125 years ago today—on August 14, 1901—my great-great uncle Gustave Whitehead (né Weisskopf) flew his heavier-than-air machine—a single-wing monoplane—approximately half a mile at an altitude of 40 or 50 feet. At least this is so according to eye-witnesses who were there at the time, and witnessed the plane fly at least three more times that day in Fairfield, Connecticut. If this is true, then Gustave has a claim for powered flight more than two years before the Wright brothers (December 17, 1903).

My great-grandmother Anna Lampart (who later married Gustave’s brother Johann and became Anna Whitehead) certainly believed it to be true. She claimed to have seen these flights with her own eyes—and not only that—she helped to sew the wings of the plane!

Unfortunately, my great-grandmother passed away in 1980 at the age of 99, long before I was old enough—or interested enough—to hear her stories myself. But I recently came across a tidbit about these beautiful silk wings in a book by John Brown. I’ve been deep in the genealogical research lately, and had turned to the book hoping to find a date for Johann’s arrival in Bridgeport which I so far have not turned up. However! I did discover a piece of information I had not seen elsewhere before.

My great-grandmother was not the only woman who helped sew the wings of the plane, it turns out. Under the direction of Louise Tuba Whitehead, Gustave’s Hungarian wife, women from the local Hungarian community were recruited and paid 15 cents to help sew fine silk onto the bamboo framework of the wings. And there are oral accounts suggesting that at least some of the silk used for the plane came from deconstructed wedding dresses belonging to these same women.

Whether that last bit is true or not, the fact is that a number of women from the Hungarian community were brought together to create something none of them had ever seen before—and something that required a remarkable degree of technical precision to pull off. There could be no holes in the fabric, despite having to join pieces together, and everything had to hold with perfectly even tension when the wings were fully extended. It is a remarkable example of skill and artistry in textile work—and a reminder of the often-overlooked role women played in the development of technologies that required specialized textile expertise. (Look into the making of the Apollo space suits for another incredible tale).

As a woman and textile worker, it is not lost on me how this type of work almost never makes it into the historical record. As it is, we barely remember Gustave, the inventor; who cares about these mostly nameless women who made his machine possible?

As to Gustave’s claim to first flight: it is a debate that continues to this day. The lack of photographs and relatively few eyewitnesses have made it easy to dismiss him as nothing more than a crank. And yet, there are many books and online resources that continue to debate the merits of his aircraft, not to mention hobby-aviation groups that have recreated his plane and flown replicas to demonstrate that it was, at least, aerodynamically sound.

Personally? I see nothing to debate. Like most of my family, I am a true-believer in the tales my great-grandmother handed down through my family of those early days in a new land, fresh off the boat with an imagination that allowed for anything to be possible.

125 year celebrations are being held this weekend in Bridgeport Connecticut and Leutershausen, Germany.

More information on the remarkable life and flights of Gustave Whitehead can be found at:

• Wikipedia, Gustave Whitehead

• For the German speakers (or google translate): The museum dedicated to Gustave in Leutershausen, Germany (Bavaria)

• John Brown’s site on Gustave Whitehead

• Search Youtube for many videos on this topic

Note: Photos in this newsletter have been retouched using Photoshop. I have no originals and am working from copies found in books and on the Internet, necessitating some retouches to improve resolution.

Also note: Both my great-great aunt and great-grandmother were born into the Hungarian empire of the late 1800s. Today we call their countries Croatia and Slovakia.

Back then, I didn’t really have trouble finding quality clothing to wear to work and around town. I had a decent job, and worked downtown only a few blocks away from the Hudson’s Bay. I could afford to purchase decent clothing on what I earned, one foundational garment at a time, and had a wardrobe of workday staples, funkier clothes from boutiques in my neighbourhood, as well as hiking and casual clothes that came from MEC and Mark’s Work Wearhouse.

