Austria July 2009, T-C1 workshop with Vibeke Vesby

Haslach Upper Austria was the location of the European Textile Association’s 15th biannual Conference: “Revival of Old Textile Centres: a new future for training”  Wednesday, July 22 until Friday July 24, 2009.
The ETN 15th conference took place in Austria at the Textile Centre Haslach, with pre-conference activities in Vienna and Linz "2009 Cultural Capitol of EU" and post conference workshops organized by the Haslach Textile Centre.

During the day of Networking presentations I spoke on publishing fibreQUARTERLY and about textile and fibre arts activities in Canada (this presentation was supported by the Canada Council)

After the conference I took The Sky is the Limit: Challenge your creativity with a TC-1 and Photoshop ™ with Vibeke Vestby from Tronrud Engineering Norway who is the developer and manufacturer of the T-C1. Using Photoshop ™ to create weave structures was something I had been resisting because I had been using Poincarré ™ software in Montreal at the MCCT and "The Woven Pixel" by Alice Schlein and Bhakti Ziek.just seen a bit like starting at scratch. 10 minutes into the workshop however I was slapping myself on the for head and uttering duh and grinning from ear to ear. Building weave structures a pixel at a time in black and white and then defining them as a pattern to replace a colour in the design was so simple and such an obvious use of that particular bit of software I was stupefied by me resistance and just got down to it.

This the image I was working with during the T-C1 workshop

This is a simulation of the damask pattern I developed from the garden images

I wove a test sample with a white weft on the white warp

Being a workshop my sample is the cue waiting to be cut out, I was satisfied with the result but realized I had used to many weave structures to make a readily recognizable Damask which for most people is the simple two colour or two tone weft faced Satin and its reverse. I decided to move onto something more complicated and insert multiple coloured/ shuttle areas into a primarily white on white multi layered cloth with the colour inside when not on the surface (front or back) rather then a brocade.

that little strip is my sample and for me it was enough to answer my questions on how and if this design would work.

The inserted upright rectangle will be a 6 colour insert. I wove a small sample but at that point the loom started to act up so being unfamiliar with the loom I stopped, but I had enough to convince myself this design could be produced.

Later in the year Vibeke provided me with an image of larger sample of this design she had woven for me. Using a green rather then white yarn to punch up what I planed as white on white area of the design. Looking at this 18 months later and having heard two papers on Velvet weaving at the TSA symposium in Lincoln in October I now am thinking a trip to the Lisio Foundation is in order and a silk damask with a multicoloured velvet brocade might be an interesting way to go.

Here is a photo of the workshop group standing left to right Christina Altona, Doris Hascher, from Austria Simona Standler from Czech Republic, Heide Peitarinen from Norway, Joe Lewis (Canada) with Vibeke Vestby, Agnes Haupty from New Zealand and Khatuna Popiashvili from Georgia in front of T-C1 and  Della Reams an American who teacshes in Qatar. [Textile Conference bring an international audience together don't they]

To read more about the Textile Center Haslach and the 2009 ETN conference go to fQ Volume 5 Issue 3 Fall 2009  for Conference reports and there is also a longer article on Haslach Textile Centre

Links to the Organizations interest mentioned in this postings

European Textile Network http://www.etn-net.org/

Textile Centre Haslach http://www.textile-kultur-haslach.at/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1


T-C1 Loom http://www.tronrud.no/index.php?id=58&L=1

Montreal Centre for Contemporary Textiles http://www.textiles-mtl.com/

Lisio Foundation http://www.fondazionelisio.org/index.php

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