It seems I might have a bag problem, as in too many. After years of collecting them I have now turned my attention to making them, and what fun that has been!
I recently came across a poem by Brian Bilston about someone who has a lot of bags. Naturally I thought he must be writing about a weaver. Somehow I thought it was only we weavers/spinners/knitters who can never resist the opportunity for yet another tote bag (okay, maybe also quilters). I was just about to write a comment on his poem when I saw that someone had already posted this:” I think you’ve been in my house!” There was no indication that she is a weaver/spinner/knitter, so maybe the predilection for tote collecting goes farther afield.
If you’ve never read Brian Bilston’s poetry before, you can find his poetry at https://brianbilston.com/ here. Or you can look for his books.
Bags
you have bags of bags
collecting bags with nothing in them except bags, inside of which are other bags, full of bags
you have enough bags for life for a hundred lifetimes– if there was a prize for the total number of tote bags you would totes have it in the bag
don’t know why you need so many bags when all you ever put in them are other bags — Brian Bilston
A couple of years ago, after I took a sakiori class with Janny Simpson, I continued to weave off my fabric. I used it as supplemental fabric on a denim ground to make a tote bag. I am smitten with it still, in spite of its lack of sewing skills.
I’ve bought plenty of tote bags over the years from places I love, like the Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, a festival in Horta in the Açores, totebags from every weaving conference I’ve ever attended….the list goes on and on. Here’s the tote I bought in Nijar, Spain, in April after wishing I had bought it the year before, when I first saw it. I had to buy two so I could share the wonder with a friend.
Over the summer I used this tote bag from Spain to make another attempt at sewing one myself, with fabric I got in Sardinia in May. Do you remember how I asked a restaurant and vineyard owner to sell me this table runner right off one of the tables in his restaurant?
My sewing construction for this bag was much better. It helps to have a good tote bag as an example, along with help from my sewing friend Emily, and all the YouTube videos available. In these digital times there is always a solution to finding information. I love carrying this bag. Now that I’m back in Bosa (Sardinia) I have bought more of this fabric to share with friends. And of course I stopped by the restaurant to show the owner how I used his table runner.
And since I love to see what other weavers make wherever I travel, I was thrilled to find women here in Bosa who also sew with these fabrics, I’ve bought three more bags, but only two of them are mine! I just got the two that are shown together hanging on a door knob recently. All of these were made by a local woman, Paola Porcu, who sews lots of interesting items out of these traditional fabrics. The two I bought are lined with handwoven fabric that looks like Swedish canvas lace (that I just finished weaving myself in 40/2 linen as shawls!). That fabric was woven by Paola’s mother. What a treasure! How could I resist, and how could I just choose one of these stunning bags. They are HUGE, as you can tell in the top photo. I plan to showcase lots of yarns in these bags, and showcase the bags themselves by having them out for viewing near my favorite chair for knitting.
Before we headed home last June we stopped in Alghero, a little further up the western coast of Sardinia from Bosa. I found this man’s weaving studio, where he also makes tote bags, among other things.
Not all sewing projects turn out well on the first attempt. This tote bag is waiting at home for my return when I will try to figure out what on earth went wrong!! It’s made with fabric I love–made on a day spent with my good friend Jody who does wonderful work with botanical print dyeing. She guided me through this attempt, and I have a lovely raw silk scarf now. But I’m actually more intrigued with the cotton flannel fabric we used for an iron blanket on our scarves. I decided to use the cotton flannel botanical print for a hand bag. The sewing went well, using the pattern “Mini Poppins” by Aunties Two, but when I finished the bag by inserting metal stays to shape the bag something went terribly wrong. I hope I can fix whatever is wrong. It would be a wonderful bag to carry in fall and winter.
Tote bags are SO useful, and also beautiful. They hold memories of events attended, travels, and the gathering of so many rich experiences. The materials for making them provide a grounding time of creating and sewing the bag. How can I possibly resist them? Yet the poet Brian Bilson is also correct that many of my tote bags hang on hooks and are filled to the brim with other tote bags.
