North Pennine Textile Group

A session full of laughter, smiles and invention, experimenting with rag rugging , using British herdwick and carpet wools of many colours. And a couple of weeks later...

We are almost at the midway point of the LoLasses project. Just like having a new baby, we've dropped off taking photographs of progress.  While dying yarn with walnut shells, this session also acted as a catch-up spinning and crochet one, as well as a review of what we've done and what else we'd like to do.  There was also an informal show and tell of what people have been up to outside the monthly meetings.  A couple of members have joined a local weaving course and shared their first pieces. Another member has used the wool dyed at previous sessions - onion and hibiscus - to crochet a delightful rabbit. With the advent of some warmer - albeit sadly brief - weather we have also begun the suint method of fleece cleaning. However, with the temperature in the North Pennines dropping back to normal, we expect this to take a while. Thanks to Helen and Sarah for the photos.

In February, for our 8th session, the group travelled to Langholm for Creation Mill 's Wool, Woven and Wild Festival where some of us undertook fleece processing workshops and all visited their scrap store. March saw us back in the studio and dyeing with onions skins and madder. And on 26th April we dyed with hibiscus and logwood. Only we were too busy learning how to crochet to take photos of our finished work, but we did take ones of the studio prep. 

Following fleece washing after the previous session, it was time to card and spin. Fellow LoLass Julie gave a demonstration of combing to remove short cuts from fleece before members carded fleece into rolags. Group members moved on to learning how to spin with drop spindles, starting to create their own yarn. At the end of the session more raw fleece was taken for washing and all the drop spindles went to different homes for the next few weeks to be practised with. 

 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.