The Weaving Mill—Emily Winter MFA Textiles 2015

August and September have been busy—we hosted a second Volunteer Day in mid-August, which served as good deadline to stop the perpetual cleanup and focus on getting the mill up and running. The cleaning and organizing and vacuuming could go on forever, and at a certain point, it’s time to realize that nothing will ever be truly free of dust, things will not always be in their right place, and it’s time to start making work.

William Clayborn sorting the nuts and bolts (photo by Lucas Vasilko)

Lawanda and Jason putting away buttons and canvases (photo by Lucas Vasilko)

Itema loom and some of our first trial fabric (photo by Lucas Vasilko)

When I was getting started this summer, I thought it would be six months before any equipment was up and running. But things are moving along a lot faster than I thought they would, and we are working on a first edition of 100 blankets! Each one is a little different—the blanket striping patterns are determined by the cones of yarn that were left in the mill, and the weave structures play with the possibilities of the dobby loom and continue with some of the ideas I was working on in my MFA thesis.

Winding striped cones for weaving

Cutting apart the blankets once the bolt is off the loom

I can’t run the looms during the day, as they’re very loud and disrupt regular Westtown programming. So during the day, I work on any number of non-weaving activities and when the Envision clients go home around 3:30, I turn on the looms. Weaving for 3-4 hours a day on a regular basis is really helping to build a muscle memory and I am getting more and more comfortable fixing problems on the loom (which, as it turns out, is how a weaver spends most of her time).

I am working with a fellow RISD Textiles MFA alum, Matti Sloman, here at Westtown. While in school, she and I talked often about what we wanted to do when we finished grad school: it usually came back to an experimental, community-based production mill. When I found out that re-starting the mill at Westtown was a real possibility, I called Matti. She moved to Chicago this summer, and we’ve been working together on this project for the last few months. 

Me and Matti nap under our new blankets

After much hair-pulling and quite a few truly terrible ideas, we’ve settled on a name: The Weaving Mill. So, please visit www.theweavingmill.com for future updates and blanket sales at the end of September!

One month in, one month out- Emily Winter MFA Textiles 2015

This week marks the last of the first round of pilot sewing classes. I’ve been working with the same group of five Westtown clients (Yolanda, Cristina, Charles, Lawanda, and Santiago) twice a week for the last month. We’ve been focusing on getting comfortable on the machines, practicing foot control, and steering the fabric. We’ve been working on these spiral sewing samples, which is a great way to practice all these elements without getting caught up in or frustrated by construction.

Lawanda and the square spiral

Some folks (Yolanda and Lawanda) have experience sewing: Yolanda was one of the primary production sewers for the old weaving operation and is a really great sewer and teacher.

Yolanda 

Santiago has taken to sewing like crazy: he is cranking out stacks and stacks of spirals

Others, like Cristina, have used sewing machines at home, but never anything industrial like this. This group of five self-selected, and there’s a full waiting list for next month’s class.

Cristina and the super spiral

They’ve been a great class: really excited and engaged, and more than patient as I myself get familiar with the industrial machines’ particular personalities. Also very willing and able to help one another. One of the underpinnings of this project (and my work with Envision) is a commitment to creating self-sustaining communities within and outside of Envision. This is so important in the context of Envision’s clients. So often things can fall into a client-counselor or student-teacher dynamic which minimizes the client’s autonomy and reestablishes the ability/disability distinctions. By creating a classroom setting where students and teachers are helping one another answer questions, these hierarchies can start to fade and reformulate.

The whole class

Starting next week, I’ll run a second intro class, working with another group of five, hopefully with Yolanda as TA. The folks from this first intro class will start the basic construction class: we’re going to work on a tote bag prototype. This class will introduce pattern cutting, pinning, seam sewing, and pressing. Updates to come!

Volunteer Days–Emily Winter, MFA Textiles 2015

A major part of this summer’s project is cleaning up the weaving workshop space. This past weekend, we organized a series of volunteer days to tackle some of the dust, mystery machine parts, and miscellaneous furniture objects and start turning the workshop into a functional work space.

i invited pretty much everyone I know in Chicago, and we had a surprisingly good turnout.

Westtown Center has been hosting meetings for the Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA) on evenings when the building is empty, and I stuck around for one of those earlier in the week. Westtown Center is right up next to the 606, a new rails-to-trails project which opened this spring. It touches Wicker Park, Humboldt Park, Logan Square, and Hermosa neighborhoods. The LSNA is working on a canvassing project this summer, letting home-owners along the 606 know their rights concerning property tax assessments. This is part of a larger campaign to preserve affordable housing and ethnic and economic diversity in the areas along the 606. It was great to meet the folks from the LSNA. especially their youth team. The canvassing project and the greater campaign are important ones, and I’m really pleased that Westtown and the LSNA are sharing spaces and resources.

