THE TREETOPS STUDIOS - SAANICHTON
Fabric Arts at The Treetops Studios
Hi! I'm Elaine. Welcome to the Fabric Arts areas at the Treetops Studios. If you came in with the main group, you will have guessed that the 'older' gentleman you met is my husband John.
We moved here in 1994. John's father had died that spring. Rather than move his invalid mother to the Ottawa, Ontario, area we decided to retire and move to the coast ourselves. We knew the house well and enjoyed the 'village' environment of Saanichton. John's mother, like her mother before her, had been a part-time professional needlewoman. It took a while to master her Janome 6000 but the rest of the equipment and 'stash' fitted easily with the traditional sewing, knitting, crocheting and quilting skills that I have practiced since childhood. The only general purpose machine that we have added is a four-colour serger.
This portion of our 'studio program' evolved out of the reasons for our move to Vancouver Island. While John's Mom lived we took turns walking over to the Saanich Peninsula Hospital twice a day to visit and help with her feeding. Over the previous half dozen years Parkinson's Disease had slowly destroyed her muscular coordination. By the time she died later that fall John and I had both gotten used to the routine of helping around SPH. After the New Year we both joined the SPH Volunteers organization. I joined the Auxiliary as well. That, in turn, led to a lot of knitting and sewing for the long term care residents and for the fund-raising activities of the Auxiliary. And that, with a little prompting from my sister and her machine knitting friends, 'The VIP'ers' in Ottawa, got me into machine knitting. Top
The Fabric Arts work areas take up by far the greatest portion of our studio space. The spare bedroom on the upper, or street level, floor became a dedicated sewing room within the first year. The 14 by 16 foot family room on the lower level has become the knitting room. That room presented some challenges. We eventually modified the two outside walls to quadruple the amount of natural light.
For this room, John built a 6-foot square work top for me. It mounts the three knitting machines that are my regular workhorses: two at the 4.5mm 'standard' gauge; a Brother 970 electronic and a Brother 894 card reader, and a 9.0mm gauge Brother 260 - my 'Bulky Buddy'. All three machines have their own ribbers and specialty knitting accessories. Both of these standard gauge machines have 'garter carriages', powered carriages that creep back and forth along the machine bed to knit relatively simple patterns. The Brother 970 electronic machine can reproduce studio designed patterns via a link to a dedicated personal computer which is, in turn, connected to John's graphic design workstation through the studio LAN. I also keep a third standard gauge machine and ribber, a Brother 840-850 combination, as a 'travel set', packed and ready for shows, demonstrations and teaching. Top
A large fabric arts studio demands lots of storage and overflow work space. Material, equipment and yarn storage - with the natural fibres in moth and damp proof cedar lined cupboards - take up over 200 square feet of floor area, floor to ceiling in some places. One of the three original bedrooms on the lower floor has been converted into yarn storage. (One was always a wood and metal workshop. And one has been preserved for guests and family visitors.) When we are in full production, before the spring and fall shows, almost any large flat surface in the house is liable to be pressed, literally, into service for the assembly and blocking of garments: the beds in the spare room, the dining room table, the carpeted floor in the living room, .... Top
Contact Us
Elaine Dendy e-laine@shaw.ca
John Oliver Dendy dendy@islandnet.com
URL: http://www.treetops-studios.com/index.htm
(unless otherwise stated in the page source code):
Text and Photography - © 2001-7 John Oliver Dendy
Design and Art - © 2001-7 John & Elaine Dendy
Web Layout - © 2001-7 John Oliver Dendy
Revised 22 June, 2007