Lyon Handwovens

Lyon Handwovens Lyon Handwovens creates handwoven articles designed to be as useful as they are beautiful.

When I first decided to sell my woven items it was all about my yarn habit, at that time I thought my yarn stash was substantial, little did I know. But in spite of its relatively small size compared to today, at that time I bought whatever caught my eye with no thought to what the fiber was made of. In retrospect this does seem rather thoughtless for someone that had been investigating hazardous waste sites for twenty odd years. Fortunately, I have evolved through the years and while I still purchase non-sustainable fibers and fabric, it's never as new materials. I have a short list of non-profits that resell donated items to fund their objectives and I watch Marketplace to purchase quality yarns and fabrics that show up in estate sales. In addition I also have a short list of yarn producers that I purchase new natural fiber yarns from; wool is my favorite fiber and seeing how many different patterns I can create with a palette of three to five colors is a challenge I love to indulge in.

Then there are the non-traditional materials, such as VHS tape and commercial carpet yarn. The two have even been used together in weaving a lightweight tote bag. Plastic bread bags are on my short list of future projects, I've already made the first fabric prototype and I'm in the process of tweaking how it looks compared to the picture in my head.

Lyon Handwovens Kansas City, MO | Lyon Handwovens creates handwoven articles designed to be as useful as they are beautiful.

Originally, my shop opened as Tangled up in Blue Springs a play on words: giving a nod to Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up In Blue", my life-long love of yarn, and the fact that I lived in Blue Springs, MO. My love of yarn began with crochet, moved to macrame in high school (yes, I'm of that generation) and then back to crochet in college. After inheriting my grandparents' Union rug loom, weaving opened up a whole new universe of possibilities.

But as we all know life keeps moving whether we like it or not and after early retirement from my day job, a narrowing of my focus towards sustainable materials and a move back across the KC metro area a name change was needed.

Lyon Handwovens is a fusion of my early love of all things textile, a two decade career in environmental consulting, followed by another decade in quality. This fusion has resulted in narrowing my focus in weaving to using sustainable yarns (wool, cotton, silk) up-cycled materials (VHS tape, commercial carpet yarn, plastic shopping bags) and repurposed fabrics (dead stock and remnants from professional decorators, estate sales, thrift shops). Sustainability, like most things is not static and this journey I'm on will require ongoing adjustments, new paths and learning from others. I hope you'll check in periodically to see how my journey is progressing.

Thanks for browsing through my shop, and if you have any questions please convo me.

Pam

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