Weaving!

Self-Study Class Includes Lifetime Access, Online Community & More!

22 Lessons – $49.00

Collage with fiber! Join Mandy Greer for a surprisingly expressive and fun class for anyone new or expert. Work with yarn, fabric, recycled materials and whatever else you can dream up.

Price reduced! Now available as a self-study class.

TEACHER: Mandy Greer

Class Description

Weaving! with Mandy Greer
Self -Paced, Start Anytime

Whether you are a beginner or have fiber experience, don’t miss this chance to learn from fiber-based installation artist Mandy Greer and discover the possibilities of expressive tapestry weaving. Mandy’s teaching style focuses on breaking down complex techniques into specific, easily learnable steps, while encouraging intuitive exploration and risk-taking.

In 22 lessons, she covers warping, layering shag tassels, shapes, deep texture, working with reclaimed and unusual fibers, creating complex patterns, how to create a sculptural quality with embellishments, how to mount and hang weavings in ways that will set your pieces apart, and more.

Weaving can be meditative, peaceful and freeing — to help let go of preconceived ideas and observe what’s happening in front of you in the loom without judgement. Be bold, take risks and make some beautiful stuff!

Please see message from Mandy about Looms and Supplies in the Supplies Tab above.

Photos courtesy of Mandy Greer.

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Class Itinerary

Week 1 – Videos 1-10

Introduction, Warping, Tassels, Begin Weaving
Mandy will share her guiding ethos for making art and weavings. We’ll learn to warp our frame looms, how to build our own textural tassel bundles and several styles for shaping them, and how to get weaving right away, with many tips and tricks.

Color Blocking: Geometric and Organic
Learn to make most any forms and shapes you can imagine, and how to treat your weft like you are painting, moving your forms around with your brush, with options for working intuitively or with a plan.

Roving and Experiments with Recycled Fibers
Learn several ways to add thick wooly goodness to your weaving with un-spun wool roving. Explore all the possibilities of recycling fabric into your loom, turning trash into deep texture and rich focal point.

Week 2 – Videos 11-17

All the BIG Chunky Fun Textures!
Learn a wide variety of juicy high-relief textures that make your weaving have multiple planes and unique depths.

Adventurous Stitches with More Complexity
Lean in and learn some complex stitch work to add some counterpoint to your more organic patterns. Based on timeless weaving patterns broken down for New Tapestry.

Openings and Spacings
Add dimension and light into your weavings by learning several technique for creating openings in the plane of your weaving.

Week 3 – Videos 18-22

Added Sculptural Forms and Embellishing Finished Weavings
Learn many of Mandy’s favorite ways to transform a flat weaving into a more complex wall sculpture, how to fix parts you hate, how to never give up on a weaving.

Mounting and Finishing
Just say no to dowels! Being creative and innovative in how to hang your weaving is just as important as the fibers and stitches you choose. Mandy will share a wide variety of ideas how to see your weaving as a work of art that can continue to evolve off the loom.
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For a full list of the supplies you will need, see the tab titled “Supplies” located just under the video screen.

Full Supply List

Here are the items you will need for your Weaving Adventure! If you have any questions for Mandy about the supply list, you can email her directly at [email protected].

• Frame Loom, with matching Heddle bar
• weaving sword
• wood weaving needle
• 12-inch shuttle
• comb or fork
• spool of cotton warp string, at least one color
• scissors
• metal tapestry needle
• wide variety of yarns: at least 3 other thicknesses of yarn
• roving
• thinner sock yarns for tassels
• collect as much fun stuff from around your house as possible; string old clothes, notions, scraps, mylar, netting veggie bags, dried grasses from your yard, sticks, flat stones, zippers
• For mounting: driftwood, branches, old metal parts, antlers, wood scraps, copper pipe, found objects, antler. Start looking for possibilities!
• optional: hot glue gun, paint/stain for sticks, beads for embellishments

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RESOURCES Recommended by Mandy

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Frame Loom with matching Heddle bar.

Here are two looms that will work for this class:

Roving Textiles: I’d recommend at least the Corker loom and heddle bar (18″x 18”) $145.00.
Lost Pond Looms*, By Eden Bullrush: I’d recommend the “The Dragon Fly” Loom ( 18″x 20″) $51.00 and 20″Heddle bar (sold separately at $24.50) or the smaller “Peeper” complete kit for $39.95

*The Lost Pond Looms shop is open for us Oct 26 thru Oct 30 but will be temporarily closed due to a medical procedure. To guarantee your loom by Nov 12, please order right away and add a message to your order letting him know you are in our class. We are sorry for this inconvenience!

Everything we do can be done on a small or large loom. If you have experience weaving or want to really go for it, I totally suggest getting a larger loom! The course will have us move from beginner to intermediate, and using a large loom towards the end will be totally accomplishable for everyone.

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Weaving Sword that is as wide as your loom

Here are a few options from etsy: Lost Pond Looms and Haulin Hoof Farm Store.

