Studio update June 2016

This month we have been weaving blankets and making new samples. But there is lots going on aside from that. 

We have had a work experience week with Eloise who has been learning how to make warps and thread looms, weave and be inspired by colours. It has been Awfully Good Fun having Eloise around and on Friday we had muffins and tea to celebrate the end of a successful week. 

We also appointed two people to our Heritage Lottery Fund project; Alicja and Hannah. Each of them brings a different set of skills and experiences to the project, which will be looking at the tweeds of Shetland with a bigger project in mind, and we are really looking forward to meeting up for the first time rather than virtually and to beginning the work of investigating tweed collections. If you know of the location of or suspect that you have some interesting fabrics, blankets or anything woven in Shetland, even if it now is much further afield, please get in touch and let us know. We would love to hear about them!

There is to be a new exhibition in the space in the new unit; Shetland Tweed Company fabrics and if you come in over the next few weeks you will be able to see it slowly taking shape. First off, repaint the floor then start to work with the samples. Fun indeed.

And outside we had a week of splendid weather which brought all the flowers on in leaps and bounds. We have a big-and-growing collection of orchids, sundews, marsh marigodls, buttercups, violets... all the flowers that make a Shetland summer so colourful and unexpected. If you come for visit, park up and take a short walk alongside the car park where the orchids are in full flower. Absolutely beautiful colours. 

On the subject of flowers, here is one of our blankets which I photographed looking out into the garden from an abandoned croft house in Yell. The cottage garden has gone wild and bluebells and thistle, roses and buttercups were flung hither and thither in wild profusion and abandonment. It looks Fabulous, no?