Despite that, I wanted to sew garments, enamoured by the early Internet sewing community and the cute clothing they were making, much of it in retro styles. In particular, I was an avid follower of the now defunct “Sew Weekly” blog by Mena Trott in which she made a new garment every week and invited her readers to follow suit and submit photos of their sewing makes according to the weekly theme. That blog disappeared rather abruptly and with no warning—a fact that still makes me a bit sad as the content was very inspiring. I’ve always suspected that it was a fun project for Trott which got quickly out of hand—making a garment every week for an audience seems totally unsustainable, and the site was not monetized in any way to support even the purchase of fabric and patterns, let alone pay for all that content creation.

But I digress!

When I started sewing, it was generally agreed that you could not sew clothing for as cheaply as the fast fashion garments which had taken hold across the retail clothing space. Home sewing could never compete with $51 tank tops, $30 dresses, or $25 pairs of jeans from Old Navy or Joe Fresh. To purchase the fabric, thread, patterns, and interfacing for a basic homesewn dress could easily run into the $60 range (or more if you were purchasing luxe fabrics). And even as many of us worked to economize by purchasing fabric on sale or at thrift stores and estate sales, home sewists would have a bit of a laugh whenever someone suggested we were saving money by sewing our own clothes!

I have recently realized that with the enshittification of ready-to-wear fashion, this is no longer true. I now believe it is quite a bit cheaper to sew one’s own clothes - even if on the face of it, it appears to be more expensive.

You may have noticed what I have in the last fifteen years. No matter how cheaply those fast fashion garments were being made back then, things have only degraded in quality since. It used to be that a fast fashion garment was inexpensive and cheaply made, but if you wanted to pay more you could still buy a better made garment from a higher-quality brand. And while it is true today that you can order from April Cornell or Gudrun Sodjen and get something that looks better than your average Old Navy piece, the finishing and longevity of the garments is surprisingly similar in its poor quality. Last year I wasn’t sewing much so I bought a tunic from April Cornell ($75) and a cotton cardigan from Gudrun Sodjen ($150). I still wear both garments, but the fabric of the tunic has worn poorly, and the sweater showed up with buttons that all needed resewing (and wasn’t nearly as attractive as it looked online). Honestly, if I wasn’t so thrifty, both of these would already be in the bin.

Compare that to the two dresses I completed this week:

The dress on the left is the Afternoon Dress2 made from quilting cotton that’s been in my stash for a few years. Though I’m not sure what I paid for the fabric initially, after doing a quick bit of Internet looking, I would guess it came out to about $15 per metre with shipping/tax, and this dress took about 2.25 metres of fabric. That plus thread and interfacing? Let’s total this garment at $40. I don’t normally use quilting cotton for garments - BUT THIS SHIT GLOWS IN THE DARK! Plus, I needed a cute boost in my wardrobe as I’ve been feeling a bit frumpy these days.

The dress on the right is made more appropriately from garment fabric—a linen rayon I bought a month ago from Blackbird Fabrics. Three metres of this was required to make my shirtdress modified from a pattern by Assembly Line fabrics which came to a total of $68.03 with tax. Thread, interfacing, and buttons were another $6, so let’s round up to $75 all in.

While it is true that I could probably find something approximating these dresses for the same price or less in ready-to-wear land, I can guarantee they would not be made from the same quality of fabric, nor would they be sewn to last, and definitely not custom-made to my own specifications (colours, fit, styles). A very similar dress to mine can be found at Gudrun Sodjen for $235 plus tax and shipping (round-up to $260), though I’m sure it is not as well made since I hand sewed in all my facings and the buttons are not already falling off.

When I was a younger sewist, I made the mistake of comparing my home sewing garments to those from the cheap fast fashion lines, not understanding that those two points were already on a line diverging from each other : I was getting better and better at making garments, while ready-to-wear garments were getting worse and worse. Today, I can hardly bring myself to purchase off-the-rack clothing, and that includes the garbage showing up at thrift stores.

