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May 2008current gallery |
February 2009 |
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Diana Caleb We anticipate Diana's new work with excitement. She is always up to something innovative. "I have such a great time experimenting with all sorts of materials. This piece showcases shrinky plastic. I cut out a specialized plastic sheet into fish shapes and coloured them with pencil crayons. I used a heat gun to shrink the plastic. This intensifies the colours and they do look somewhat realistic. The background has been covered with puffy paint. I swirled the medium to imitate motion through the water. I let this dry and then used my trusty heat gun to puff up the swirls. I then painted the background in metallic paints to give a bit of shimmer to the piece. I added lots of beads...the tentacles of the jelly fish, star fish along the bottom of the ocean and bubbles coming up from the various sea creatures at the bottom of the ocean. I swirled silk ribbon near the surface of the ocean to emulate kelp fronds. On the bottom of the ocean, I added more silk ribbon in and around the starfish and other bottom creatures.
A Christmas Cracker This piece was designed by Anke Schaddelee to be worked on canvas. I decided to use Treenway silks. It makes a perfect Christmas tree ornament. The silk glistens with the Christmas lights. It is a perfect way to show off a variety of stitches with a variety of silk threads. |
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Susan Harvey Susan tells us a bit about her interesting blend: "The scarf is a mixture of the various silks I have bought from Treenway over the years: muga, tussah, some reeled, silk noil, silk chenille and creamy spun silk. It was arranged in a repeating sequence, sett at about 24 epi in a repeating twill. The weft is 12/2 spun silk. I put on enough warp for two scarves. One was for myself and seems to accent most things I wear. I enjoy the compliments I get on it. The While I have dabbled in tencel and some of the other luxury fibres out there...I keep coming back to silk! |
other scarf used a gold noil silk as weft and was bought by a classy gent to wear with a winter top coat.
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Susan Kroll Susan writes: "I am a knitter, spinner and a weaver and silk is my most preferred fiber for it all. I love to wear silk next to my skin so creating jewelry with it was a natural thought. Treenway's beautiful colorways in the 3.5mm silk ribbons inspired me to work a round Kumihimo braid on my maru dai. I used the braid to make the necklace, tying a 'True Lover's knot' with a shell I found on a local beach. Its colors perfectly complemented the |
palette of silk ribbons and it adds some weight to the necklace, making it adjustable in length for different necklines."
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Marion Marzolf Marion grew up watching her Swedish-born grandmother weaving rag rugs at her farm in Michigan. She took her first weaving class in 1972 with Joyce Jones in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but soon learned that a university professor had little time for that. When she retired in 1995, weaving and writing about weaving became her prime activities. She has written several articles featuring other fiber artists. She collaborated with Marie A. Gile on the book Fascination with Fiber: Michigan's Handweaving Heritage, (1976) published by the University of Michigan Press. She is outgoing president of the Ann Arbor Fiberarts Guild www.annarborfiberarts.org and has her studio in Chelsea, Michigan. "When I saw the colorful Eros ribbon in our local knitting shop, I bought some and knitted a lacy scarf. But I kept thinking that there must be a way to use it in weaving and still retain its sparkling appearance. After some experimentation, I came up with this design that I call Confetti. I used 20/2 Treenway silk for the warp and weft, sett at 24 epi and in plain weave, except the eros stripes are in double weave in order to get the ribbon on front and back. The first scarf I made had the ribbon showing only on one side, and when it flipped in the wind, the sparkle was hidden. These scarves can be hand-washed, dried on a towel, and steam-pressed. They have been popular sellers at our guild booth and local art center. I have used Treenway silks for my block twill scarves and vests and in some hangings. My other fiber love is wool for rya rugs, shawls, and stoles." |
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Joan Merrifield Last fall, 2007, Judy Fawcett organized a knitters retreat to Salt Spring Island with Lucy Neatby as the instructor. Joan was one of the knitters who came to the retreat. They all loaded into a bus one morning and came to visit Treenway. We had the large group divide into two. One group came to Karen's studio where we talked about the different varieties of silk and how they are made while the other group looked around the Treenway 'shop' and then we swapped. Joan tells us a little about herself and her socks: 
