Monday, June 04, 2007

What a weekend!!

It was a busy weekend for me!! Full of good friends and lots of crafty things.

On Saturday I went to the Textile Museum with Coleen. There was a festival going on with many exhibitors and hands on craft projects. There's also a wonderful exhibit going on right now called RED. There was no photography allowed - so go check it out in person! The highlight of the exhibit were these gorgeous long tent bands - all hand woven. They were made by Central Asian ethnic groups, including Turkmen, Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Kazakh.

Here are some images from their website - printed with the appropriate credits below...


Tent band (full and detail)
"Eagle"-göl
group I
[Goklen (?)] Turkmen
The Textile Museum 1968.36.4
Gift of Mrs. C.V. Hook from the Estate of Gustave Pabst


Tent band (full and detail)
Saryk (?) Turkmen
The Textile Museum 1968.36.2
Gift of Mrs. C.V. Hook from the Estate of Gustave Pabst


Tent band (full and detail)
Saryk (?) Turkmen
The Textile Museum 1983.55.1
Gift of Gloria Gartz


There was quite a crowd there... many dressed up in beautiful hand made costumes.

Textile Museum

Textile Museum

We made sure to take an active role in all the exhibits - as you can see - Coleen is trying out a braid making device.

Coleen

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Here, a woman was using cards with holes punched in them to weave this belt. It was amazing - each turn of the cards - created a different pattern.

Carded weaving

There was also a felt making booth were you picked up different pieces of wool roving, yarn or felt and rubbed them into a felted piece.

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Here's ours....

Felting

Another booth had a red stamp activity. We made handkerchiefs!

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Mine must have been just irresistable - because it was stolen when I went back to claim in!
I kept looking at all the little kids with their handkercheifs - ready to jump whoever had taken mine. But alas! I never found it...

So here is my first attempt...

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And since I never found it - here is my 2nd attempt...

Red work

They also had those little silk cocoons that I kept seeing all over at MD Sheep and Wool. I didn't really understand what you did with them - but I found out. Look at all that silk being pulled off!

Sillk Cocoons

And what textile exhibit would be complete with a sheep shearing?

Sheep Shearing

The little guys were starving and cold after their haircuts!

Sheep


There was a stage in the middle of all the activity and we watched some women dancing in beautiful clothes.

Dancers

Dancers

Not to be outdone - Coleen practised her pole dancing there too...

Coleen on a pole :)

Inside the atrium - there were some exhibits by textile artists.

Here is some yarn being woven into a rug...

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Some woven articles...

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Look at this gorgeous red one - just perfect for project spectrum's new colors!

Red weaving

I loved this exhibit on Batik.

Batik

She had dyed the silk brown and was painting on wax so she could dye the fabric again and the areas with the wax on them would stay brown.

Batik

Inside were more hands on exhibits. I found a woman doing needle punch. I had never seen this type of needle craft before - but it looked really cool... Here she is making a rug for a dollhouse.

Needle Punch

This post is already growing too long - so I'll sign off for now with this little tidbit - a present that I made Sarah for her birthday!

Box bag for Sarah

I went over to her place Saturday evening for some sewing time - we made the cutest purses. Go look at hers! I'll post mine soon - I still need to take some pictures.

9 comments:

Stacey said...

those are some great photos - nice pole dancing!!! :)looks like you guys had a lot of fun and saw some great stuff!!!!

Lolly said...

They must have had so much more after I left - I didn't see a lot of these things! I did see the amazing weaving and the batik, however. I talked to that loom lady about some recommendations!

Great pictures and a great time! You came home with some cute things :)

Anonymous said...

Cool Pics Jody...OOOH, I love batik. I used to do it a lot in HS, and still have all the stuff for it...maybe at the next place I can do some more (for now the dying is just too darn messy).

Coleen said...

Thanks for a fab day! Next time we'll have to take Mr. Van Dyke in a closed cardboard container! :)

chacha / Jen said...

When do you sleep? What with Vegas, and the cruise, and now the textile museum with handkerchief thieves... :)

Looks like very nifty exhibit and festival going on there!

Amie said...

I believe the term is... Hubba Hubba!

Mauren Mureaux said...

Doggon, too bad we didn't know about this. Deb would have loved it! She's getting into weaving.

Got my invite to Ravelry today. WooHoo!

Jinann said...

Fabulous pictures! That really looked like a fantastic time - thanks sooooo much for the incredible "replay". Do they do stuff like this often at the textile museum? Believe it or not, I've never been there!

Anonymous said...

Looks like great fun!