While I don’t wear the earliest garments I made any longer (due to body and style changes plus the fact my skills are much better now than they were back then), I do have several me-made items that have been in the wardrobe for ten years or more. And because my garments stay looking good for a long time, I don’t have to sew a ton of new pieces every year to keep things refreshed.

I still purchase some clothing: basics that I can’t be bothered to sew like black tank tops, leggings, and underwear. Also, I’ve never learned to sew bras (though lately I’ve been wondering about getting into making my own under garments as well—I’m so over the whole foamshell bra cup that seems to be the rage). But pretty much everything I like or love to wear comes out of my me-made wardrobe these days.

As I’ve dipped deeply into my fabric stash in the last couple of weeks, I allowed myself to splurge yesterday and put in an order for three 2.5 metre lengths of fabric. 2.5 metres is my minimum purchase of any fabric, enough for me to make a shirt or an uncomplicated pair of pants/dress/skirt. With tax the total came to $225. From experience I know that at best, I could buy a single well-made dress for that amount of money. By sewing my own, I will get three garments instead!

The two thrift stores yielded nothing at all - and they rarely do these days given how much fast fashion has infiltrated the second hand racks. These items barely looked good when new, once worn and washed a few times… well, it’s just sad what is in the thrift these days.

The three items I did buy came to $350 with tax. I’m not unhappy about that, they are all quality garments - but I certainly can’t be doing that all the time.

All of this spurred me on last night to finish sewing the pants I started a couple of weeks ago. I needed to resew the waistband and hem them - both tasks I completed by hand while watching a thriller on Apple TV - and this morning I ran the elastic through the waist and stitched it down before the beginning of work.

This is the Sew House Seven Free Range Slacks pattern, which are a very casual kind of pant that I’ve made probably a half dozen times, the summer versions out of light weight cotton - the winter versions made of sturdier stuff, and I wear them constantly. With some adjustments I’ve made over the years they fit me perfectly, have an elastic waist for comfort, and roomy pockets that a phone doesn’t fall out of.

These pants also mark the first successful sew I’ve had in awhile. Over the winter I tried out a couple of new patterns that did not work for or on me at all, and I had abandoned making new things for myself entirely (the reason I was clothes shopping yesterday). Now that I have these pants under my belt (haha) I feel inspired to sew a few more garments out of my fabric stash for summer.

Instead of looking for new patterns, I’ve been thinking about what I actually wear from my me-made wardrobe that is summer-worthy. In general, I like to wear loose things, easy shifts and pants, dresses that can be thrown over a swimsuit to go down to the beach, and stuff that covers my skin from the sun. I don’t usually bother sewing basic stuff like tank tops, leggings, or t-shirts - though if I come across some good knit fabric at the thrift store, I can be convinced to.

These are the tried and true patterns currently hanging in my studio with the intention to sew over the next few weeks:

• Sew House Seven - Free Range Slacks. I’m definitely making another pair of these soon.

• Jennifer Lauren - Afternoon Dress. I have made this twice and one of the versions I wear all the time in summer (it’s looking worse for wear after years of this), the other version comes out in the spring only as its made from fabric covered in rabbits. This is a great pull-over dress with cap sleeves, big pockets, and an interesting neckline detail.

• Assembly Line - Oversized Shirt. I have made this twice in heavier fabrics for fall/winter and once in a lightweight fabric. That one is in constant rotation at the moment - I throw it over a t-shirt with leggings and I’m good to go. I would like one or two more of these in lightweight fabrics.

• Sew House Seven - Sauvie Sundress. I’ve made this twice and it is a staple dress in the summertime for me, especially if I have to dress up at all.

• Megan Nielsen - Eucalypt Dress and Tank top. I’ve made this one loads of times as a shift dress and it uses so little fabric, is so simple in construction that it’s an afternoon kind of project.

We will see how many of these get made in between my upcoming thyroid surgery and summer travels, but I’m sure I can knock out a couple since none of these is a complex sew and I will be looking for a low-key at-home project in my recovery week most likely. I will share here if I do!

