HOW TO MAKE LINEN BUTTONS BY HAND (traditional Galician method from north Spain)
At last, here is the blog post I promised several weeks ago about how to make the charming buttons from linen yarn that were used in my region of Spain – Galicia – for traditional linen shirts and other garments. They are easy to make and, unlike some other hand-made buttons, you don´t need any rings or moulds.
Make 10 wraps around a paper tube with linen yarn
Remove yarn with care. The wraps become the button core which you wrap with the same linen yarn
Continue wrapping the button until you fill in the hole
Use the "tail" of the linen to fasten the button to the fabric
Thanks to Montse Rivera of A Mouga shop in Santiago de Compostela for sharing her knowledge with textilesnaturales.
WHAT´S NEW AT AC ESTUDIO TEXTIL – New 100% linen bath towels
New towel design with decorative border (AC Estudio Textil)
Checking the weave with a magnifying glass is part of the way we workWARP + WEFT Textile Exhibition Catalogue
- Contemporary Woven Textiles – 11 September – 30 October 2010
- Oriel Myrddin Gallery, Wales
It´s not often that you come across an exhibition devoted exclusively to loom-woven textiles and it´s a real pleasure to find the subject written about in such a knowledgeable way in the exhibition catalogue. Perhaps this is not surprising, given the fact that the exhibition was curated by British weaver, Laura Thomas, in collaboration with Oriel Myrddin Gallery.
Dr Jessica Hemmings (Associate Director, Centre for Visual and Cultural Studies, Edinburgh College of Art) divides the work on display into two basic types in her essay – textiles informed by “experiments with the very structure of weaving” and textiles of containment – whether literally – as in the case of Japanese company NUNO whose textiles contain feathers in pockets, or Priti Veja who uses fibre-optic yarn within the cloth – or as vehicles for images or meaning. In fact there are 14 weavers represented in the exhibition, including Ainsley Hillard, Ann Sutton, Peter Collingwood, Ann Richards and Reiko Sudo (Nuno). Not everyone will be able to make it to Wales, although the exhibition will also be travelling to Bury St Edmunds (visit the Oriel Myrddin Gallery website for tour dates). Still, reading the exhibition catalogue has confirmed what I already suspected, even here in my very rural hamlet – weaving is surely one of the most challenging crafts today and one of the least well understood owing to a certain “cognitive barrier” which results when most people are so separated from the physical reality of making cloth on a loom – You can see someone weave on a loom without really understanding at all how the loom works or how pattern and cloth structure are related. It is clear, however, that weavers, galleries, weave teaching bodies and bodies responsible for craft development and promotion have a lot of work to do to close this cognitive gap, which is a pre-requisite if the true value of woven textiles is to be This catalogue goes some way to explaining the beautiful mystery of the art of weaving cloth on a loom and suggests that to make a living today at hand-weaving today you need to explore, experiment and develop your own particular style and way of working.
You can obtain a copy of the catalogue by post from Oriel Myrddin Gallery (£15) but Laura Thomas´ own blog and her warp and weft blog are also very useful for finding out about what is going on in the world of contemporary woven textiles in the UK.
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