Description
Date: June 1st – 2nd, 2024. Class starts at 9am on the 1st, and finishes 5pm on the 2nd.
Instructor: Jenna Bradford & Jeff Wagner
Topics: The weekend is divided into 4 half-day blocks. The classes are meant to be an introduction to a broad enough range of topics that you can leave ready to experiment with your own fiber art projects!
- Saturday morning, 9-12: Carding, spinning, and processing wool with Jenna: Learn how to take raw wool, process it and spin it. This includes: washing the wool, carding it (by hand or with a drum carder), and spinning it using a drop spindle or spinning wheel.
Students will gain knowledge about wool processing and have hands-on experience carding and spinning. - Saturday afternoon, 1:30-5: Introduction to backstrap weaving with Jeff: Warp-faced backstrap loom weaving, including history, loom setup, pattern design, and the fundamentals of weaving patterns.
- Sunday morning, 9-12: Introduction to wet felting with Jenna: Using processed wool from our first lesson, we will learn the basics of wet felting. Students will make a small felted bag.
- Sunday afternoon, 1:30-5: Eco printing & natural dyes with Jenna: Using locally available plants we will learn the basics of natural dying and leaf printing, including mordanting, making a dye bath, dying, and printing. Students will create a leaf-printed silk scarf and/or dyed silk scarf.
Students will make a small strap or bracelet, with the option to take the weaving home to continue weaving. For students who spun very thin threads in the morning, they have the option to use their thread as the weft for their weaving.
Location: Paonia, Colorado (Groundwork Farm — See map).
Lodging: A riverside campsite is included for those who are camping out for the weekend. You are welcome to arrive and camp Friday night.
Meals: Meals are provided during the weekend, with organic ingredients from our educational farm.
Level: Beginner (No experience required)
Meet The Instructors
Jenna Bradford
Jenna grew up in the Sacramento River delta in California, swimming, climbing trees, searching for animals along the water’s edge, studying their ways, and always looking for excuses to be outside. She received her B.A. in Environmental Studies and Bioethics from Loyola University in Chicago. Before becoming a teacher, Jenna worked on farms in Colorado, designed and sewed clothing, and studyied plants through an herbalism apprenticeship with Wildroot Botanicals and an ethnobotany immersion with Raven’s Roots Naturalist School. Jenna taught 5th and 6th grade at Paonia’s North Fork School of Integrated Studies. She is excited to continue with some of her current students on this adventure. Jenna loves teaching because she loves learning and loves to share that enthusiasm with others.
Jeff Wagner
After a university education didn’t provide sufficient answers, Jeff began seeking answers to the big questions that weren’t answered by academia: how we might reimagine U.S. society in the age of climate change, and what it means to be a responsible human in an unraveling world. For over a decade, Jeff sought answers outside the mainstream: living at wolf sanctuary in the Colorado mountains, leading NOLS expeditions across North America, and facilitating cross-cultural semesters in the Andes, the Amazon, the Himalaya, and the great Mekong River Basin. Jeff’s biggest focus has been teaching to the cultural roots of environmental issues, and helping students both experience and examine different ways of life that can be applied as cultural activism at home in North America. As a person dedicated to questioning the mindsets stemming from settler-colonialism, Jeff finds inspiration in the communities working to maintain and strengthen relationships with the natural world and with the sources of food, water, clothing, shelter, and meaning. Jeff likes walking slowly, weaving fabric and baskets, and growing beautiful varieties of heirloom seeds. Jeff founded Groundwork to help people pursue the goal of becoming ancestors that their descendants will be proud to tell stories about. Jeff is a certified Wilderness First Responder.
