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For a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, Laurie Schlitter introduces a handful of students to weaving during a two-hour, hands-on class. She gives each student a small hand-held loom — a wooden frame, strung with rows of yarn about the width of a bookmark. Each strand is secured on each end of the frame with tiny nails that hold them taut. Armed with a few simple tools — a popsicle stick, a tapestry needle, and a plastic fork — the students learn the basics of this ancient textile art whose origins go back as far back as 28,000 B.C.
“In fabric, you can see both warp and weft,” Laurie explains. “Warp is the long ways. It’s going to be your scaffolding. That's going to be your support structure. And weft is going to go back and forth.”
Laurie pulls out two plastic tubs overflowing with slips — yarn leftover from larger projects that can be used for smaller ones, like the tiny tapestries that the students are about to make. “Fiber is really very tactile,” she says.
The students experiment with different colors and textures, weaving by alternating the yarn over and under each strand of the warp, then packing it tight using the fork’s tongs. The goal is to not leave any evidence of the warp in the form of small white “lice” that’s left exposed if not beaten in properly.
The class takes place at Intersections Textile Learning Center & Gallery in Bryan on a Saturday Play Day, one of many scheduled on the second and fourth Saturday of the month and once a month during the summer. During each class, volunteers introduce students to one type of textile craft. At the end, the students will leave with a small piece of useful art they created themselves — a tiny tapestry that can be made into a broach, a felted flower turned into a corsage, a shoelace made through Japanese Kumihimo braiding. These introductory classes give beginners the opportunity to experiment and learn new skills without any investment besides time; all supplies are provided for a nominal donation.
“Classes and Saturday Play Days are open to anyone who wants to learn,” says fiber artist Helen Dewolf, who currently serves as the president of Contemporary Handweavers of Texas and is a volunteer at Intersections. It is also known as the Guild House and is home of the Brazos Valley Spinners & Weavers Guild. The Guild began in 1976 “as a group of like-minded enthusiasts who wove or spun, or were interested in weaving,” Helen says. The Guild provides demonstrations, comradery, and companionship, she explains. “We really are a community. We work with each other, we support each other,” she says. Intersections is an artists’ co-op that grew out of the Guild “as a separate arm,” she says. “We wanted to take it a step further to teach and to sell.”
Helen is often the first person whom visitors meet when they walk through Intersections’ front door. The welcoming space is filled with an ever-changing variety of one-of-a-kind textile items handmade by Intersection members. The functional and decorative art for sale includes drapey scarves and shawls; brightly colored dish towels; cozy blankets; heavy-duty placemats, potholders, and rugs; striking wall hangings; unique jewelry; and more. Those who stick around may be treated with a demonstration by an artist, at work, a tour of the studio and workshop spaces, or invited to enjoy a hot cup of tea.
Lining a bookshelf is a curious collection of geodes that look strangely out of place among the dish towels, blankets and wall hangings — until one gets a closer look. Pick one up, and it’s not heavy like one might expect of a rock but soft and lightweight, adorned with sparkly beads and made with layers through a process called needle-felting. Helen also creates felt rocks, an involved process that, like the geodes, involves hours of needle- and wet-felting, manipulation of the shape using fishing line, and repeated cycles through the washing machine before carefully slicing each rock into shapes.
Helen says. “I’m trying to represent something that looks geological,” she says of her work that’s inspired by the Grand Canyon. “I want it to look like it's cleaved by some unknown force, so you can see all the lines, the striations, the layers …” she says. “No geologists would ever consider them to be real, but they're fun!” One of her masterpiece geodes won Best in Show as part of the Contemporary Handweavers of Texas Conference last June 2021.
Helen is one of several teachers who share their love of the textile arts on Saturday Play Days and through one-on-one or small group classes offered by the Guild. In addition to needle felting, she teaches wet felting, felt and fabric painting, tapestry weaving, and note cards using recycled vintage embroidery. “The fabric has started to give way,” she explains. “We'll put it on a note card and embellish it, and there you have something to give to somebody that's a little more special than what you can pick up at a store.”
Another teacher, Kay McWilliams is a prolific fiber and textile artist, whose exquisite work is displayed throughout Intersections. She is a founding member of the Brazos Valley Spinners & Weavers Guild, and in addition to weaving, she is highly proficient in all the needle arts. She bought her first loom 50 years ago to make her own needlepoint canvas, and she has been hooked on weaving ever since. Now, Kay uses that same tabletop loom to teach others the art of weaving.
“The loom itself is ingenious,” she says, explaining how it developed about the same time between the continents with no communication between them. Remarkably, there was virtually no difference between the weaving styles despite the enormous distances, she says.
Different types of looms, large and small, are built for different kinds of projects. Kay creates many of her projects on a four-harness jack floor loom capable of producing thousands of patterns. She demonstrates the weaving process while defining her loom’s many moving parts. Even though it can take several hours to set up a loom’s warp in preparation for a project, the weaving itself, “goes pretty fast,” she says. “A lot of what we do here is very therapeutic — the hands-on Zen thing,” Kay says. “People will come and say, how long does it take? And you know, who cares? It's the process.”
Appreciation for the textile arts comes not from observing, but from the doing, Helen says. “Once people see what we do, and then get a chance to do the Saturday Play Date and learn about one technique or another that’s hands-on, it becomes so much more interesting and important,” she says. “As in all things, once you learn about something, you develop a passion for it. You're excited to tell somebody else or show someone else. And that's what we do.”
For more information, visit weavebrazos.org.
Intersections Textile Learning Center & Gallery (Guild House)
2116 S. College Ave., Bryan | (979) 822-5684
weavebrazos.org
Open
Thursday through Saturday, noon to 5:30 p.m.
Wednesday, 1 to 4 p.m. (Open studio hours - watch artists at work on their latest project)
Saturday Play Days
Upcoming dates
March 26 Nalbinding (Swedish cross between crochet and weaving)
– Laurie Schlitter
April 9 Dorset buttons – Helen Dewolf
April 23 Twining – Toni Wilson
May 14 Wet-felted flowers Helen
May 28 Coiled baskets – Kay McWilliams
All classes are from 1 to 3 p.m.
Cost $7.50 donation for materials
