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. For sewing, quilting and machine embroidery I currently rely on a Husqvarna suite: the Huskylock serger and the DesignerSE sewing/embroidery machine.

The knitting 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.

It isn't obvious from the views in these images, but this is the biggest, and usually the brightest, work room at The Treetops Studios. We are down a full storey from street level so the door at the end leads us out on to a small patio when the weather is fine. This room is really the hub of our work. John built my knitting machine station. It can mount four machines but typically only three. It takes up most of the space. Our design reference library covers a wall at one end of the room. John has designed and built his eight-shed vertical tapestry loom up another wall space and a combination pressing/cutting table and media storage rack rolls in and out of a corner space.    Top