Weaving Your Story

Introduction

Row after row, or round after round, participants will use color, texture and material to represent people, memories and specific key events or milestones that impacted and shaped the course of their life. Participants can choose to weave in articles of clothing of their own or loved ones, and attach keepsake objects to the finished piece.

Like an individual time capsule, the resulting artwork will become a piece of organic art that represents facets of a human being’s story. This can also become a meaningful touchstone to house symbols of loved ones who have passed away. Making meaning and metabolizing loves and losses, heartaches and triumphs doesn’t need to happen though thinking alone. In fact, using one’s hands to capture the rhythms of the ups and downs of life via the over and under movements of weaving helps the body to incorporate individual story more fully and organically.

Important: This class is for people aged 60+, with some exceptions. If you are younger than that but would like to register, please reach out to fiber@shelburnecraftscool.org.

*** You are not registered for the class until you receive a confirmation email from The Shelburne Craft School indicating that you are enrolled.

*** If you must miss one or both of the first two classes, please wait to register for another offering in the program.

Teacher

Bradie Hansen is a fiber crafter, artist, author and psychologist. She was raised in northern New Jersey and Southwest Florida, and came to Vermont in 1996 to go to graduate school at St. Michael’s College. Vermont became her home after that. Always having some knitting project going, in 2011/2012, she started crocheting, then spinning wool, and then weaving. She’s taught fiber art classes at the Shelburne Community School and is passionate about making fiber art accessible to all people. She is excited to work with students on all things wild and wooly and textured on handlooms, rigid heddle looms, circular looms and anything else that provides support to a warp. A student of Lausanne Allen’s, Bradie loves floor loom weaving, too, and will be around to help students with their projects. Bradie’s current work is both on her floor loom and on “found” looms, like those made out of driftwood and one made out of a wooden door pane. Bridging her loves of psychology and handcrafting, Bradie is compiling a series of tapestry weavings and other handwork pictures that will become a shawl depicting “golden moments” in her life, a project part of her Weaving a Life © journey. She is also the co-author of The Long Grief Journey which is about long-term and unresolved grief.

Fiber 400: Weaving Your Story

Fall 2024

Introduction

Materials

Open Studio Information

Teacher

Bradie Hansen

Basics

Who

When

Where

What