Note: You can also use a sanded wooden ruler from the hardware store.

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Wood Weaving Needle, at least 8″-12″

A few options from etsy: Flax and Twine and Handiwork Your Love.

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12″ Shuttle

A few options from etsy: Lost Pond Looms and Rugs Rags and Bones.

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Comb or Fork

A few options: Inexpensive Plastic Pick or two fancier wood ones from Mielkes Fiber Arts and Roving Textiles.

Note: You can also use a simple metal table fork.

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Spool of 8/4 cotton warp string, at least one color

This shop has the best price anywhere, but they might be taking a break. Here are two other options: Oake and Ashe and Roving Textiles.

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Large Blunt Metal Tapestry Needle

Size 13 or similar size

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Yarns

For this course, I recommend using a wide variety of yarns: at least three thicknesses of yarn. I am sharing my favorite shops, but the options are endless. If you are overwhelmed, start with 2-3 colors that are in your life, that have meaning to you. Then buy several yarns in those colors, so you have texture options, and then a few accent colors. Keep it simple and expand from there. A great option is to search “fiber packs” on Etsy and have someone pick colors for you, like THIS ONE.

But here are some shops I recommend for yarn!

Pancake and Lulu. Hand-dyed yarns by a small business, huge variety of weights and colors.

Catskills Merino Farm. Incredible yarn from a small ethical farm where the wool is hand-dyed with natural dyes on-site.

Yarn Paradise. Bulk wholesale yarn with incredible deals, but you are paying for shipping from Turkey. They have a HUGE selection. I start in the wool and cotton sections, or I search by color.

Niroma Studio. Niroma has incredible selection or rope, yarn, and string, and tools. If you use this referral link, you get 15% off your order!

For bargains in yarn, head to Ebay and search “destash lots” of yarn. Usually it’s people selling off a huge pile for cheap. And of course you can find great things at Goodwill and estate sales.

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Roving

I suggest getting a few ounces of some colors you like in Merino roving, but don’t be afraid to try flax or viscose too! For your reference, a pound (16 oz.) of roving is about the size of a basketball.

Thinner Sock Yarns for Tassels

I LOVE making my tassels with thinner yarns mixed together with really thin linen. My very favorite is Hazel Knits. She sometimes has sales in her showroom and has seconds available. Gorgeous hand-dyed sock yarns, small business in Seattle.

Linen Fashion By Siulas. My favorite thin shiny bamboo yarn.

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Reclaimed materials

Collect as much fun stuff from around your house as possible; string, old clothes to cut up, notions, scraps, mylar, netting, veggie bags, dried grasses from your yard, sticks, zippers… Check out the hardware store for ideas in the rope sections, in the fishing section,at sporting goods stores. Check out Seattle ReCreative or shops like it in your area.

About the Teacher

Mandy Greer Artist Statement:

“I am a multidisciplinary artist working in fiber-based installation, photography/film, performance and social practice. I’m inspired to blend the boundaries between these ways of making, particularly the boundaries between artist and audience, and between process and final product. And yet my work is grounded in traditions. I work with craft on a haptic level, through a passionate engagement with materials and ideas rather than virtuoso technique. I am drawn to tinkering, inventive jury-rigging and the long tradition of using little means to turn the mundane into the transcendent. Using the physicality and metaphor of weaving, my goal is to transform the scraps of our contemporary textile waste stream into timeless, elegant and raw conglomerations of the ethereal natural world. By reclaiming the cast-offs of ‘fast fashion’ and reinvesting the material with painstaking hand-work, I hope to invite us to question how value and meaning are made.”

Mandy Greer has been exhibited in museums nationally and internationally such as Centro di Cultura Contemporanea in Florence, Italy; Bellevue Arts Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Craft, in Portland and The Hudson River Museum, NY. She has been awarded the Arts Innovator Award from Artists Trust/The Dale and Leslie Chihuly Foundation and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, as well as 4Culture Individual Artist Grants, City Artist Grants, an Artist Trust Fellowship and GAP Grants. She has been featured in many publications including The New York Times, Seattle Magazine, and the cover of Fiberarts Magazine.

Mandy has an MFA from the University of Washington, and has taught clay, fiber and art in a broad spectrum of settings for the last 21 years, from university level to pre-school children, focusing on making art processes accessible to anyone through a lens of freedom and rebellion through play. German-born and Seattle-based, she shares her life with artist Paul Margolis, their son, and are caretakers of cats and an old dog.

See her work and sign up for her newsletter at www.mandygreer.org.

Nuts & Bolts

– The videos for this class are pre-recorded and will be available in batches on the following dates:

Videos 1-10 will go up on Tuesday, 11/17/20.
Videos 11-17 will go up on Tuesday, 11/24/20.
Videos 18-22 will go up on Tuesday, 12/1/20.

– Mandy will be available for feedback and help at the Facebook forum or email throughout the month of December. Her email address is: [email protected]

– You will have indefinite access to this class.