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Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Historic Savage Mill Bicentennial, Part 1

Savage Mill celebrated its 200th anniversary in September of 2016. Visitors were treated to a custom Christmas ornament just for visiting the mill!

Free wooden Christmas tree ornament, very nice!

The mill began as a cotton factory in 1816, using the nearby Little and Middle Patuxent rivers for power. So the celebration featured cotton spinning and weaving demonstrations by the Weavers Guild of Greater Baltimore and Moon Spinners.

WGGB demonstration area

My daughter was completely fascinated by weaving and tried out various looms.

Weaving on a lap loom

Fancy works from the lap loom

Larger, fancier looms require footwork and a shuttle that goes back and forth. It looked like a lot of fun.

Big loom

My daughter started working on a bookmark using the simplest loom ever. This kept her busy for quite a while.

Micro-looming

Nearby, another weaver showed how she weaves very fancy patterns. She used a guide that tells her which way to weave her fabric. The trick is which of the vertical threads are on top of the horizontal thread and which are below. Having a little cheat sheet helps to remember which order is next.

A thin weave with a fancy pattern

The weavers recommended LapLoom as a a good, at-home, starter loom.

A recommended loom

More from the mill's celebration in the next post!

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