What are your tried-and-true patterns or summer makes? Anything under your needle right now that I need to know about? I’m always up for new pattern recommendations and summer really is the best season to sew for!

Visual representation is not something that comes naturally to me, but after 100 days of making one 4 x 6 painting per day, I had a foundation of techniques and the beginnings of a bit of confidence. After a lifetime of believing I could never learn to draw or paint, I discovered I did have the capacity to make the occasional painting that pleased me, and that I wasn’t embarrassed to show to others. That first completed 100 Day Project helped me break through the long-erected barrier to my own visually expressive self. Since then, I have learned more in the realm of painting and mixed media and find a lot of enjoyment when I do play in that territory through my journals and bookmaking projects.

As I am on the cusp of finishing my 2nd successful #100dayproject in ten days, it seemed like time to reflect on my experience this time around - in a totally different medium and with another intention entirely.

For 2026, instead of focusing on something new, I turned my gaze towards reinvigorating my weaving practice after a hiatus of about a year. Since learning to weave a dozen years ago, I have been off and on with my practice - either totally obsessed with it, or fallow, never in between.

Looking back on it, my fallow periods tend to come on the heels of something that hasn’t worked - a bad warping experience, materials that don’t mesh well, a finished product that does not turn out as hoped. It’s usually one or two of these experiences in a row that sours me, and because it’s such a big job to get a warp on the loom, a break of a couple of weeks can easily turn into four, and then a month into six. Most recently, six months became a year, with one loom left empty and another housing a warp I don’t feel like finishing.

After a year one starts to wonder why they are giving so much personal real estate to weaving equipment anyway? I have a 500 square foot studio and at least half of it is given over to weaving equipment and storage: a 36 inch countermarch loom, a 26 inch countermarch loom, a 24 inch table loom, a full cabinet of yarn, and all the equipment for dyeing fibre for weaving projects - not to mention the drawers full of tools and ties, heddles and strings of all descriptions - and extra loom parts galore.

Seems a shame to simply store all that equipment unused - but then my partner reminds me that this is just how I work, swinging between frantic and fallow. If I get rid of everything during a down stretch, then it won’t be there when become obsessed again.

But I was starting to feel some shame whenever anyone referred to me as a weaver. If I don’t weave for a whole year, can I really claim that title? What to do, what to do. The only answer of course is/was to become obsessed with weaving again!

So, for the last 90 days, I have done something weaving-related every single day without fail, and I am now officially out of my weaving slump.

During this period I have:

• woven several objects, including some plaid wool yardage, a meditation shawl, a cowl, placemats, a fancy scarf, bathroom towels, linen samples, and am now half-way through panels for a blanket

• dyed a ton of chenille yarn I had in the stash so it would be ready for weaving with

• organized my weaving yarn stash

• fixed and learned how to use my tape loom

• decluttered and reorganized my studio to fit a woodstove for power outages

• worked on a number of design ideas for future weaves, and finally learned how to use the Fibreworks software

• read several books on weaving, de-stashed some textile books, ordered more weaving books

• put work in two art/textile shows for my first time ever (sold two towels)

• created a web page for my weaving, created product cards

• started this newsletter and created a Weavers Directory on Substack

My 100 Day Project has been conducted entirely on Substack, so if you look back through my notes, you will find all my entries for the last 90 days, with photos.

Besides doing something weaving-related every day, I also committed to working entirely out of my stash - which has called on me to work within my means, to become inventive when I wanted to try something new, and to unearth materials from the corner of my deepest cabinet and prepare them for use. The only exception to this rule was the yarn which arrived Tuesday - two cones of wool needed for the weft of my current weave. Though my stash is somewhat lighter now, I could weave for another 200 days (at least) without exhausting it.

My #100dayproject lessons? There have been many, but the top five are:

1. Don’t stop threading mid-way: A loom left half-dressed is one that is hard to return to. You lose your notes, forget what you were doing, start up again only to realize you are working in the wrong direction. Once you start threading, keep at it until it’s done (but of course, with breaks!).

