Starting March 13th, Caroline joined an online 3D Weaving Workshop. That morning she joined a Zoom meeting hosted by Sally Eyring from Boston, Massachusetts, and for 3 weeks on Saturdays, she was busy for a full 7 hours. Now, I wasn’t around for these “pandemic-safe” workshop days as I headed over to my favorite coffee shop for my very own writing sessions (often gab-fests, to be honest) allowing Caroline to participate uninterrupted by a looming husband (hope you enjoyed the dad-humor pun).

This particular process of 3D weaving is a technique developed by Sally Eyring, the instructor, and required some very special tools to make this happen. Some were supplied, such as bungee cords and mitten clips, others Caroline had to find, such as empty gallon water bottles and thread weights. It turns out that having a week between classes was ideal because it allowed Caroline to become much more familiar with the processes instead of the more typical 2.5-day workshop where participants cram everything in between Friday and Sunday afternoon.

The workshop attendees got to choose their own projects. Caroline picked the “bolster pillow.” She wove a sample, trying out different things, then cut it off the loom to see how it was working and to decide on which particular patterns were her favorites. Once that’s done she’ll continue by weaving the actual bolster pillow cover. By the way, weaving samples is typical as it allows the weaver to experiment with different parameters before proceeding with “the real thing.” After the final product has been made it seems likely that Caroline won’t be returning to this technique, but she enjoyed the opportunity to learn something new while discovering that online weaving workshops are viable alternatives to meeting in person.