It´s time to say goodbye to Tracey, the AC Textile Studio´s pupil and work assistant over the past couple of months. Tracey, from the UK, first came here to north Spain, with Kathleen McCormick, in 2007, to for the residential 3 week intensive weaving course or “Textile Assistantship” for beginners, offered once or twice a year. 3 years on she decided to repeat the assistantship again in 2010, this time to deepen her knowledge of weaving hand-made textiles and find out more about the reality of earning a living by hand-weaving.
A total of 6 weeks of weaving tuition and immersion in the environment of a professional working weave studio meant that Tracey was skilled enough to help out with some of the professional weaving and other related work of the studio for a further period as a volunteer. This involved a range of varied work including assisting in large-scale batch dyeing with madder, weld and logwood, weaving up several saquitos, mini-Galician textiles and cushions to the studio´s own designs, cleaning and tidying the workshop, helping out with some computer-based work, yarn winding and helping to prepare looms for public weaving demonstrations and private weaving tuition given to Spanish pupils at the studio.
During her time with us Tracey also learned how to photograph her work and the importance of knowing how to develop her work for different markets, how to price her work, and see some of the different options open to professional hand-weavers today in practice – including teaching and public demonstrating at craft fairs. The world of hand-weaving today is one which offers no set career progression and so anyone wishing to make a career of weaving as a designer-maker or maker-educator needs to be able to be independent and be able to find their own way. The photos you see here are of the pieces made by Tracey during her time at the studio, and are very similar to the photographs that she herself took during an afternoon textile photographing course at the studio, as part of her training in professional skills and working practices which accompanied the more direct technical and design-based learning.
Perhaps the most exacting project we gave Tracey was to work on a made-to-measure curtain project from beginning to end, setting up the loom, weaving sample fabric and then adapting the design for specific measurements. As you can see from the photos Tracey rose to the challenge and you can see the beautiful results in the photo to the left. We hope that this kind of project – and the knowledge gained in doing it – will stand Tracey in good stead when she returns to the UK – and starts to weave her own designs on her own and face the challenge of creating her own career path in hand-woven textiles.
So we wish Tracey the very best of luck in her textile work in the future, warm thanks for all her hard work., and hope that she´ll come back to see us in the future.
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