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Today we visited a velvet workshop and school in Florence. The looms were awesome and too big to grasp for me to photo just yet.
We’ll see more velvet looms as we travel around. Besides seeing velvet being woven on huge Jacquard looms, we saw old examples from their archive–and we got a serious lesson in analyzing and some drafting these complex fabrics.
After the tour, 4 of us will be taking a 3-day workshop at the school. We’ll punch the cards and weave a variety of velvets ourselves– with very knowledgeable teachers who are English speakers.
I look forward to coming back and digging deeper into learning about how the gorgeous velvets are woven.
They provided each of us with a study guide for the analysis of 4 different types of velvet. It was a challenge to wrap my head around their way of drafting besides the complicated weaves. The photo of the study guide gives the official name of this world famous organization.
Your pics are beautiful . Glad you are having such a great time
Thank you for such beautiful photos and interesting commentary, Peggy. I haven’t been on Facebook much in the past week, so I’m catching up with you. Enjoy your three day workshop!
Continue your wonderful time and try not to think of us in the trenches! You don’t want to know what is going on here. Andrew and Jane are helping. Jane is back full force and she and I are going to do the tray beat. Trust us. Love, Elizabeth