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, April 15, 2023
@ 10:00 a.m.

Tapestry

 

@ 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.**

The Tapestry Study Group will present the program for the April meeting.  It will include a brief history of weaving up to and including the Golden Age of Tapestry.  Members will also be showing various looms and demonstrating some techniques.  We will also talk about yarns that we use and will answer any questions about tapestry.  The program will coincide with a display of member’s tapestries at the Guild House. 

Blaine Davis is 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.

Upcoming Programs:

April 15: Tapestry
May 20: Margot Becker, HCCC Artist in Residence

Meetings are located at:

Guild House
1425 Blalock #202
Houston, TX 77055

Past Programs

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/