Guild Challenges

Step up to the Challenge

Overview

At the start of a year, the guild often poses a challenge to its members.  The challenge is open to all regardless of weaving proficiency.  It is a fun and creative way to learn something new and interact with other guild members.  At the end of the year, guild members meet to show – and sometimes exchange – their work.

Challenges

2024-2025: Weave with Wool

Your challenge for the 2024-2025 guild year is to use wool.  You may spin it, or weave it, or do both.  We’re also setting a challenge as a Guild to submit 50 items to next year’s Skein and Garment Competition at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival!

We’re designing the Guild challenge so that the categories and rules coincide with those of the competition. You can submit entries to the competition and then show them at our June 2025 show-and-tell! This challenge is not an exchange.

Your items can be 100% wool.  Or they can be wool mixed with another fiber but at least 50% wool.

You may weave anything with wool using any loom. You can weave a garment, a scarf, a shawl, some other wearable accessory, or another item like a pillow or a wall-hanging.   You can weave a blanket in any of various sizes.

If you choose to spin instead of weave, you can spin singles or plied yarn in thin, medium or thick.  You can process from raw wool, or you can use commercially prepared fiber to do your spinning.  You can spin a novelty yarn. Or you can challenge yourself and make a basket of yarn.

Just like the festival competition, this is a FLEXIBLE challenge, and anyone can submit multiple items. If you really like making one kind of item, for many categories you can enter two of them! Check the Competition website for full details and all the categories. Note that there’s extra credit (and prizes) if you use Maryland wool, or wool from animals on the Livestock Conservation list (Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em), or wool from the Fibershed.

Here’s the Sheep and Wool Festival Competition website where you’ll find full details and all the categories. As an added bonus, you can also submit the same items to the Howard County Fair.

As always should you need help, contact one another, ask questions at meetings, form a study group, show up for an upcoming Hangout on Big Bad Wool (watch for the announcement), and study up on any of these resources:

How to Weave with Wool: 10 tips to Set You Up for Success

Ask Madelyn: Weaving Lace with Wool

Weaving with Wonderful Wool

5 Tips for Weaving with Wool and 2 Free Projects for Rigid Heddle

2023-2024: Weave with Linen

Have you admired beautiful handwoven linen towels, napkins and tablecloths but are afraid to try your hand at linen weaving?  Now is your opportunity!  Join in for the 2023-2024 WGGB Guild Challenge.  To participate, you just need to weave a towel with linen or cottolin before the June 2024 guild meeting where everyone will show off their beautiful linen towels and participate in a towel exchange!  Approximate desired dimensions for the towels on the loom are 20” (width) by 30” (length).  

Watch out for a WGGB Weaving School class on weaving linen.  A few helpful resources include:

eBook: Best of Handwoven: Weaving with Linen

Book: Linen: From Flax Seed to Woven Cloth

Book: Linen: Hand Spinning and Weaving

Website with links to videos (free): Weaving with Linen

Website (free): All About Weaving with Linen

Online class: Weaving with Linen with Tom Knisely

2022-2023: 75th Anniversary Challenge

In 2023-2024, we’ll be celebrating our Guild’s 75th year – the diamond anniversary.  In anticipation of that momentous year, our Guild challenge will be to create a wearable item – scarf, shawl, top, anything to wear – that is reminiscent of diamonds.  Diamonds can be in the structure or pattern, you can add bling to your yarn choice, incorporate anything that evokes diamonds.  And remember – diamonds come in many colors!

2021-2022: The Mohair Challenge

Scared of mohair?  Don’t be!  Take this challenge (and the free yarn) and commit to weaving something out of mohair for the 2021-2022 WGGB Challenge. Mohair yarn is courtesy of the Helen Patton estate.

Check out this information for suggestions on how to use mohair in both the warp and the weft.  Scared of Mohair

2020-2021: The Window Swap

The pandemic forced us to hunker down and live within the same four walls for months on end. We needed a change of venue so it was time for a “window swap!”  We took photos looking out our windows. Or a photo of something in our homes – something on the wall that we’d been staring at all this time or an object we loved.
All participants then received an an image from someone else to use as inspiration for a weaving project.
There were no rules on how we got inspired.

• We could use the colors from the photo to determine yarn colors.
• We could pick out a shape in the photo and mimic it in the structure or design.
• We could grab a sense of texture from the image and incorporate that.
• The results were literal, or abstract, 3-D….or not.
• There were no rules.

At the June 2021 meeting, we shared our creations.

2018-2019: The Great Towel Exchange of 2019

Weavers generally love to make towels!  This challenge had no specific rules although there was an extra challenge to try using yarn from your stash or a structure you had not woven before.  Towels were exchanged at the June meeting.  Many also made an extra towel for the MAFA Conference 2019 towel exchange.

2017-2018: Bag Lady Exchange

Participants put at least 3 yarns – perhaps something they had not figured out how to use – in a paper bag along with some information about themselves.  Bags were exchanged (yarn sight-unseen!) and the weaver had to decide what to make with the yarn in the bag.  Final products were returned to the original owner of the yarn at the June meeting

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