For the table (2020 challenge)

Scarf Challenge 2019 | Historical Drafts | Articles | Museums

A compilation of the submissions:
For the Table ebook

Interested in preserving history? Curious about these old samples you have found in a dusty box in the guild’s library? Looking for new sources of inspiration? Join ANWG’s study group. The group’s focus is on exploring the weaving history of the Pacific Northwest.

For our current project, each participant will design and weave a an item “for the table” inspired by a “historical weaver” with connections to the Pacific Northwest.

See some of the items in the Member’s Gallery.

Choose from the names below or introduce us to your own inspiring weaver from the past.

  • Mary Andrews who taught for years at the Banff School of Fine Arts. Learn about her here
  • Mary Meigs Atwater who needs no introduction but who has strong connections with Montana. You can download her Recipe Book here
  • William Bateman, from Montana and Seattle, who is behind so many new weave structures
  • Oscar Beriau who revived weaving in the Canadian prairies with the Searle Grain Company program
  • Margaret Bergman, who born in Sweeden, immigrated to the US and did so much for weaving in Tacoma and throughout the Pacific Northwest. She also designed and produced looms. Download old drafts inspired by her work here
  • Ingrid Boesel, a master weaver and educator, and the co-creator of Fiberworks
  • Russ Groff from Robin and Russ Handweavers in McMinnville, OR, and the publisher of Warp and Weft
  • Virginia Harvey, very active with the Seattle guild, first president of the Whidbey Guild, organizer of the conference that was to be the precursor of ANWG, textile collector, author of many monographs, most notably the Bateman monographs (she and her husband took over the printing of Shuttle Craft Guild Monographs in 1974), and artist in her own right
  • Margaret H. Kilbuck Johansen, a tapestry weaver with connections to Pittsburg and Oregon, noted female, Northwest American, Native American, textile artist
  • Laurie Herrick, an influential weaver from the Portland area, whose famous Tree of Life you have surely seen
  • Honey Hooser, a Vancouver area  weaving expert and mentor. She used her craft to help special needs people, including badly injured soldiers after WWII.  One of her hand woven skirts was in a layette given to Queen Elizabeth for the birth of Princess Anne.
  • Thomas Kay, whose daughter Fannie and her husband started Pendleton Mills
  • Mary Sandin, co-founder of the Guild of Canadian Weavers and co-publisher of Loom Music
  • Margery Hoffman Smith, known for her work at Timberline Lodge and who designed the textiles for the lodge and was even involved in the weaving
  • Jean Wilson, author of classics such as Weaving is fun, Weaving is creative, Weaving is for anyone, Weaving you can wear, and more.

To join or provide input on how to run the group, contact webmaster.

Future activities could include sample exchange, inventory of old drafts, samples, and books collecting dust in our guild libraries and save them from the dump, design textiles inspired by historical drafts, research into the lives of past great weavers.