Our anniversary exhibit, Threads of Change: Celebrating 50 years of the Northern Fibres Guild, was hosted in the  community gallery at the Yukon Art Centre for December through January. There was an art opening on Thursday, 28 Nov. 2024. 
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The centrepiece of the exhibit was our Yukon Climate Stripes tapestry, which was collectively woven by ~30 NFG members during July at the Jenni House arts residency in Whitehorse. It is an amazing piece of collaborative creation, and was displayed with many additional inspiring pieces made by our members.

by Carolyn Steele Lane
Weaving Mug Rugs

Jill Johnstone mentioned to me one day that she wanted to try overshot and then I just happened to receive an email about a free Weave-along course that would introduce us to colour and overshot. I think I sent the email to Jill the day it started. She jumped in and I followed.

Wow, I never knew how much fun it can be to experiment with such small projects. I don't have too many colours to play with yet, but then I found an old box of cross stitch threads and a world of opportunity opened up. I only explored one warp of tiny rugs. We were going to host a session on colour before Christmas, but then we hoped to give away most of our samples.

Normally, Overshot uses a Design thread that is usually twice as thick as the warp and the tabby yarn.  The warp thread and the tabby yarn make a plain weave. So, if the design thread ever wore off, you would have a plain weave cloth underneath. That also means that for every Design thread you throw for Weft, you would follow it up with a plain weave tabby thread.

We started class by using one colour in the warp and testing various tabby threads in the Weft. My warp was burgundy. Notice how the red and green make a muddy green. Because plain weave has the thread going over and under every thread the colours blend more and having them closer on the colour wheel and in value made nicer backgrounds.

We laid out Design threads on these backgrounds to see what would stand out. One really wants a design that pops. It helped to take photos and make grey tones of the colours to check their values.

And without further ado, here are some of my mug rugs.

by Carolyn Steele Lane
using 8/2 un-mercerized cotton, 24 epi

I fell in love with the colours in the Sunset Towels pattern by Sarah Resnick and bought several cones in Canada minus the Italian Cotton/Linen  cone. Without the Cotton/Linen, I decided to find another pattern to use it on.

Then I discovered the Circles and Checks Towels in Taqueté by Susan Poague that were in Handwoven May/June 2019 and I just happened to still have a 8-shaft loom on hand.

Right away I was conscious of the fact that I chose colours that looked awesome in a stripe and proceeded to make something that had a yellow tabby in the warp. Unsure of the yellow, I added some nile green and as I didn't like how the colours flowed, I added purple because well, I like purple. And two greys - one of which ran out one thread short on the warp, so I substituted.

The first sample I wove made me think I might create something very ugly indeed.  Then I learned how many errors I had made in setting up the  loom. There were many.

It didn't improve the next sample.

I tried to relax and enjoy the process more. This of course went out the window when I was finishing the last towel. I learned that I had room for one more "last" towel and proceeded to weave it in a day.

I think I learned about colour. The colour of the weave changes with the angle you look at the cloth because I had a tabby in my warp. This lesson is still sinking in. I definitely learned about tension and got better at it as I went along - my last towel is probably the best. And washing improved everything!

I've already got another project on the loom and its in plain weave on 4-shafts. What a difference! I can actually walk away and easily pick it up again without losing my position in the pattern. It's quite relaxing and this time I'm only making two towels.

Woven by Wendy Nixon

I made these small (62 x 88 cm) [24.5" x 35"], weft faced rugs on a 4 harness floor loom using #6 cotton seine twine warp at 6 ends per inch, and a variety of wool and wool blend yarns in the weft. It was a great use of some of the coarse yarns that I have acquired over the past few years. The pattern of the more complex one was inspired by a rug that friends have had on their floor for many years. The primary challenge was dealing with the edges, and aiming for consistency in both pattern and tension along the selvedges. I now know what I should have done to achieve that! 
My plan is to warp the loom for 3 more small rugs, in a variety of colours and patterns. I am making these rugs for family, and as my technique improves, I hope to make some for friends. Many thanks my weaving mentors, Jean and Janice. You have both shown me there are no limits in the world of weaving. 

by Janice Brodie


White one is 2/20 silk sett at 20 epi. It's a lace weave with the pattern in plain weave. The pattern is quarter notes.
The pink-ish one is an undulating weave using handspun silk that was dyed in the roving. The weft is 2/12 silk l dyed TWICE... the first time it was dyed scarlet at 1% DOS. Yikes. It was too pink. Overdyed it with .5% DOS with violet.

Braided rag rugs created by Susan Ross:

I took the braided rug workshop with Jill’s mom (Lois Johnstone) about 10 or 15 years ago and did nothing since except collect wool that I thought would make colorful rugs. My stash grew and this spring I dug it all our from various places and realized that I had a great deal. I had 3 old blankets, one winter coat and lots of skirts. I cut and dyed and developed a bit of a pallet the using the written instructions from the workshop I started. My first two or three were full of errors but with each one I am seeing products that I am very pleased with.  

These are 2 rag rugs made from old flannel sheets that have been made to fit standard yoga mat dimensions (24” x 72”). They were warped with a strong linen twine at 4 ends per inch, and woven as plain weave with densely packed strips of flannel. The pattern uses some simple tapestry technique, as well as twisted strips of weft in some places to create the designs. Woven by Jill Johnstone.

This was my first experiment of weaving a project on my own from set up to take down, so I went out and bought a kit from Jane Stafford Textiles called the Undulating Twill Tea Towel. Of course its black and white and grey and charcoal.

This pattern uses 8 shafts and 8/2 cotton.

I set it up early January so that I would have a project to work on while I recovered from hip surgery. I discovered that I had set it up so the design would show on the underside of the loom, but I was ok with that.
Yes, I learned a lot while making 8 towels. And I learned a lot about design along the way. Near the end, I was a little bored and felt like I should be getting back to my wet felting. I took everything off the loom, hand-stitched the hems and put them away. Then I spent two days looking for the next kit or yarn. I just can't seem to handle seeing the empty loom. Who knew?

Would love to show you all my efforts, but until we can get back together again, here they are. I still can't pick a favourite.

Cheers!
Carolyn Steele Lane