Veronique Perrot

Guest of Elisabeth Hill

156 Elmer Road
Conway, MA 01341
(413) 250-1275
-

I first wove in my mid-teens when I built a four-shaft floor loom out of scrap wood from plans I came across. The loom had a direct tie-up and a sinking shed (I used big rubber bands to hold the shafts), didn’t have a beater or reed, and I had no idea about how to wind a warp or dress the loom. I did manage to weave a few scarves on it, one of them in 2/2 twill—I got the sett right, somehow. The loom went back to the wood pile, and I was loom-less for a good 35 years. I did knit a lot during that time, and never lost interest in textiles at large, accumulating a sizable library on basketry, braiding, weaving, spinning, dyeing and, of course, knitting.
On a whim, in Spring 2019, I looked to buy a second-hand loom and lucked into Nestor, a 40” eight-shaft Macomber. I fumbled my way with Nestor until I took a weaving class with Elisabeth Hill at the John C. Campbell Folk School in early 2020. Then COVID hit, and I was stuck at home with a loom I knew how to dress and a stash of yarn!
Elisabeth and I started collaborating in 2021, meeting regularly, mostly over Zoom, to discuss weaving, colors, structures, fibers, patterns, etc.
I weave mostly functional textiles (kitchen towels, scarves, blankets, etc.), and mostly with cotton, cottolin and linen, with occasional forays into purely decorative wall hangings, and wool. I delight in playing with colors, designing each warp as a color playground and each piece on that warp as its own color experiment.

Weaving has become my main activity and my third career (after being a research scientist and a high school teacher). Encouraged by Elisabeth Hill, I started writing weaving patterns (so far, 7 patterns available on Etsy in Elisabeth’s shop (www.etsy.com/shop/plainweave), 2 patterns published in Handwoven magazine). I also started teaching a weaving class at the Folk School (Flex your color muscle, September 2023 and 2024). I got two wall hangings selected in the 2023 juried exhibit “Transformation” organized by my home guild, the Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild.