General Meetings

CHH meets the third Saturday of the month,
August through May.

On occasion, meetings are moved due to holidays or other events,
so please check the calendar.

 Saturday, September 16, 2023
@ 10:00 a.m.

Karen Selk 
speaks about
Silk 

 

@ Guild House
and on Zoom

Check the newsletter for zoom link or click here.

**Please note, the program will be first followed by the business meeting.**

Our September meeting presentation will be given by Karen Selk about the wonders of working with silk.

In Karen’s own words, “Wild silk is much more than the miraculous journey of metamorphosis from caterpillar to silken luxury. It is tightly woven to an ancient living culture raising tasar, muga, and eri silkworms in remote forests of central and eastern India.

Raising wild silkworms, reeling cocoons, spinning fiber and weaving silk cloth provides sustainable work, while protecting the environment, and supporting communities.  Photos and stories captured from weavers, spinners, and silkworm farmers over thirty years of research will transport you into their homes and villages to witness the love and dedication involved in each part of the process from soil to cloth.”  

Upcoming Programs:

October 19 (Thursday)Michael Cook on Silk Reeling
November 18 – Swatch Swap presents  “Skyscapes”
December 10 – Holiday party

– – – – – 2024 – – – – –
January 20
– Tracy Kastner presents “My Weaving Journey in Print”
February 15 (Thursday) – Connie Lippert on Wedge Weaving

March, April, May
programs TBD

    Meetings are located at:

    Guild House
    1425 Blalock #202
    Houston, TX 77055

    Past Programs

    Saturday, August 19, 2023

     

    Mahmoud and Alyssa
    Arabic Weaving

    Mahmoud and Alyssa like to incorporate modern designs with traditional Arabic weaving methods. In this presentation, they will tell their story of their journeys in Syria, UAE, Turkey, and the US, as well as discuss Arabic weaving traditions and history. 

    Mahmoud and Alyssa are a Syrian-American handweaving family. They met during a chance encounter in Dubai in 2019 and instantly bonded over their shared love of weaving. Mahmoud’s family in Syria has been weaving for hundreds of years, and he learned the art at a young age. 

    In Dubai, they owned a store where they sold handmade kilims, fine antique carpets, and other Arabic and Persian items. They also had a weaving studio where they taught families the art of weft-faced weaving. 

    Saturday, May 20, 2023

    Margot Becker
    HCCC Artist-In-Residence

    Margot Becker, a current artist in residence at HCCC will give a talk about her work as a weaver, artist and educator. Margot will share her personal journey as an artist, revealing the inspiration behind her work and the creative process that goes into each piece, as well as the technical aspects of her weaving practice.  She will also bring samples of her recent works.

    Margot first learned to weave in 2010 as part of a study to understand the process of creating textiles from start to finish. Following the belief that to know your production line, you must be your production line, this project became an all-encompassing life practice- incorporating animal husbandry, yarn spinning technologies and fine hand weaving. Her work has been exhibited in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. She received her BA in studio art from Bard College in 2009 and her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2020 where she was awarded the Edwin Anthony & Adelaine Boudreaux Cadogan Scholarship and the Toni A. Lowenthal Memorial Scholarship for Excellence in Textiles.  She is currently a Resident Artist at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and the latest recipient of CHH’s Tilly Marchwinski scholarship.

    Saturday, April 15, 2023

    Tapestry

    The Tapestry Study Group presented the program for the April meeting.  It included a brief history of weaving up to and including the Golden Age of Tapestry.  Members also showed various looms and demonstrating some techniques, talked about yarns they used, and answered any questions about tapestry. 

    Blaine Davis was the main presenter for the program.  He has been weaving for over 40 years, both on multi-shaft and tapestry looms.  His tapestry work has been shown at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and in a small show in Blonduos, Iceland, where he did a one month residency at the Icelandic Textile Institute.  He is also a printmaker and is currently a member of Archway Gallery in Houston.