Do you ever get the sense that you cannot work fast enough? That ideas are flowing but your hands cannot keep up with the ideas? Frankly, I always feel this way, and it’s no fun. This summer seemed filled with obligations (fun) and too many doctor appointments and medical tests (no fun). At some point I got quite annoyed with all the time I was missing from creating.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve felt better about what I’ve managed to accomplish over the past almost-three months. I know it’s not a good attitude to have– judging myself on output, but it does seem like a good attitude to be happy with the things I’ve tried that have stretched my skills. I have wanted to be a better ‘sewist’ for years. You can’t get better at anything without putting in the time to practice. With so many weaving projects calling to me, sweaters to knit. braids to make to enhance other projects, it’s really hard to make to time to sew. But I did it, and the skills were hard to learn. Really, I haven’t mastered them yet, but I also did manage to make some things that are moderately successful. Just don’t look too closely!
I made two fitted shirts! The first was a pattern from Modern Sewing Company. I bought the workshop rather than just the pattern to make a “Classic Shirt.” The workshop included several videos, and learning to add a bust dart to a plain front was the best instruction I’ve ever had on this skill. I’ve tried a few in the past, but since this was a video I just watched/paused/executed over and over. The blouse fits well. The challenges, after the darts, were the collar stand, the cuff plackets, and the cuffs. All done pretty well–not perfect.
Then I made a second shirt. This time no cuffs and no collar stand. It did have front darts, and two small darts in the back of the neck. What drew me to make this pattern was the Peter Pan collar. I just love them!–there is something so feminine and innocently sweet about them. The pattern is from Wardrobe by Me. The downside was that all the inside seams are serged rather than beautifully finished with French seams as the previous shirt was. Oh well. I love the shirt and the fabric I finally used that I bought years ago in a wonderful French fabric shop in Fort de France, Martinique. In both cases it is kind of a downer to have to print so many pages of pattern pieces and tape them together. That process takes a full day for me.
Then I also tried my hand at this pattern for a tunic or dress. It’s called the “Sunset Shift,” by Studio M. I saw this made up in this very fabric at a quilt shop near me, and I thought it was adorable!–summery and happy. That is not at all how I feel wearing it. It probably will never leave the house. Maybe I should have made it a bit longer? At any rate, it was a good experience to once again make something that fits, even though I don’t care for how I look in it! That is three successful sewing projects in a row, which has never happened for me before.
I have also had a weaving project going this summer. I saw it last winter on Jane Stafford’s website, and it’s called “linen Swedish canvas weave shawl.” It uses 40/2 linen which I ordered as a kit for this project. I even ordered the color that the shawl is shown in on the website–lavender. It was an easy project to warp and dress the loom and to weave! Being me, I could not fathom making the second shawl exactly like the first. I went diving into my linen stash and found a cone of blended silk and linen in a handpainted colorway of blue and natural. This yarn has slubs in it, likely from where the silk did not completely blend with the linen. It made a very different looking shawl, and is suprisingly stiffer than the all linen shawl. I love them both. I will keep one and gift the other–but which one will I keep??
And then there is knitting, and there are handbags! I’ve got two sweaters going at the moment. Neither is finished although one is getting close. It’s Kate Davies’ “Yorlin” cardigan. I think I’ll be wearing it as soon as the weather changes at home in New England. I am currently working on it in Sardinia, where Bob and I have returned to Pandora to sail for late summer and early fall. The other sweater came as an impulse purchase when I visited Harrisville Designs in mid-August. It’s called the Carlina pullover and it’s made with two colors of Harrisville Shetland. We had a tour of the spinning facility, a lovely lunch across the street at the general store, and a fun time shopping at Harrisville Designs. “We” are a tapestry group I am involved with, and we had a weaving retreat together and added the trip to Harrisville as part of our retreat. It was a marvelous week, and I have some new ideas about tapestry weaving. There is a stunning tapestry by James Kohler that hangs in the shop at HD. It’s been so long since I’ve been there I hadn’t seen this work before.
I have a bit to say about making (and loving) handbags and totebags, which i’ll save for another post! I am finishing this post from Sardinia, although I started it at home before I left. As you might imagine, if I’m traveling again it means I’m gathering again, both material goods and ideas. Hopefully my new treasures will become projects that will bring me a lot of enjoyment. I’ll stop here with a photo of the wonderful Sardinian fabrics that are always at the Tuesday Market in Bosa.
