By Betty Hilton-Nash
Fiona Hutchison is an Edinburgh weaver, who studied at the Edinburgh College of Art and has been teaching weaving for many years. Please take a look at her website: https://www.fionahutchison.co.uk.
We all followed our own paths in the class but they were based on a couple of new techniques that Fiona demonstrated. One was weaving narrow strips of tapestry side by side, then pulling the warps to distort the work once it was off the loom. Another technique was creating surface texture by using different materials, wool, linen, nettle fiber, weaving 2 x 2 instead of over 1, under 1, leaving small open warps, weaving roughly, not smoothing out the yarns and letting them poke out randomly (linen was good for this, as it would hold its shape). She also showed us how to add
a wrapped cording to the surface of our weaving, and integrate it into the weaving.
As a committed Gobelin/Aubusson style weaver for 30 years, trying always to achieve the flat surface with perfect edges, all of a sudden I could breathe deeply and just play and explore. This for me was the ah hah moment. So new direction for me, I can’t wait to go forward and explore these
new techniques.
Here are some pictures from the class. Enjoy.
Exploring surface texture. (Betty Hilton-Nash)
On the loom, prior to cutting off. (Betty Hilton-Nash)
Pulled warp technique; still some manipulating left to do. (Betty Hilton-Nash)
Whipped cording and surface manipulation. (Terri Bryson)
Tapestry Weavers South 