Spanish fashion students at the University of Vigo get a taste of loom weaving with weaver and designer Anna Champeney

A super-intensive 13 hour course with professional designer-weaver Anna Champeney gave fashion students at the University of Vigo a taste of what it is like to weave fabric by hand.

The workshop included Powerpoint talks about the elements of designing loom-woven textiles and an introduction to the work of leading international designer-weavers such as Lotte Dalgaard, Eleanor Pritchard, Margot Selby and Wallace & Sewell, amongst many others.

Students were able to weave complex double weave fabric as well as traditional Spanish loop-pile on pre-prepared 8-shaft Louet table looms as well as discover weave techniques on small fringe-looms used traditionally in Galicia, in north-West Spain, to make the traditional fringes of hand-woven coverlets.

The challenging theoretical element of the course included teaching students about the graphic representation of weave structures and a challenge to translate double weave onto the looms.