HCCC Family Festival

by | Nov 6, 2022

On a sunny day in November, volunteers from CHH met at the Houston Center For Contemporary Craft for a day of rope-making with the Houston community.

Teamwork! A father and his two daughters operate the rope twisting device as a team.
On the other end, CHH volunteer Anne-Lise Wiegand  holds the opposite end of the rope until it is ready to be released. Many other CHH volunteers watch.

Family Fest is an annual day of crafts and community hosted by HCCC. It is always free to attend. This year’s fest focused on up-cycling, the process of transforming trash, useless, or waste materials into new materials or products. CHH led a rope-making activity, making the rope from donated t-shirts.

Din Iyer helps a young boy make rope. Image courtesy of HCCC.
Molly Koehn helps a child operate the rope twisting device. Image courtesy of HCCC.
Two community members wearing their newly-made rope! Image courtesy of HCCC.

Rope-making was a hit! The activity was consistently busy the entire day. Each rope was made with three lights of cotton t-shirt. Each length was twisted individually using a device made by former HCCC Artist in Residence, Tom Gonchoroff. When enough twist had built up in each strand, the strands were released to twist upon each other, forming the rope.

Susan Antrican assists with selecting t-shirt rounds to be transformed into rope.
Susan Antrican and Pat Compton assist community members with making rope.

By far, the best part of the day was the surprise and awe on each participant’s face when the t-shirts transformed into rope! We look forward to the next Family Fest!

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