Featured Class: Upcycling Sweater Yarn for Weaving

Pam James yarn1Looking for an almost endless supply of interesting yarns?    When you think about weaving with sweater yarn does that stuff your Grandma knit with come to mind? Think again! Thrift store sweater ravelings have yielded wonderful cottons, chenille, great tweedy warp yarns, slubby stuff, metallics, multi-color plys, variegated yarns, ribbon yarns, great novelty yarns and even silk. . . all at a fraction of the cost of retail. Spend a Saturday afternoon and see how it’s done – or undone!

In this class students will learn how to assess the suitability of a sweater as a yarn source, predict the kind of yarn a sweater will yield, retrieve yarn from recycled sweaters, and see how the resulting yarns performed as a woven yarn.

Pam James has been weaving for about 10 years. Pam was active in the Pikes Peak Weavers Guild in Colorado Springs before moving to Austin 2012. During her weaving career she has woven almost exclusively with reclaimed sweater yarns. She has also been active in WSSA, scheduling and curating gallery shows including one at the Austin Airport in 2014. In 2010, she won “Best Rigid Heddle Project” in the “Not just for Socks” weaving contest in Handwoven Magazine. In 2013, Pam led WSSA’s Study Group, You Wove with What?!

Pam is teaching ” Repurposing Sweater Yarns” twice — on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.