North Pennine Textile Group

 In a nod to the season, there were gingerbread to decorate, and eat, made using an 1868 recipe. Returning to the textile theme, gingerbread families were made by needle felting. At the end of the session, participants took away fleece - Teeswater, swaledale, texel and/ or northern mule - to be cleaned reading for processing next session.

Another session where we worked with our organic calico, some of us adapted and augmented our mine-dyed pieces while others worked on fresh material with beeswax...  or by folding and tying, before dyeing.  We talked about the miner's shirt project, and whether to work collaboratively on a single shirt or individually, and agreed to do a bit of both. People donated pieces of their fabric to make one shirt, and some of us even got round to cutting out collars.

In June 2025, Jenny Brook led a series of workshops entitled 'Explore textiles and heritage,’ funded by the North Pennines National Landscape's Land of Lead and Silver project. In October the pieces created by the group were displayed at Bowlees Visitor Centre.

On a drizzly Sunday morning, the LoLasses worked outside to unwrap their material mine parcels. After washing and rinsing, they were hung up to dry.  And then we got on with more mark making on fresh pieces of organic calico ...

Following on from our visit to Nenthead mines last month, in our third session we focused on weaving interpretations of the geological strata we saw below ground and the rock formations/ landscape above.  Small slate looms were used for the purpose, warped with cotton or herdwick yarn, and then a selection of wools and threads was used to create fabric pictures. Some of the pieces were later exhibited at Nenthead Mines art exhibition, funded by the NPNL Land of Lead and Silver Community Grant Fund, over the weekend of 5th and 6th October. 

While some of us enjoyed the tour underground, others stayed above, looking at the mine's surface remains: We looked at the scenery and geology... climbed over rocks..... ... looked at lichen... ... and found Hayley's fossil stone... Back inside the barracks building were rock samples to also fuel our ideas for next month's weaving project: Thanks to Lydia and Sian for the adventurous climbing, and Helen and Sian for the photos.