Daily Admissions are $10 and give one access to over 110 booths of vendors, gallery exhibits showing finished yardage, the Fashion Show garments, woven items of all types, a spinners challenge of what people did with some pre-dyed fiber, a spinning wheel testing area, even a visit from live Alpacas!

Our fabulous vendors will have all kinds of equipment, tools, fibers from all over the world, yarns (hand-dyed skeins and cone yarns), sewing and felting machines, jewelry, and a great gathering of fiber-related books!

The CNCH Boutique gives you an opportunity to purchase finished items from our fiber artists in the fiber community – some fabulous, one-of-a-kind items will be there!

Hours for the exhibit halls are:

Friday, April 9th from 1:00-6:00 PM
Saturday, April 10th from 10:00-6:00 PM
Sunday, April 11th from 10:00-4:00 PM

Tickets will be available in the lobby. Parking is also free at the Santa Clara Convention Center, 5001 Great America Parkway, Santa Clara, CA.

We look forward to having you come and see what the fiber community in Northern California is doing. See you soon!

Blacksheep member Ulla de Larios will be sharing her “exploration in cloth” with us.  Initially, her teen-age experiences with Flemish Tapestry set her on a course to find another way to create images on cloth.  Trying different techniques she settled on Warp and Weft Painting as the ultimate process for creating the pure color fields and the exciting borders that are inherent to this process as well as to Ikat*.  Ulla has an MFA in Textile Arts, shows her work widely, and has been published in Väv Magasinet.

Date: March 18, 2010

Time: 7:30 until 8:30 PM

Location: Woodside Village Church, Guild Hall, 3154 Woodside Road, Woodside, CA

*Note:  According to Wikipedia, Ikat, or Ikkat, is a style of weaving that uses a resist dyeing process similar to tie-dye on either the warp or weft before the threads are woven to create a pattern or design. A Double Ikat is when both the warp and the weft are tie-dyed before weaving.

Stacy Speyer will be giving a presentation on her woven art work, dyeing process, and current explorations.  Since 1996, she has been focusing on weaving installations out of fine threads that have been dyed before being woven.  Her technique, known as space dyeing or free dyeing, is a controlled method where she lays out the warp threads on a table and paints them with dye, allowing for a more painterly experience.   For the last two years she has been intensely researching geometric forms.  She has made both traditional shapes and altered forms to further her understanding of how lines can be constructed in three dimensional space.  This has led to an Artist in Residency at the SF Exploratorium in 2009.  Ms. Speyer¹s work has been exhibited nationally and is represented in private collections. BFA, Kansas City Art Institute; MFA, CCA.  To explore more, please visit http://www.stacyspeyer.net/

Wind, Stacy Speyer

We would like to extend the deadlines for the:

Galleries and Fashion Show to March 15
Boutique to March 31

This gives you more time to finish your wonderful items, photograph them if still on your loom, etc., and send to the people in charge of that respective event.

The entries we’ve received so far are great and we’re looking forward to all of the ones that are still to come.

Nancy and Kathy
Co-Chairs, CNCH 2010

In the process Suki uses, double weave pick-up, two layers of fabric are woven simultaneously. The layers differ in weights. One layer, made of heavy linen thread, is tightly woven; the second layer is transparent and woven from very fine thread. The body image is produced on the heavy linen threads using small iron ingots, which rust the image outlines. To further define the image, fiber reactive dyes are painted onto the threads and this is followed by discharge. The process of weaving the two disparate layers together to form a single image is very slow and labor intensive. As the weaving progresses, one weft shot at a time, the feelings that were the inspiration for the image become more clear and defined.

At the March meeting of the Santa Cruz Handweavers Guild, Suki will explain the process she uses with photographs and examples of her work. Passage won the First Prize at the Santa Cruz Art League Textile Exhibition, 2009.

Meeting details:
Wednesday, March 10, 2010 from 9:30 AM until 12:00 PM
Aptos Village Park, 100 Aptos Creek Road, Aptos, CA

Judy Fisher

The selection committee was thrilled to have three applicants, all of them enthusiastic and very well qualified, and making our decision a difficult one. Thank you all for stepping up and applying.

Judy will be forging a new concept for CNCH communications as we move to a magazine format online. You (CNCH members) have laid some of the groundwork by participating in the survey sent out late last year. Now Judy will be looking to you for continuing support with ideas and contributions. Let her know what is going on in your neighborhood at editor (at) CNCH.org. With your support the first issue will be online by May 1.

Welcome Aboard Judy,
the Communications Committee,
Judith Sorgen, Kris Peerand, Penny Peters, and Erin Maclean