and enjoy a candlelight high tea.

Finished items

After the excitement of seeing the new fabrics come off of the loom, participants will have the opportunity to sew the beautiful fabrics into finished items such as bags or pillows.

New perspective

Textiles play such an integral and often unnoticed role in our daily lives, yet how few of us have a real understanding and tactile experience of how they are made? To see and feel exactly how fabrics are made will give anyone a whole new daily perspective, each time we put on a piece of clothing, use a towel, sit on upholstered chairs, walk on a carpet,…