2. Constraints support new directions: For the first time ever I decided to weave for the constraints of an art show and the materials I had on hand. This resulted in one of the more beautiful pieces I have ever created - the Sakura Scarf - which I plan to write up a draft of to share.

3. Fix your mistakes or turn them into something else: I am not an exacting weaver, but if I leave a threading mistake uncorrected it will ruin my entire weaving experience. On the other hand, sometimes a mistake is too big to fix easily and it’s better to move in another direction entirely. Both approaches are correct as long as you are satisfied with the end result.

4. Build community along with your practice: When you are struggling to sit down to your own work, let others art and dedication to their practice inspire you - like their posts, comment on their writing, explore aspects of others’ work

5. Some is better than none: Some days I just read a weaving book or made a simple design sketch instead of doing the super hard work of dressing the loom - but in the end, it all helped me keep the momentum going. I made several advances during this period, both in the craft and in my self-perception related to the craft - and everything I did contributed to that.

Pretty soon it will be summer and I will be away for a bit, but until then I plan to keep up with something weaving-related every day. Once this blanket is off the loom, I’ve got plans to weave some beach towels to sell at a local gallery in the next month before it’s time to take a bit of a break and go play some Old Time fiddle at music camp!

In some cases the answer is simply that I haven’t gotten around to it yet. In others it’s because the equipment or material was purchased for a project now finished and can be sold or given away. And sometimes it’s because the fibre needs some prep or a tool needs fixing before its usable again. If it’s this final situation, the next question I’m trying to address is - what can I do to make it usable right now?

Case in point: the pounds of Louet cotton chenille I bought from someone’s stash and had tucked away in a cupboard. I absolutely loved weaving with this the one time I dyed it and made some bath towels - but the rest of it needs scouring and dyeing before I can weave with it again.

Rather than cram it back into the cupboard, I’ve been working through it in the background the last couple of days - throwing a skein into the boiling pot with some synthrapol while I work on other things. Once I’m done with that step, I will prepare a soda ash bath and dye the skeins in vivid colours one at a time over the next few weeks so that the next time I want to weave a bath towel, I’ll have materials ready to go.

Second case in point is the tape loom I bought a few years ago at a fibre fair:

A tape loom was historically used to weave bands or ribbons that would be used on clothing and bags, to decorate hats, to wrap gifts and so on.

The story behind this loom (a reproduction from the 1780s) is that in 1993, the magazine Early American Life printed an article with schematics for building these. They turned out to be a somewhat popular make (as popular as anything weaving related could be), and woodworkers made them for their partners and for sale into local guilds. The only problem with the schematics printed by the magazine) is that the pawl on the warp beam gear (that is the lever connecting to the back gear in the above photo) was on backwards. These looms, as built and sold in the 90s, were often unusable until a small change was made to them.

This was conveyed to me when I bought the loom, so I never tried it when I returned home - instead shelving it until I could get around to fixing the pawl in the opposite direction. Of course, this wasn’t an urgency and so it sat until this week when a friend asked if I was selling it as part of my studio clean out, as she was interested in it.

No! I didn’t want to sell it, but why wasn’t I using it? Ah right, that pesky pawl.

So yesterday afternoon when I got home, I took the loom down to my workbench and in 1 minute had done this:

A better option would have been to flip the entire mechanism to the other side of the loom, but whoever made this glued in the mini-dowels that hold the warping reel in place so I can’t turn it over. Whatever, the pawl now works to stop the gear from moving forward which is its purpose.

I moved right from that to warping (using my AVL reel which was overkill in terms of equipment but worked really well).

Since I’d never woven tape before, I started with a simple two yard warp in a checkerboard pattern. Talk about simple compared to preparing warps of hundreds of threads! Sixteen threads later and I was ready to weave.

And weave I did! Here you can see the first few inches of tape I’ve ever woven:

By the end of the evening, in between hanging out with my partner and watching TV (we finished the last two episodes of Pernille - which makes me sad, for we loved that show), I had woven off the warp with a yard and half of tape to show for it.

