In the autumn of 2002, Connie and Dan Westbrook purchased property on Jackson Harbor Road and a lovely old cottage, known to Islanders as the Johnny Young house. The following summer at the Art and Nature Center, they saw a weaving demonstration by Virginia Thomas. “I was mesmerized,” Connie recalls, “and knew that this is what I wanted to do.”
As a young child, Westbrook was taught sewing and remembers working with her mother on a counted cross stitch sampler. For many years Connie wove baskets, but said, “I was searching for something else to do, and when I found it – there was no looking back.”
After completing a beginning weaving course at Sievers School of Fiber Arts, Connie purchased a four-harness Sievers loom. “I gave myself three years to experiment and learn various techniques,” she said.
For weaving more complicated designs and for greater versatility, Westbrook needed an eight-harness loom. She purchased a Baby Wolf loom from Schacht Spindle Company in Boulder, Colo. Connie uses both looms regularly, depending upon the project requirements.
“I am a utility weaver,” she remarked. Limited only by the width of her looms, Westbrook creates beautiful textiles for the home – table runners, placemats, towels, and rugs.
“Color and texture excite me,” she said. “How colors interact and what happens when the fibers come together – that’s what motivates my weaving.” Connie uses cotton, alpaca, silk, new fibers such as Tencel (a biodegradable fiber made of wood pulp cellulose) and wool.
Westbrook combines her sewing and weaving skills to make women’s clothing. On the Island, she sells a selection of her work at Sievers School of Fiber Arts and the Red Cup.
She has two published articles in Handwoven, a resource magazine for weavers. The first article, “Serendipity Warps for Waffle-weave Towels,” discusses using leftover bits of fibers from various projects to weave colorful towels.
Inspired by the unique beauty of the beach stones at one of Connie’s favorite Island locations, Schoolhouse Beach, her second article, “Using Handwoven Projects as Springboards for Fabric Design,” came out in 2011.
“I designed a fabric in a deflected, double weave structure using a wool and silk yarn for the warp,” Westbrook reflected, “and a perle cotton for the weft in colors to imitate the hues of the beach stones – birch, natural, desert and stone.”
The result of Connie’s creative design is a cloth with raised, random bumps that are set closely together, yet are distinct, in an amazing representation of the beach stones.
The Island’s natural beauty is a constant motivation for Westbrook. Seated at a loom in her weaving studio, she looks out the windows in winter at huge pine trees dusted with snow.
“I never get bored,” she said. “Hours go by and I have no idea what time it is. I think about weaving all the time.”
The greatest satisfaction and joy she gets from weaving is giving her handwoven pieces to friends and loved ones.
Connie is an instructor at Sievers and also works in the school’s retail shop. She accepts commissions of her work and can be reached at 920-847-2540.
By Patricia Hewitt
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