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© HGWSD January 2012

Registered Charity Number: SC040388

Exhibition Guidelines

Just a few rules:

• Everything submitted for the exhibition must include at least one of our core crafts of weaving, spinning and dyeing
• Articles must not have be exhibited in a previous HGWSD exhibition
• If you couldn’t resist using / wearing it, make sure it looks as good as new when you submit it!
• Ready-designed kits are a definite no-no!

Techniques

• Weaving: tapestry, loom, rug, peg-loom, inkle, with yarns of all sorts, including re-cycled materials
• Spinning: from fine to chunky; plain and fancy; alpaca, bamboo, cotton.......wool...yak.   Submit as a display of skeins or balls of yarn, or use to knit, weave, embroider etc.
• Dyeing: natural and synthetic; muted and bright; yarns before and after spinning; silks for embroidery; material; fibres for felting or paper making; materials for basketry.....
• Felting: only if you have hand dyed the fibres (at the request of the Felters Guild)
• Knitting (hand or machine) with handspun yarns
• Crochet with handspun yarns
• Braiding: Kumihimo, perhaps with beads, sequins, feathers...
• Embroidery: using hand spun or hand dyed yarns of all types
• Basketry: from natural materials; hand dyed if you wish
• Paper making from hand dyed fibres

Planning and design

Designing something for yourself can seem scary, but is really no more so than planning a journey and problem solving along the way:  Where are we now?   Where are we going?  How are we going to get there?

In designing a craft project you could:

• start with an idea then work out what kind of yarn you need to spin, or how you need to thread your loom, or what colours you need to dye etc
• start with a wonderful yarn or fibre as your inspiration and think about what you could make to show it off best
• start with a traditional pattern and give it a new twist with unexpected colours, style, yarns

There is no one way to do it, but here are a few pointers that might help:

• Start with something simple
• Work things out on paper first – sketch, measure, calculate
• Make samples to test out your tension, pattern, colour combinations etc
• Be generous when working out how much yarn etc you need
• Be ready to adapt if it doesn’t work out exactly as planned – e.g. if it doesn’t work as a cushion, how about a bag, or part of a patchwork rug – this is how new discoveries are made!
• Be confident!