Something about the simplicity of the tools and the weaving make this very addictive to me so that once I started, I didn’t want to put it down!

Tomorrow I am assisting a friend (same one who asked about the tape loom) at a mushroom dyeing workshop for the day - and I plan to warp the loom again so I can bring it along to show off during the downtime while we wait for the fibre to cook in the pots.

This studio unearthing has been a real examination of where my interests lie as I sift through equipment and materials, and I am feeling much lighter in the process. The fix of the tape loom and subsequent weaving on it has been an unexpected deep dive into the history and practice of tape looms - and I look forward to learning more, and perhaps even making some simple tape looms to share in community practice. I love the simplicity and portability, not to mention the ability to use up small amounts of yarn in the production of useful material!

What is in your studio waiting to be fixed or amended so it can be used? Is it something that will take one minute or a few?

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There are, of course, weaving project books that lay out blankets, tea towels, scarves, and other items in detail—but they can be frustrating. There are so many variables in weaving that it’s hard to ensure all of them are aligned well enough to reproduce a piece exactly as pictured.

For example, I’m a huge fan of Scandinavian weaving books and magazines, but I often can’t source the same yarn weights or types they use. Likewise, my friend with a counterbalance loom can’t easily weave unbalanced structures so many weaving projects don’t work without modification.

It’s often simpler—and less expensive—to design from scratch using the tools and yarns you have, rather than trying to recreate projects from books. I do own a lot of weaving books, but mostly just use them for inspiration or to learn new weave structures, rather than following them as written. My only exception to that is tea towels, because 8/2 cotton is readily available everywhere and it’s what is most used in towel patterns.

Right now I’m working out an idea for an overshot scarf in cherry blossom colours. This isn’t a palette I normally work with—I have a tendency towards darker jewel tones and neutrals—but I have had some magenta pearl cotton in the stash forever that I have wanted to use in an overshot project.

And since a local art gallery put out a call for a May show in which the theme is flowers, I thought this might be the time to use some different colours in keeping with the season. I’m still not sure whether I will end up showing this piece as it’s not even on the loom yet—but I have sketched out a rough draft of what I intend to make and started winding the warp from the lighter pink cotton.

Since I cleaned out my weaving cupboard at the beginning of The 100 Day Project (#the100dayproject), I have limited myself to working with yarn from the stash. This constraint has really supported my budgeting for retirement, and the cupboard is a little less crammed as a result. Constraints also serve to support the design process - in this case “stash only” and “flowers” have funneled me in a particular direction I might otherwise not have gone.

So we’ll see what comes of my constraints-turned-design ideas. I’ll be warping the loom over the next couple of days and share here after I get a few sample weaves onto it.

Since moving to Gabriola Island nearly ten years ago, I’ve had the privilege of having a space separate from our house in which I can work both for money (at my day job which is computer-screen oriented), and for the pleasure of working by hand (at all the textile arts). My studio has a kitchenette (no stove), a bathroom, and a pull-out couch bed which means I practically live up here when my partner is in the city half the week. I entertain friends, take my fiddle lessons, and even have the occasional appointment with my therapist here. Given that it’s the size of some apartments I’ve lived in, this often feels like all I need space wise.

Or it would feel like all I need space wise if I stopped cramming it full of stuff. Here is a photo of my studio at its near worst this past weekend:

As you can see, it is big and full of light and looms - but also a mess - and that is how it is a great deal of the time no matter how much I try to put my tools away when I’m done with them.

Which brings me to the fact that I am partway through a rather large studio reorganization spurred on by some realizations over the last few weeks.

The first of those is that although I don’t need my space to be some spare minimalist paradise, I also don’t need to keep every tool I ever tried out, or every piece of fabric I brought home from the recycling centre.

The second is that I need to stop allowing surfaces to be magnets for clutter and laziness (ie: not putting stuff away). Grainline Studio is running an excellent series this year on sewing room organization, and Jen’s recent piece “Reclaiming Your Cutting Table” has really inspired me in this regard.