Luckily for me, the LSNA youth team’s plans on Friday fell through, so they all came by Westtown to take part in the volunteer day. 25 16-20 year olds jumped in on an incredibly hot July day, and wasted no time painting tables, moving furniture, hanging drywall, and hanging out with Envision clients.

LSNA youth crew (and me on the right in green)

We now have a nice selection of orange worktables

Keyondre painting a chalkboard wall

On Friday, we had a crew from Friedman Place, a residence for blind and visually impaired. My friend Judith teaches in their weaving studio, and brought some of the residents over to help. Showing the workshop to handweavers is always really exciting, because the elements are all familiar: we know what a warp looks and feels like. We know how the loom works. But to see this scale, tucked into a building in a Chicago neighborhood: there’s really no frame of reference for it.

Jean cleaned the tool cabinet, Wally sorted screws. Good sports.

Tristen vacuuming cones of yarn

On Saturday, we had a few more folks from the LSNA group, as well as a smattering of old friends, new friends, and total strangers.

Kristin and Phyllis get the whole sorting thing going

William Clayborn: psyched to sort

Ellis tackles the pallett jack

Phyllis prepares for the workbench’s mysteries

Nick and Anne vacuum demons

Hope and Elizabeth stacking cones of yarn

This big-group-moving-enormous-workbench was the climax of Saturday’s labors

It was really great to have all these people coming in and out of Westtown over the weekend, seeing what goes on in the building, meeting Envision clients, and learning more about the programs. A major part of what we’re trying to do with the weaving workshop is open up the building to neighbors, artists, and friends. These volunteer days were like informal shopwarmings or barnraisings maybe. The turnout and excitement were mindblowing: I was absolutely moved by the people who showed up and helped out.

We made huge progress on the workshop over the weekend. And shockingly enough, it seems like people had fun. We provided plenty of coffee and donuts.

And weaving demos:

First days back at Westtown– Emily Winter, Textiles MFA 15

I arrived in Chicago late last week, and started working at Envision on Monday. Envision is a social services agency here in Chicago which serves adults with developmental disabilities in a number of day programs and community homes. I worked in their art studio at the Westtown Center for two years prior to grad school, mostly working on textile and fiber based projects with clients.

Having been gone for two years, it’s pretty incredible to come back and see the progress some of these clients have made. Lillian Davis, pictured above, is a great weaver and a lovely lady as well. When I was last here, I often worked with her at the loom, practicing the basic steps of raising different harnesses, getting a sense for the weft thread’s tension, and so on. It was always a one-on-one collaborative weaving event, often with both of our hands on the shuttle or me moving her feet across the treadles. I came into the studio today to see her sitting at the loom, winding a shuttle, and weaving by herself at her own pace.

This summer, I’ll be working in a different part of the Westtown Center: the weaving workshop. Several years ago, a local weaving business partnered with Envision to bring more production work into the day program. In recent years, that business has ceased operation and the mill has been sitting quiet. My project this summer, simply put, is to get it going again. Learning how to run the industrial weaving equipment, designing new fabrics, finding potential partners, and developing sewing workshops for Envision’s clients are all a part of this.

Clayborn, Timothy, and Santiago

Mario, Timothy, and Santiago

The workshop has become a de facto storage space recently, so my first task is to clear it out and make it more conducive to production. Lamont, Clayborn, Matthew, Santiago, Mario, and Timothy helped me move many boxes of files to a different part of the building and had some great ideas about reorganizing some of the fabric stock we have in the building.

So much of the success of the art program is the way in which the studio director, Monika Kimrey, has this uncanny ability to make spaces inviting. To create a space which asks something of an individual is so much more powerful sometimes than asking them to do it outright. I can ask a hundred times for someone to work with me on a sewing machine, or to sit with a canvas, but they are so much more likely to do so if the space asks them to as well.

The lovely warper

I was thinking about this while vacuuming the pin warper. This piece of weaving equipment is from 1919, it’s an incredible hulking cast iron wheel, onto which you wind the many hundreds of warp ends. You pull dozens of threads off the creel onto the pin warper to wind the warp with (hopefully) even tension. I was vacuuming this oily dust off the legs of the warper, and thinking about what a beautiful piece of machinery it is, and how it really is just an enlargement of the weaving tools I use in my studio, and how this dust has been collecting on it, and how excited I am to start winding warp threads onto it. And I was thinking about all this in the moment of vacuuming, because I was reminded of how the space of this workshop is so important. Before we start producing fabrics which contribute something new to the many heaps of existing fabrics, this space has to get dusted off, the machines need to be attended to, and it needs an infusion of attention and care.

The looms, behind the warper

Tomorrow I have my first loom training session, and will continue working on the sewing program curriculum. I cannot wait to see this space in operation again.