Recently I was asked to write something about the weaving museum and workshop in Perugia that I have now visited twice. It needed to be just enough info and images to be made into a poster. Here it is, mostly because I want to remember what I wrote.
A most unusual tradition in Perugia during the Middle Ages is that women did the professional weaving that was mostly done by men during that time in Europe. The women wove altar cloths for churches throughout Italy and northern Europe, without male dominated guilds to dictate their work. Starting in the 12th c. these women designed elaborate woven patterns that they picked by hand as well as simpler patterns that could be woven on their rudimentary harness looms.
While very few of the actual textiles from this period have survived, they are well documented in the paintings by famous artists of the period, such as Giotto, Ghirlandaio, and da Vinci. Over time, due to wars and economic situations, this tradition became less and less prominent. By the 16th c. very few weavers were making these textiles. Weaving survived in the homes of women in hill country of Umbria, outside Perugia.
In the early 20th c. a wealthy Perugian woman, Giuditta Brozzetti, decided to start a business rekindling this tradition. She collected 18th and 19th c. manual Jacquard looms, which could be “programmed” to weave quite complex patterns. She gathered information about the traditional patterns that the women of the Middle Ages had woven. She hired local women who had a background in these traditional patterns and taught them how to use the more modern looms. Four generations later, her great granddaughter, Marta Cucchia, is continuing this business. Marta is the first of the women in this family to be a weaver herself. She understands the various jacquard looms, which are all quite different and challenging to use. She has studied the medieval patterns and translated them to the punch cards that are used by jacquard looms.
Her most challenging study was to decipher the patterns that Leonardo da Vince depicted in his fresco “The Last Supper.” That tablecloth is quite elaborate; even the white background fabric is heavily patterned. Marta has also documented many fabrics depicted by other artists who painted images of the Madonna and Child. The infant Jesus was often shown wrapped in a traditional Perugian woven textile.
In 1995 Marta moved the workshop/museum to a 12th c church outside the medieval walls of Perugia. This building was the first church built for St. Francis of Assissi. Over the years other, larger churches were built in St. Francis’ honor, including the enormous cathedral in nearby Orvieto. The little chapel in Perugia was sold to the Benedictines early in its history and used as a convent. During the 19th c it was used briefly as a spinning mill. It is a glorious environment to house the antique “modern” looms that now weave the traditional fabrics of Perugia.
The motto for the city of Pergia is “Per Aspera ad Astra,” literally “from hope to the stars.” Perugia suffered many setbacks during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and this motto demonstrates the Perugians’ endurance and creativity. More info check out the website.
Over the 10+ years that Bob has sailed from Connecticut to Antigua in November, song birds have found their way onboard to rest during their long migration south. These are always single birds so we imagine that they are individuals who have fallen behind the flock. It has never ended well. Most of them die onboard within 24 hours of arriving. It’s very sad, although it is part of nature. Maybe these are all older birds, but it always hurts to watch this happen. Maybe we should take comfort in the fact that each of these birds had a little rest and perhaps died peacefully. I know I am putting a lot of human emotions on birds. Nature is not sentimental.
It is now Memorial Day in the US, and over the weekend Bob and I sailed 200 miles from Menorca in the Balearic Islands to Sardinia. We arrived in a small cut on the western coastline of Sardinia yesterday, Sunday, after about 40 hours of motoring, sailing, and mostly motor-sailing. On Saturday around midday a little song bird arrived in our cockpit. I immediately had the same old dire emotions of this little bird being exhausted and dehydrated, and likely close to death. He flitted about for some time. Then he left us.
We noticed that he perched most comfortably on my little vase of mostly dead flowers. I felt that he knew there was water in the vase, but it was too deep and narrow for him to get to the water. Bob filled a lid from one of our plastic storage containers with water and set it next to the vase, but our little visitor left before finding it. During this visit he landed on top of Bob’s head!–he moved before I got my phone ready. And he landed on my hand twice, which is at the end of the video above.