The third thing is a recurring problem with power outages on our island which last anywhere from a couple of hours to five days (yes, you read that right). While my studio gets plenty of natural light to work in during the day, it is very cold in the winter since the only heat source is electric. After a 24 hour outage last week in which I bundled up to spend time weaving, I decided that it’s high time I get a woodstove installed. That requires reorienting some storage units in order to create the space for that stove.

Even though there is no rush on any of these things, I got very excited on the weekend and started tearing things apart which is why it looks such a disaster in the above photograph.

In the past few days, I have:

• created a new bobbin winding station, that is not on my cutting table

• cleared everything except the cutting mat and rulers off the cutting table

• got rid of a broken spinning wheel to a good home (I now only have the one wheel I use)

• sold all my fibre processing tools (combs, carders etc) to friends who I can borrow them from should I need them in the future

• sold the clothing rack which was a magnet for me-made garments I didn’t want to make decisions about

• rethought my fabric storage (more on that in a future post), and my shelving situation which will allow me to remove one cabinet where the stove needs to go

• found room in the cupboards for materials that were hanging around on the floor

I have an out pile by my front door which has some stuff that belongs elsewhere in the house, and for the recycling center - and have put my clothing UFOs in a basket that I am going to spend some time with over the next little while.

Having done all of that, it’s already starting to look a bit better in here:

There’s still quite a bit to do, not the least of which is build a high shelf for the books so I can use my bookshelf for fabric storage, and then I will have to map the wood stove space, install some tile and and a heat absorbing panel on the wall, and eventually go through every drawer and cupboard with an eye to paring down materials I am not using. I also need to fix the storage situation in the bathroom which is where I keep all my fibre dyeing materials including bags of lichen and dried flowers.

I’m going to keep posting about my studio organization as I get things back into place. There is no doubt though, that a bit part of keeping organized is simply reducing the amount of stuff overall. Last month I donated a whole box of books, and have just held onto the ones I will return to in my fibre and academic studies - that alone is making the current re-org just that much easier.

I note that I have four subscribers now so it’s not just me in here any more! I haven’t really promoted this newsletter yet as I’m trying to build a little base of textile articles before I put it out there in the world - but I do appreciate that some of you have found me in any case. Welcome!

And that’s what I’m up to this week on the loom.

One of the rules of my studio is that I can’t bring in new material if the designated space for my older material has no more room. At the start of the 100 day project, I cleaned out my weaving cupboard and noted that although I had given everything more space to breathe (mostly by moving spinning fibres elsewhere), it is still pretty crowded with yarns. So at the moment, I am enforcing the no new material rule and working only from my stash.

Working from stash has its limitations, since much of it is made up of half-cones from previous projects or single cones and skeins I bought while learning different kinds of weaving. Some of those leftovers are real treasures, but they’re often in quantities too small for a full project.

Luckily, I’m still building my weave samples book, and sampling with small amounts of yarn is one of the best ways to use them. During my cupboard clean-up I found a mostly full cone of 40/2 linen, along with some silk in different weights (20/2 and 30/2) that I had completely forgotten about. I’ve never woven with linen in that weight, so it’s a bit strange that I had a cone of it at all — but I suspect I added it to an order at some point just to try it.

This week, its time has come.

On the loom right now I have the 40/2 linen sett at 24 ends per inch in an 8-shaft point twill.

Linen is notoriously challenging compared to cotton and wool, and it took me a bit to sort the warp out—I have never warped with a fibre this thin and slippery before—but in the end it wasn’t nearly the disaster it could have been. I put three yards of warp on, just shy of 12 inches wide in the reed with the intention to sample for several aspects of the cloth:

• Sett: I have sleyed the reed at 24 ends per inch, but at the halfway point I will untie and resley at 30 to see how it impacts the design and drape of the cloth.

