The Isle of Wight Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers was founded in the 1980s by a group of like-minded people, who shared a common interest in these traditional crafts. This year the Island Guild is celebrating it's 30th Anniversary and has organised an exhibition of members' work at Ventnor Botanic Gardens taking place this week. "Twined Threads" is a marvellous display of hand-spun yarns, knitted & woven textiles, dyed fibres and felted designs as you can see here...
Not being a spinner or weaver I felt a bit of an interloper when I first joined the Guild about 6 years ago, really as a way of keeping in touch with other feltmakers on the island - but I was made so welcome. It is a wonderful, friendly group and I really enjoy being amongst enthusiastic like-minded ladies, all sharing their amazing knowledge & skills. Monthly meetings are held at Rookley Village Hall and members enjoy a varied & interesting programme of events and workshops, covering all aspects of weaving, spinning & dyeing, plus related textile crafts such as feltmaking.
Practical workshops are held regularly throughout the year and the Dyeing Days are a particular favourite. We all get-together, usually on a very hot summer's day and boil up pots of natural dyes over open fires. Brilliant coloured skeins are left hanging to dry in the trees and bushes, and ladies sit spinning in the shade waiting for the dyes to brew - it really is a magical day! Not having hand-spun wool I take along small skeins of Jamieson's unbleached Shetland 2-ply to add to the dye pots and I now have a wonderful collection of natural dyed wools.
One of the highlights of the last couple of years was taking part in the Medina yurt project, which involved a number of schools and community groups island-wide. The Guild was invited to produce a 6ft square felt panel for the yurt and my design was chosen. We all worked together on this huge panel, making prefelts, cutting out and positioning the felt shapes onto layers of Blue Face Leicester fleece and finally rolling and felting it all together. A high percentage of Island fleece was used, all hand dyed by Chris Lines, the co-ordinator of the project and Guild member. It was great fun to be involved, hard work and an amazing achievement. Here are some photos and there's more if you follow this link …
The "Twined Threads" exhibition at Ventnor Botanic Gardens is on for this week, 1st - 6th May, in the Echium Room and if you are interested in textiles it's well worth a visit. Admission is free and it's open from 10 - 4pm each day. There will be Guild members on hand to give you more information...