About an hour later he returned. He found the water and drank for a while. He seemed to understand (again, anthropomorphising on my part) that we were not too threatening. He flitted about, and we heard one lovely note of his song. We could not identify him at this point because we were very far offshore, so cellular data and our starlink connection were not operable.
Look at his beautiful wings spread for flying! On this visit he found the water which made me ridiculously happy. He explored the front of our cockpit on this visit, but left again within a few minutes. I thought about him all night and on Sunday morning. To our surprise he came back about midday on Sunday. Song birds are not water birds, so he could not have spent the night on the water. On his first visit we were about equal distance from both Menorca and Sardinia, roughly 100 miles to reach either one. I have no idea how far a tiny song bird can travel, and I mostly think they travel over land if possible so they have options for stopping. Yet he arrived again on Sunday morning, and at that point we were abut 40 miles from Sardinia. It gave me great hope that he would make it back to land. Where on earth did he spend the night??
Once we got back in cellular/starlink territory I searched online for what kind of bird he is. He was the color and size of our eastern gold finches in winter–a dull olive. He had black and white bands around his eyes. According to google he is a Mediterranean warbler, possibly an olive Sardinian warbler. He does have a beautiful song, and I felt lucky to hear one note of that song while he was onboard.
Here are some still photos I took of him.
We are now in a tiny cut on the western side of Sardinia, called Cala E Moro just moments north of Bosa. We anchored here in order to delay our arrival at a marina in Bosa since we were exhausted by the time we got here and figured there would be no dock hands available on a Sunday evening. This spot is incredibly dramatic. Parts of the rock outcrops look more like a lunar landscape than earth. The rocks closer to the water are blue/green which might mean there is copper in the rocks. I have always thought that copper deposits are underground and have to be mined. I don’t know that I’m right of course, but these lower rock formations are quite an odd color.
We enjoyed a lovely sunset here, and I felt somewhat confident that our little visitor is alive and well somewhere on Sardinia!
In October of 2024, I visited Perugia, Italy, for the first time as part of a workshop in Umbria on natural dyeing and using the wool to weave tapestry. I only had part of a day there, but it was one of the best days of that trip. You can read about it here, or maybe just look at the photos of this incredible place. Almost a year later I learned that through VAWAA you can book a week long workshop at Giuditta Brozzetti. A weaving acquaintance found the opportunity, and if she got three others to join her the cost for each of us would be reduced. I wasn’t sure where I’d be during the 3rd week of April this year, but I was certain I was going to get to Perugia for this workshop. As it turned out, Bob and I were in Almerimar, Spain, facing a record number of repairs needed on our sailboat Pandora. But I took a flight from Alicante, Spain, to Rome, and met my three weaving cohorts the following morning. We took a train to Perugia and saw a great deal of the countryside. It was a magical trip from the start.
We arrived on Saturday evening and spent Sunday touring the historic area of the city. Our lodging was not as charming as described on the website, and definitely ODD. It took us two hours to check with the owner’s ‘contactless check-in.’ I don’t recommend this. To get into the accommodation we had to go through a locked gate, then up two long fights of stone steps from the Middle Ages to a locked door. More time corresponding with the owner to get through that locked door, then another flight of modern stairs to the first room. My room required yet another flight of stairs. The rooms were not quite as advertised, but they had some antique charm and we made the best of it.
We were staying in a medieval part of the town which was very scenic. This is right outside the gate to the building where our rooms were.
At the bottom of this narrow street we turned into the large Piazza IV Novembre. It was great location for seeing much of historic Perugia.
The building behind the fountain is the National Gallery of Art that is housed in a medieval castle. The collection is focused on medieval religious art, with a wing devoted to Giotti and his students, and the effect they all had on portraying figures more realistically and emotionally. A hightlight for me was a small collection of highly figured woven altar cloths that Perugian women were so famous for making during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
These beautiful altar cloths were woven on floor looms where the ornate designs had to be picked by hand. Looms that could weave these designs had not yet been developed, so all this work was done painstakingly by hand. The tradition in the Middle Ages was to make the warp out local white linen, also spun by hand in this period, and to use very precious cotton from Egypt, dyed locally with idigo, for the patterned weft designs.
