Ikat Workshop, 10/25-10/27/2024. See details here.

Friendship Bag Workshop, date to be determined. If you want to participate in the Friendship Bag exchange, or just want to make a bag from a whole towel, please let Pat Bullen know by the end of March. We need to know how many are participating in the swap and how many just want to learn how to make the bag. We will set aside an afternoon when we have more than 2 hours at a location more convenient for hauling sewing machines around. See below for the reminder of what is needed to make the bag. Note that the instructions call for a 6 yard warp to make 2 bags. It has been pointed out to me that many towel kits and many towel instructions don’t require such long warps. If your material ends up narrower than 18″, you will need 2 yards after washing to create four 9×18″ rectangles and have enough left for woven 2 straps and a pocket. Ideally, your finished towel material should be 36×18″ AFTER washing in HOT water and drying in a HOT dryer to make sure it is a size that won’t change after sewing the bags. In my first Friendship Bag Project, one of the participants did wash and dry her towels — washed them in cold water and dried them briefly before hanging them to dry. She neglected to tell anyone she swapped rectangles with. I did not get her rectangles in the swap (we had 12 participants). The 4 who got her rectangles found out after one of the bags had a lunch leaking it. When it was washed, the rectangle did strange things with the interfacing. Lesson learned the hard way. These instructions also include woven straps. If you are using commercial webbing or straps or belts, you only need to warp enough to get 4 panels after washing/drying. If you don’t want to swap panels and you just want to make a bag from a single towel, it doesn’t matter what size it is. I have a wide variety of colors of webbing/straps — some cotton, some nylon,