What makes a good yarn for weaving rugs? Bobbie has been exploring different breeds of wool in her rug making. Sometimes she processes and spins her own rug yarns but it’s always nice when she can find a commercial product…
Local fibres, local dyes, local labour. The fibres we choose for our projects are important. But so are the dyes! And colour can tell such stories – of who we are, of where we live. Here, a member of the…
A short story of a long project When I declared to my guy Jim that I wanted to grow flax and make linen textiles, he said, “Well if you do that, I want you to make me a linen suit.”…
by Janet Ware Last Spring, when I first saw this large fleece from Alexa at Somerset Farm, I was first taken with its lustre. But, as a spinner/knitter, I was then quickly impressed by the soft yet tough feel of…
This project has been, and will continue to be, a Work-In-Progress! Two Vancouver Island fibre artisans – Bobbie and Karla – have combined their talents to create something special – a rug woven entirely of fibre grown or harvested from…
The Gabriola Fibreshed pod wanted to prove to island farmers that local fleece is well worth processing, so we sent a number of fleeces from Alexa Boultons’s Somerset Farm off to Custom Woolen Mills in Carstairs, AB. We got back…
The first post of an occasional series about different sheep breeds raised on Vancouver Island and the uses for their fleece. by Heather Cameron Sabine Blackburn keeps three East Friesian sheep for milk on her small farm in Cedar. (They…
A nettle fibre workshop idea was floated, and it all came together rather quickly by contacting artist Sharon Kallis from Vancouver’s EartHand Gleaners and enticing her over to Gabriola for a few days. The Nettle Love event was born; a…
This year, we are hosting a local rug challenge. Our goal is to demonstrate the use of local fibre to produce quality rugs, made using any technique you like. Vancouver Island has many sheep breeds that produce strong or coarse wool, and these fibres are particularly well suited for floor coverings.
Threads of Resistance is a community-led series of workshops on that honours Black History, radical self-care, Rest, and activism through fibre arts.