These woven fabrics are from the 13th c. so they are around 700 years old and still look so beautiful. You cannot tell how highly figured the white background cloth is. It is woven in a series of different diamonds, some created with lace weaves, and some with twills.
As I mentioned in the post from 2024, Leoanardo da Vinci used these cloths for inspiration in painting his fresco of the Last Supper. The current owner of the Giuditta Brozzetti workshop, Marta Cucchio, studied high resolution images of the fresco to recreate these elaborate designs for weaving on 18th and 19th c. manual jacquard looms. Four generations of Brozzetti women have worked to keep this Perugian weaving tradition alive. Marta is the first in the family to weave hersefl; her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother ran the business rather than doing any of the weaving. In the Middle Ages and early Renaissance these cloths were highly valued and commissioned for churches all over Italy and throughout Europe, which is why Marta’s family wanted to see this tradition continue on modern looms. While most of these cloths are no longer extant, many of the painters from this time period have preserved them in religious paintings, such as da Vinci’s fresco. If you look closely at the enlarged image of the fresco, you can see the patterns on the digital image and compare them to the modern tablecloth. Marta has studied these designs and recorded them for punch cards to be woven on jacquard looms. My cohorts and I dubbed the large diamond design “da Vinci’s diamonds,” and we gave the smaller designs names as well–“da Vinci’s small birds and flowers,” and “da Vinci’s DNA chain.” In this photo you can also see how highly figured the background cloth is.
Here is Marta and I, back in 2024, looking at a high resolution detail of the fresco, along with a photo of the entire fresco and part of the woven reproduction of the cloth. Can you tell I am awestruck?
All four of us were smitten with these historic designs and used them in our own work during the week. Our first exercise was to study a simple medieval design and draw it on graph paper as if we would translate it to the punch cards used on jacquard looms. It was an excellent exercise in understanding the jacquard loom. The penciled-in squares on the graph paper represent the weft threads, and the uncolored spaces are the warp tie-downs. I used this flower in one of the pieces I wove during the workshop.
Marta and her assistant Alessia worked with us throughout the week to hone our skills in using the jacquard looms. There is a lever above the beater that controls whether you are throwing a pick of background or a pattern pick, That is the first thing you set with each pass of weft. Then you depress the one treadle which is quite heavy since it is controlling the lift of many warp threads, sometimes thousands. Next you pull the cord for the fly shuttle, which was set for either background weft or pattern weft when you set the binary lever at the center of the loom above the beater. The rhythm is binary lever, depress treadle, pull the fly shuttle cord, release treadle, beat. Each of the looms is a different width and has its own quirks in operation. One thing that was standard is that we needed to depress the treadle somewhat gently, but to release the treadle aggressively and quickly. By the end of the week I was struggling to release the treadle quickly enough. You only use one leg for treadling, your right, and the treadle is rather high. By the end of the week I was struggling to lift my leg high enough to release the treadle quickly. Not being quick at this maneuver causes small weft skips that will have to be corrected. I’ll have a number of corrections to make!
It’s surprising and thrilling to be able to weave so much in so little time. Here is some of our work
This is my first finished piece. Beyond the cloth beam I had practiced half the diamond design and some of the flowers. I was particularly smitten with these oldest designs that have been handed down through artwork, so my first piece is “da Vinci diamonds” and the ” da Vinci little flowers.”
The second piece I wove is from the London Liberty period during the Arts and Crafts period. It’s pomegranates, and I blended three colors of reds for each repeat of the design–light reds first, then medium reds, and finally dark reds. I then repeated that sequence backwards for light, medium, dark, medium, light. Each pattern weft requires three threads of 4/68 cotton held together, so all of us enjoyed creating our own color blends. The bottom border is a chain and then small trees, and the top border is several repeats of the chain. Alessia said she’d like to weave my color combination herself! Maybe she says that to everyone… She recorded all our color choices, and we did as well, not that I may ever have the opportunity to use a jacquard loom in the future. I have grandiose plans to make this fabric into a handbag, like the one I bought when I visited here in 2024.
pomegranate design from the Arts and Crafts period in England, woven using a blend of reds.