"I bought the 8/2 reeled silk yarn last year at the retreat. I have been knitting for over 40 years and I love to knit. I have knit over 150 pairs of socks for myself. I used size 0 needles, 64 stitches. The heel is Gerdine Strong's from Knitters magazine, Fall 2003. I am retired now after working with General Motors for 32 years. My other passion is travel. To travel with knitters is especially fine. |
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Melanie Nakashima We loved looking at Melanie's scarves when then arrived via email. She told us a bit about their making. "I visited Salt Spring Island in summer of 2005 and made a trip to Treenway. It is a yarn lovers dream to see all the gorgeous yarns and colors. I picked up the yarn I used for this project along with some other beautiful reeled silk. The scarves are a mix of plain weave and 2/2 twill. I especially loved the delicate many–hued silk ribbon, so I designed the scarves to have the ribbon float alternately over seven picks. The warp was 30/2 spun silk in Evening Spirit #9510 and Sand Dune #9517; 20/2 blue violet spun silk and variegated 3.5mm silk ribbon in mauve, lavender and violet hues. I wove one scarf with Evening Spirit and one with Sand Dune." The finished scarf is 57" x 7 ½" with a beaded, twisted fringe. I love weaving kitchen towels, fuzzy afghans and large rugs, so I was not used to silk, but I found the yarn to be very amenable. I loved the feel of the luxurious silk – to weave and to wear. I really enjoyed making these scarves, one for myself and one for a gift." |
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Ida Marie Threadkell Ida Marie is always up to something exciting in her studio. She says, "The basket turned out very differently than what I had in mind...'the best laid plans'. I used one of the Treetops colourways, Spinifex. The basket was supposed to have a very specific colour gradation using five spokes and five |
weavers, not four. However, the dimension of the strips and, therefore, the pattern, got away on me even though I used a ruler to corral them into place. Because they each had different top and underside colours the corralling gave them a contrasting edges. Serendipity! The unused strips became the lip and the really unused ones became book marks. A few doodads from my stash and voila! This was very much a case of life is what happens when you were planning something else."
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Helen Wilder We asked Helen to tell us a bit about herself.... "I went to a Textile college in Sydney many years ago to do a three year course in Craft Textiles. Four years ago I joined a Craft Co-operative called the Arts & Craft Society of NSW www.artsandcraftsnsw.com.au. We have a shop in the heart of Sydney in the Rocks. I now concentrate on making scarves and shawls. I love the fine silk for its lustre and drape. I dye most of my warps and get my inspiration from nature or pictures in magazines. I did this scarf for an exhibition in our gallery. The back ground green with touches of gold and red are inspired by the Australian bottle brushes and their red berries. I wove it using 30/2 silk using 8 shafts in a block weave like the Scandinavian 'Drahl'. I love this weave because you can vary the blocks endlessly."
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Barbara Zander Barbara's new direction using fine threads is unique and exciting. "I have been weaving silk scarves for the past nine years using Treenway's 60/2 spun silk as both warp and weft. I loved the light feel of these scarves and sold hundreds of them. Recently I have taken a new direction. I think I am a frustrated sculptor, but I really love creating cloth so I have been looking for a way to combine the two. I have come up with what I call sculptural fiber. For the fabric I use 30/2 spun silk sett at 40 epi for both warp and weft. I weave plain weave in the natural. The cloth is cut into lengths for either the wall hung or the stand-alone pieces. I then dye each piece using either arashi or itajime method of Japanese dyeing. I enjoy this method because you never quite know how your cloth will look until it is done. I use acid dyes for all my dyeing. They work wonderfully on the silk producing deep, rich colors.
The next step is to create the acrylic forms that serve as the "bones" for the sculpture. The wave sculptures use acrylic bases and acrylic rods. Flat pieces of acrylic that I shape using a torch are the structure for the wall waves. There has been a huge learning curve in working with acrylic but I am please with the results. I now have my sculptures using hand-woven, hand-dyed cloth. These sculptures present a new way of looking at cloth." |
