Intermountain Weavers' Conference - Part 1

The end of July the Intermountain Weavers’ conference (IWC) was held in Durango, Colorado. IWC is a regional conference of western states: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. It meets every two years in the off year that the national conference, Convergence, meets.

The past 4 conferences have been held in Durango at Fort Lewis College on a plateau above the city. It’s a beautiful campus, usually cool temperatures with a terrific backdrop of mountains.


A land formation seen from the highway while driving through New Mexico.

 Driving there through Arizona and New Mexico is like driving through a western movie set, the vistas are vast and unbelievable. One year my roommate and I drove through a “brown” thunderstorm in Monument Valley.


A modernistic Navajo rug ready for sale at a Trading Post



My own Navajo "rug" 5"X 7" woven by Lorraine Mark

We enjoyed the stops at the Indian trading posts throughout the reservation, looking for yarn and weaving tools. Some of the posts had rugs for sale that were beautiful works of art.

AAA puts out a terrific map called “Indian Country” that covers the huge Indian Reservation at the Four Corners Region where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet. Besides the roads and highways, Indian Trading Posts are indicated and the normal tourists attractions of parks, monuments, museums, etc. If you’re going to travel in the area, the map is well worth while obtaining.

WOW! Group - Part 1 - World Traveler Returns

Last Wednesday our WOW! Group was back to full strength with the return of Bill and Larry. They had just returned from a transatlantic cruise from Copenhagen to Ft. Lauderdale, with some stops in Ireland and New York City.

At their stop in Ireland they toured a flax spinning and weaving mill which Bill found fascinating. In passing he mentioned to the mill tour guide that he was also a weaver. After taking several pictures and being the last to leave the room, Bill was surprised when the tour guide gifted him with the hank of unbleached linen she had been showing during the tour. You can see it the above photo. It has a grayish color not unlike old barn wood.

Flax is a plant and the thread produced is made up of the fibers from the plant stem after the flesh has been beaten away and called linen. That is a simplified version of a longer process. The whole process is discussed in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Handwoven on page 64. The thread is actually quite thin and certainly fits the term fibrous.

Bill is one of our two guild representatives to IWC (Intermountain Weavers Conference). IWC is a regional association of western weaving guilds that holds a weekend conference every other year in the year that Convergence is not held. The conference consists of two and a half day workshops, over Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings, with a style show, and juried and non-juried gallery shows of fiber related works. The past two conferences and the one in the summer of 2009 will be held in Durango, CO, on the Ft. Lewis College campus.

Each participating guild usually donates some “favor” to be distributed to the attending conference members and leaders. For the 2007 conference our guild wove about 200 book marks 1 ½” X 6”, made on 6 looms passed around our guild through out the year.

Starting last year our guild has been doing cardboard weavings making small purses for the 2009 conference, as Bill is working on in this photo at WOW. The small weavings could be used as coin purses or business card holders. The purses are closed with a loop going over a button. The variety of purses has been quite interesting. Bill is hoping to accumulate over 200 by June. He is over half way there now.