I also wanted to weave fabric of the interesting background designs. I chose several colors of cream to weave against the cream warp, and then a combination of wheat colors for the middle section. I want to do a rolled hem on this piece and little picots of bullion stitch to turn this into a table runner. At the end of this I wove a short section of little trees to cut into book marks.
In the middle of using the jacquard looms, I tried the 4-shaft floor loom when I had to wait for the next available jacquard loom. These cloths were simple twill designs that look more complicated than they actually are. There are paintings that depict the Madonna and Child with the baby Jesus wrapped in these type of woven cloths. This painting is by Pinturicchio from 1496.
I was quite intrigued by what the Perugian women wove with simple, 4-shaft twill designs in the Middle Ages on counter balance looms. There are plenty of examples at Giuditta Brozzetti. I spent some time weaving a sample to take home with me. There is a possible tablecloth in my weaving future.
Here is our wonderful teacher Alessia Galassi showing us some of the woven goods at the workshop. She has a master’s degree in historic jacquard weaving, and did research on the mistakes in woven jacquard fabrics. You can find info about here here.
And here is Marta Cucchio whose family started this venture in 1921, and who has been running the business since the 1990s. She is an enthusiastic champion of preserving this Perugian tradition. Thank heaven. Giuditta Brozzetti Museo e Laboratorio. I took this photo because I’d like to make a vest like she’s wearing. I want to weave the fabric in a fine wool plain weave and knit the interesting collar.
In 1995 Marta bought a 13th c. chapel that had originally been the first church of St. Francis of Assissi. It was later sold to the Benedictines and used as a convent. Over its long history it has also been a spinning mill. It’s a stunning setting for the jacquard looms and the fabrics made here that are for sale.
I am particularly interested in this woven phrase which is Perugia’s motto: Per Aspera ad Astra. In Latin this literally means “Through hope to the stars.” Marta says it means something more like through life’s challenges hope brings us to the stars. I wanted to weave this as one of my projects, but that jacquard chain only fits on the largest loom, which students do not use. Alessia got out the graph of this design, suggesting that I might use it for embroidery. Good idea. On the image of the woven pillow the phrase is surrounded by griffons, which are the emblem of Perugia. A griffon has the head of an eagle and the body of a lion, which is symbolic of being able to fly to heaven to talk to God and to be powerful on earth.
My biggest thrill was buying a tote bag! Several months ago I had seen that Marta had designed and made a tote bag for one of the hauture Italian fashion houses for an opening event they held. I asked if she planned to make more, and she responded that she wasn’t sure when she’d have them. When I arrived at the workshop I didn’t see any, and I was too disappointed to ask about them. Then, on the last day of our class Marta arrived late because she driven somewhere to pick up the first six tote bags! I was very lucky to get the first pick since I had asked for one. It is a treasure, along with the handbag I bought when I was last here.
During our stay we managed to see and do some memorable things in Perugia. We had a number of dinners in medieval spaces that were nicely renovated for modern living, such as this restaurant in a nice corner with Chris (L) and Shari (R).
It was a lush time of year in Perugia, and we were lucky to only have a short shower one day during our visit. Here are Bev (L) an Shari (R) standing under a large wisteria vine.
The views from the medieval wall were impressive. What a beautiful city!
I had hoped to buy a piece of Deruta pottery during this visit, but Marta warned me that Perugia is not the place for that, allthough Deruta is from Umbria. My friends all bought Perugian chocolate, but I missed that opportunity–not sure why! We did find a mother/daughter enterprise who paint tiny spheres of pottery in a technique called “fuseruola.” They make exquisite jewelry and other things in this technique, which is an ancient art that was originally used to decorate the whorls of drop spindles. How could I NOT buy one of these? I chose earrings, but I was seriously tempted by a larger sphere painted with sea shells that could sit on a shelf on Pandora. I do regret not getting that. You can see their work online.
The entrance sign to Giuditta Brozzetti draped in yellow roses in April
“Per Aspera ad Astra!” I hope to have a Perugia 3.0 someday. I never realized how much I would enjoy weaving on these looms in spite of the physical challenges involved. Naturally, I wish I’d discovered this when I was younger, but I’ll take what I can get, and however long I left to weave, I hope it includes more time on a jacquard loom.
