I’m taking part in the 2026 Franklin Arts Trail, an open studio and gallery event this Labour Weekend (24-26 October) from 10am-4pm each day. I’ll be at the Pollok Hall with Kerry Collins and Lynda Jane Dodd.
Kerry has been a textile artist for many years and has a passion for dyeing and creating fabrics using indigo dyeing, eco-dyeing and boro stitching. Lynda Jane is an award-winning watercolour, driftwood and acrylic artist. Currently she is also enjoying working in oils on canvas.
Visit https://franklinartstrail.org.nz/ for more information including a map of all the participating artists. You can also pick up brochures from the Franklin Arts Centre and local libraries.
Creative Fibre Auckland’s Spring Education Festival is being held at the Estuary Arts Centre, Orewa from 6-8 November. I’m tutor for the Dimensional Textiles weaving workshop, a two-day workshop running from Friday 6th to Saturday 7th November. The workshop is an introduction to combining double weave and differential shrinkage to create dimensional cloth. Skill level: You need to be able to weave on an 8-shaft loom and read a liftplan. Cost: Members $200, Non-members $235 You will be sent details for dressing your loom after registration. For more information and to register visit: https://creativefibreauckland.wordpress.com/
Created for the Matariki exhibition, We Were Here, at the Pollok Arts & Crafts Co-op in July. I was watching lots of Time Team videos on YouTube at the time of creating this piece and thinking about what future archaeologists will find when they look at what we have left behind; that the signs we were here will probably just be loads of plastic, polluting our land and waterways.
Woven from hand dyed wool and embellished with sequins created from plastics and metals in our household waste.
Rivers – Metaphor for a Journey is an exhibition by the Professional Weavers Network of New Zealand The show is on at the Aigantighe Art Gallery in Timaru until 22 March and then it’s coming up to the Franklin Arts Centre in Pukekohe. My two works in this exhibition were inspired by the Waiuku River, more commonly known as the Waiuku Estuary. The appearance of this tidal river changes over the day as the mudflats are revealed and then concealed by the movement of the water.
I used passementerie techniques to create my works, starting with creating twisted cords from hand-dyed corriedale wool. The browns were dyed using harakeke seedpods harvested from my garden and the blues are acid dyes.
You can see a glimpse of the river in the background of the pictures of the finished works.
I’ve been weaving, more tea towels. I really like the variations possible on one warp with the Bumberet weave structure, though I have tended to only use three treadling variations for the tea towels.
At the end of each warp I have played with other treadlings and weft colours, and I’ve made some of that fabric up into Christmas tree decorations. I also made the hanging cords from thrums from the warps.
That’s enough tea towels for a while, I’m planning some new projects. I may return to Bumberet as I also wove a sample warp with wool and it produced a few samples that I want to investigate further.
As the picture says, I’m participating in the 2025 Franklin Arts Trail. I’ll be Pollok Hall, 4 Cemetery Road, Awhitu along with Glenys Duff of Taraire Croft Handwovens and Kerry Collins of Bent Tree Textiles. I’ll have a selection of my work, with some for sale and be demonstrating weaving along with Glenys. Kerry will be demonstrating indigo dyeing.
You can download a map at www.franklinartstrail.co.nz to plan your studio visits or pick up a brochure at the local libraries and information centres or the Franklin Arts Centre. We’d love to see you.
I noticed that yellow oxalis (oxalis pes-caprae) flowers were popping up around the place, along with all the other weeds that are taking advantage of the slightly warmer weather and thought I had read that you could dye with them. Of course when I tried to find some information I could only find a few mentions online with not a lot of detail so I decided to just go ahead and play. I picked a bunch of flowers while out walking my dog, put them in a jar and poured hot water from the tap on them. At first the colour of the solution was a very bright yellow but it changed over time to a red colour.
The jar sat on the kitchen bench for 8 days and mould had started to grow on top so I strained the solution and poured it into a dye pot. I added some more water and then 100g of merino yarn. I didn’t find any information about whether to mordant or not so I decided to just go ahead and not bother, thinking that the worst case is that the yarn wouldn’t take up any colour. In the dye pot the colour of the yarn appeared as a light, bright yellow that I quite liked. I simmered the yarn for a while, then removed it and hung the yarn up outside to dry a little while I did some other jobs. Later in the day I washed the yarn in warm water with a little detergent. Not much colour rinsed off during washing but the yarn colour deepened/darkened which was a surprise.
