Thursday, February 23, 2023

It's About Time for a new post!

 I do not post very often to my blog, but I do try to keep my teaching calendar up to date here.  And if you are interested in a remote program/slide lecture for your fiber guild meeting, that information is in the post for June 19, 2020.


                        Farewell to The Burrow, our beloved 1900 farmhouse



Hello, Shepherdstown!


So much has happened since my last post in June 2020 - we finally found a house we could both love, and we moved to Shepherdstown, West Virginia.  We bought our new home - a 2018 Craftsman style house - in August 2021, sold our old house in March 2022, and finally completed our move July 1, 2022.  

I now have a 2.5 car garage for my weaving and teaching studio and fiber storage - it's is great to have so much space!


We also moved my old studio shed, which has now been christened The Wool Shed, and all my spinning wheels, fiber prep equipment and fiber storage are there.

I had my first students in my new studio in January this year - 3 new weavers learning to warp, beam and thread in the traditional manner.  I helped them prepare their looms for the L'Amour de Maman - Acadian Weaving class that I taught for the Fiber Guild of the Blue Ridge in late January.



One of these students has returned for more private study: she wound and beamed her second warp this past weekend.

I am still giving a few online slide lectures for guild programs, but planning more and more in-person classes, which is wonderful to return to.  Check out my teaching schedule in the sidebar! If you are interested in seeing my class list, leave a comment on the blog or send me a pm through Messenger - Melissa Weaver Dunning.

My new studio has room for more looms - currently there is a reproduction barn frame loom waiting for a warp, an AVL floor loom with grey and black Shepherd's check yardage, a Schacht Baby Wolf with a Double Rainbow warp, a Schacht Wolf Pup with a cordonne warp that will be used for two Acadian classes and also a for Sing 'Til The Work's All Done class at the John C Campbell Folk School, and a Schacht Flip loom with two Solitude Wool check scarves in progress.

I was scheduled to teach at Convergence in Knoxville in July 2022, but both my husband and I came down with Covid-19 so I had to cancel and spend 2 weeks in bed instead.  I had signed up for a few lectures and Jennifer Moore's Double Rainbow class, so the warp for that class has been waiting 7 months for me to have enough mental bandwidth to start that project on my own.  Jennifer provided me with all the handouts and a few video links, and I finally dove in last weekend - it's weaving up beautifully!


I am trying to get my sewing space in the house better organized, in hopes that this will inspire me to do more finishing of my woven cloth, and maybe even sew a Noh coat before the AWG conference in June!  But I have a number of classes to organize and prepare for between now and then.



1 comment:

Unknown said...

Dear Ms. Dunning, I was enrolled in your L'Amour de Maman - Acadian Weaving workshop at the Waterford Weavers Guild on 1 & 2 April 2023 which I just learned has been cancelled due to insufficient enrollment.

I am so disappointed as the subject matter is of great interest to me. I am on my way tomorrow to the Royal Ontario Museum to study one of the chemises pictured and described in Keep Me Warm One Night by Burnham and Burnham. I intend to make a handsewn reproduction in my own handwoven linen as the first step in reproducing additional early 19th c. garments. I am a fairly experienced weaver and have taken the Foundations class at the Marshfield School. I am also a professor of costume history and costume designer. My current research brings weaving and historical pattern making together.

Is it possible to contract with you to follow the workshop curriculum independently? I would be very grateful to learn from your experience with early Acadian weaving.

Thank you so much for your consideration. Susan