Don’t Miss this Fashion Show Opportunity!

Call for Entries

Project Handmade Fashion Show to Feature Contemporary Designs by Local Makers

(May 23, 2012). Textile artists and fashion designers working within a 100-mile radius of Asheville, NC, are invited to submit entries for Project Handmade, a fashion show dedicated to showcasing contemporary garments made with traditional handcrafted detail using local materials. The goal is to inspire textile artists to engage resources available in the region and encourage innovation to showcase and distinguish the region’s creative fiber and textile art community. The fashion show will be fall 2012 at the Asheville Art Museum.

Entries are due July 15, 2012, and must include digital images of original garments or fashion accessories representative of the applicant’s work and an artist’s statement that explains the processes involved in sourcing, creating, manipulating or embellishing the work and/or the fiber, yarn, fabric or patterns used to craft it.

Participants selected for the juried show will be asked to create garments or fashion accessories following the theme: Earth Tone Palette. Finished work must be received by Oct. 15, 2012, and is subject to final approval by the fashion show committee after the actual work arrives.

Any hand-processed technique may be used to make the fashion show submissions: growing, spinning, weaving, knitting, felting, dyeing, printing, draping, stitching, tailoring, painting or molding. Locally produced and repurposed materials are encouraged, as well as collaborations. For example, a local fashion designer might obtain fabric from a local weaver using yarn processed locally from a local fiber producer.

The fashion show is a joint project of Local Cloth: Farm/Fiber/Fashion Network and the Asheville Art Museum. Local Cloth is a Western North Carolina-based organization that encourages and supports collaboration among textile artists, designers, fiber producers, suppliers and related small businesses. Its mission is to sustain and grow a thriving regional fiber and textile arts economy and bring locally grown and made textile products to consumers within and beyond the Blue Ridge. Both Project Handmade and Local Cloth: Farm/Fiber/Fashion Network operate in cooperation with Handmade in America.

More details and entry guidelines are available at www.projecthandmade.org.

-30-

New Year, New Study Group Subject

Happy New Year, Sutherland Handweaving Studio Friends!

Karen Donde and Barb Butler invite all weavers and weaver wanna be’s to join Sutherland’s Weavers’ Study Group as we start our second year. Our first meeting will be this Sunday, Jan. 8, from 2-4 pm, at our studio in the Cotton Mill Studios, 122 Riverside Drive, Asheville. We’re starting a brand new study subject, so this is an ideal time to join. We meet monthly on a Sunday afternoon, but which Sunday tends to fluctuate. We’ll try to work that out at the first meeting. So check out the details below and let us know if you’d like to join us. If you’re interested but can’t make it Sunday, we’ll put you on the contact list for next month. Don’t worry, we’ll catch you up.

Our study subject this year is block weaves. The group will choose one profile draft and everyone will weave a piece based on that profile, similar to Handwoven’s Weave-Along last year. Members will choose a month to show their sample and discuss how they interpreted the design. The process will work with any loom, from rigid heddle to multi-shaft.

At the first meeting on Sunday, Karen will provide a little tutorial about block theory, how to develop a profile draft and how to translate it to various weaves. We’ll work together to design a two-block profile draft that will be our inspiration for the year. Then we’ll assign months for members to present. Here’s one of Karen’s latest block weave projects.

We will also collect our $15 annual dues for 2012. Show-and-tell is one of the best parts of our meeting, so please bring whatever you’ve been working on, thinking about working on or have questions about. We love sharing successes and ideas.

We decided at our last meeting to arrange a tour of the Oriole Mill in Hendersonville, followed by dinner at the pizza place in Hendersonville. Our dues from last year would be applied to the bill for last year’s study group members. Others are welcome to join us. We’ll just ask that you buy your own pizza. 

We had a lot of fun learning together last year and are excited about our study group’s second year. Hope you can join us!

Karen and Barb