    March 16, 2023

    Japanese Kasuri (Ikat)
    and Indigo Dye
    with Marilyn Robert

     

    Marilyn Robert talked about Japanese kasuri (ikat) and indigo dye, and their influence in the West. Ikat is a woven resist technique. Threads are bound according to a pattern and then dyed leaving undyed areas where there are resist ties. Ikat is classified as warp ikat, weft ikat and double (both warp and weft) ikat, depending on which threads are bound. The threads are dyed before weaving and the pattern appears as it is woven. The primary, traditional dye used for kasuri is indigo.
    Marilyn Robert is a textile designer who weaves, stitches and dyes. She has received awards to travel to Japan with a Japan Foundation Fellowship where she studied kasuri weaving, and other weave structures. Visit her website here.

    February 18, 2023

    Basket Weaving
    with Mary Brown

     

    For the February program, Mary Brown talked about basket weaving. How does it compare to loom weaving: what are the similarities, differences?  She showed a variety of materials used for basketry and baskets with different methods of construction, including plaiting, twining and coiling.
    Mary Brown first learned to weave baskets in 1994 in a small basket shop in Oak Ridge, TN. She loves experimenting with shape, color, and non-traditional weaving materials. Twining is her favorite weaving technique, and she enjoys doing braided borders on her baskets. Her recent guild house display was a show-stopper, and at this meeting you will get a look at her materials and methods.

    January 21, 2023

     

    Bead Weaving:
    Up Close and Personal

    At our January general meeting, we had four master bead weavers from CHH!  Each demoed a separate bead weaving technique. Members (and a roaming Zoom camera) visited each in turn to learn the technique and view samples. These expert beaders have been generating dazzling beadwork at our sale for years. It was lovely to see some of their beading magic in action!
    Pat Powell: bead weaving on a loom
    Peggy Friedrichs: off-loom bead weaving
    Carol Moseley: netting with beads
    Diane Ferguson: bead embellishment for handwovens

    Of Memory and Matter
    Shradha Kochhar

    November 19, 2022

    Artist and educator, Shradha Kochhar, traced the legacy of cottons indigenous to India, focusing and investigating resources lost and born out of colonization. These include ‘Khadi’ – a self-reliant and equitable practice of textile making and ‘Kala Cotton’, a miracle cotton crop native to India. The talk was followed by a demonstration in spinning of ‘Kala Cotton’ to yarn using a ‘Peti Charkha’ (spinning wheel).

    Passementerie:
    An Endangered Yet Thoroughly
    Contemporary Craft
    by Elizabeth Ashdown
    October 15, 2022

    Crête, Tassel, Gimp, Galon and Bullion – just some of the fascinating and mystical terms associated with a rare and fascinating textile art. Often overlooked as a frivolous decoration, passementerie was once used as the ultimate status symbol and signifier of good taste and wealth within both interior and fashion design.   Join our meeting to hear about the fascinating, and often dramatic, history of passementerie, as well as how contemporary artists and designers are reinventing this heritage craft.

    October’s speaker wass Elizabeth Ashdown.  Elizabeth received her MA in Textiles from the Royal College of Art and is one of a very few individuals specializing in this type of weaving. She has produced exclusive handmade designs for clients such as Liberty, the Clothworkers’ Company, Cassamance and Camira Fabrics; she has also completed multiple commissions for private clients. For more about Elizabeth and her work, please visit her website.

    The Boro Phenomenon
    by Yoshiko Wada

    September 17, 2022

     

    Boro, literally, “rag” in Japanese, refers to objects that have been used, broken, and worn to tatters, then lovingly mended to last far beyond their expected life.   Antique Japanese boro textiles, much like patchwork quilts in America, eventually came to be appreciated for their artistic qualities which have much in common with contemporary art.  They are now seen as a prime example of the slow fashion movement, which promotes re-use of textiles for sustainability and reduction of waste.

    Our speaker, Yoshiko Wada, is a textile artist, curator, art historian, scholar professor and author.  An internationally known expert on shibori, boro and other Janese arts, Yohshiko has received multiple awards for her work, including the George Hewitt Myers Award recognizing “lifetime achievements and exceptional contributions to the field of textile arts.”   For more on Yoshiko and her work visit her website: https://yoshikowada.com/