• Yarn types: The warp obviously remains 40/2 linen throughout, but I can change the weft as often as I want to. I am sampling with 40/2 linen, 20/2 silk, 30/2 silk, baby alpaca, and zephyr wool/silk (I have previously wound bobbins of these last two from other projects).

• Pattern: I am changing the treadling with each sample and will eventually re-tie the treadles for some other options as well. This alters what shows up on the face of the cloth and is a useful reference when designing larger projects later. Pattern can also change the strength and hand of the cloth.

Thus far I have made samples in plain weave and twill using the 40/2 linen:

A twill sample in 30/2 silk:

And am working on a twill sample in 20/2 silk:

I’ve discovered that linen at this weight is a bit fragile, especially at the selvedges, and it’s easy to get too much draw-in. I’m also going lightly with the beater to make sure the weaving stays square. This makes the process fairly slow, but in truth I’m never much of a speedy weaver. The faster I go, the harder I beat, and the more likely I am to misstep on the treadles — and neither of those tendencies results in good cloth.

On the other hand, the weaving is so beautiful (in real life, the photos are a poor representation) that I keep stopping to touch it. Last night I found myself thinking that I might just become a linen weaver despite the challenges. I am definitely interested in making some yardage for clothing at some point and linen is the most likely material for that goal.

I’m looking forward to getting the first set of samples off the loom before resleying at 30 ends per inch, to see what they finish like. After my current sample (in blue), I will do a couple more and then switch it up!

I had thought about including more weaving content in my regular newsletter Comfort for the Apocalypse but instead decided to create a dedicated space for weaving, sewing, knitting, and bookbinding (a craft adjacent to textiles since it involves cloth and thread a great deal of the time).

A little bit about me: My name is Megan and I live in a house called Birdsong on Gabriola Island (population 4200) on the west coast of BC. Like many of the gulf islands, we count a high percentage of artists and artisans among our population, and I am very lucky to work with a small group of women known as the Gabriola Island Fibreshed Working Group. Together and on our own we create and experiment with locally grown and raised fibre and dye materials, in addition to teaching others in our community and arranging fibre-related workings and gatherings.

My own fibre journey started about 25 years ago when I moved from Vancouver to another small community during a depressive period of my life and ended up buying a sewing machine to stave off loneliness. During that time I learned how to do some basic sewing (pillows for the couch), and then took a class at the sewing centre where I made a potholder in an afternoon and then progressed to my first queen-sized quilt. I also did quite a bit of large-scale cross stitch at that time and made rugs and large throw pillows which are still in use in my life today.

Eventually I became un-depressed and moved back to the city where I dealt with a bunch of life stuff that lead me towards sewing clothing and learning crochet, then knitting, then weaving. I’ve been weaving for about a dozen years now, though I am inconsistent and go for months at a time with nothing on the loom. Even so, I have turned out a fair number of textile pieces - mostly functional household linens and many, many samples over that time. I moved to Gabriola ten years ago where I refurbished my first floor loom, and over the last five years or so have shown some textile collage and sewn work in local art shows, learned how to spin fibre in a rudimentary way, and also taken up bookbinding.

I am privileged to have a 500-square-foot studio which houses two countermarch looms, a couple of spinning wheels, a sewing station, and a cutting table - in addition to my home office where I do my day job, and a bunch of storage nooks and crannies. I expect I will write more about my equipment and studio in the near future since I’d like to give a full studio tour here!

Having a studio on one’s property is not at all unusual where I live - we are lovers of outbuildings, and greater access to space is one of the reasons we put up with the inconvenience of ferries. Perhaps I will see who will let me into their studios here so I can share them with you!

In any case, this newsletter is mainly a place to document my projects, collect countermarch loom resources, and share the textile newsletters of other folks on Substack (there isn’t a category for craft or textiles - so I might even start a directory of newsletters to help people find one another).

I’m just getting set up around here - still need to write some pithy “about” information and so on, so bear with me. More content will arrive in this space soon - and I’ll get myself some subscribers to read it!

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