We’re very much missing welcoming visitors into our little medieval house and garden. Usually this time of year we have held the first, springtime themed Open Day of the year. Looking back through the years, we have often been blessed with sunshine. We’re hoping to reopen later this year but here’s a little look back at some springtime Open Days past.
You may also be interested in our Easter crafts at home blogs:
As we weren’t able to run our springtime Open Day, here are some of the weaving-inspired Easter crafts that you can try at home. The carrot card is suitable for any age with a little help, and the Easter Egg card is aimed at older children as some dexterity is required weaving the strips of tissue.
Carrot Card
You will need:
Orange, green and yellow (or another colour) card.
Glue dots and glue stick (or glue)
Orange wool or thick thread
A pen or pencil
Scissors
Sticky tape
Your hand!
Step 1: On the green card, draw around your hand and cut out the shape.
Step 2: Cut out a carrot shape from the orange card and wind the wool around it.
Step 3: Stick the wool in place on the back of the carrot.
Step 4: Attach the green hand shape to the top of the carrot with glue dots or glue.
Step 5: Cut out another carrot shape in the other card and write your message on it.
Step 6 & 7: Glue it to the back of the card to cover the sticky tape.
Your carrot card is finished!
Easter Egg Card
You will need:
Card
Patterned tissue paper (but plain can also work)
Glue
Scissors
Pen or pencil
Egg shape template, e.g. a cookie cutter.
Step 1: Cut the card to the size you want your finished card to be and fold it to make the card shape. Now make a second piece that is the same size as the front of the card. Use the egg shape to draw and cut out an egg shape in the front of the folded card and then trace it on to the second piece so the two holes match.
Step 2: Cut the tissue paper into strips, and glue it diagonally across the hole on the inside of your folded card. Weave more strips in and out of these glued strips, in an opposite diagonal pattern.
Step 3: Do the same with the single piece of card.
Step 4: Now glue the single piece of card onto the folded card, so it hides all the messy paper strip sandwiched in the middle.
What a busy year it has been for The Weaver’s House. This is the first year that we have had a special theme for every Open Day. Let’s take a whistle-stop tour…
It doesn’t seem a blink of an eye since we began the open season with Signs of Spring, on a sunny April day. A few weeks later, we had an extremely memorable day as reenactor group Coventry Militia brought expertise, costumes and weaponry for an authentic historical experience and some exciting medieval action! We are hoping they will join us for a future Open Day.
June and July delved into delicacies and dirt respectively, with Open Days on Tudor cooking and an archaeological dig. The Tudor recipes included Pease Pottage which visitors sampled on tiny trenchers (bread plates), and mostly declared that it was better than they expected! Coventry And District Archaeological Society (CADAS) ran the on-site dig for July, which unearthed finds including medieval pottery and later dated items such as glass, animal bones and pipe bowl/stem.
August brought a day of Summer Fun in the Garden. Young visitors enjoyed making woolly snails, weaving and “rub-a-bug” a brass rubbing style activity, featuring mini-beasts.
Before we knew it, it was September, and the annual festival of Heritage Open Days, this year celebrating its 25th anniversary. Back in the 90s it was just a single day. It runs across nearly two weeks now, and we opened for both weekends.
This year, the first Saturday coincided with the Spon Spun Arts and Heritage Trail, with the house hosting artwork by Karen Rose Textiles, marking the connection between weaving and the nearby river Sherbourne. This work is currently displayed at the Healing Arts Gallery at University Hospital Coventry & Warwickshire. During the second weekend, we celebrated the centenary of the birth of previous resident, Sid O’ Neil, with his descendants. Of course, we had cake!
Thanks to the skills of the Weavers’ Workshop, throughout September the window of The Weaver’s House was turned gold, along with most of Earlsdon, in tribute to Ben Crowther.
Although Open Day season ended in September, the house was open in October and November this year for Coventry Biennial. Three artworks were brought together to explore weaving as a historic and contemporary practice which is undertaken in almost every community across the globe. The exhibition closed in late November, ending our public openings for this year.
We also had some private groups in of course, including the Design Nation project and visitors with ancestors connected to the area.
What a busy year! We have next year’s dates in the diary and once we have finalised a few details, we’ll be listing them here very soon! We always welcome new volunteers, so if you have an interest in heritage, Coventry history, gardening or would just like to get involved, find out more here.
The first Weaver’s House Open Day this year saw the house spring to life on a sunny if slightly chilly April morning. Visitors were impressed and appreciative of the restoration project and the extra activities provided by our volunteers. There were tours and talks, special Easter themed cakes, a spinning demonstration and an exhibition of dyes and samples. Younger visitors enjoyed an Easter trail, crafts and colouring.
Our garden is well and truly coming to life now spring is here, and the heritage apple trees which we put in a few years ago are in blossom.
The Leathercoat Russet
With visitor comments on the knowledge, enthusiasm and welcoming approach of the volunteers, it was a shining start to the season!
In just a few weeks, the next Open Day will be part of the May Day weekend. Special guest reenactor group Coventry Militia will bring history to life on site, demonstrating arms and armour of the War of the Roses. There will also be some late medieval tabletop games to try, and as this was the period when the royal court was held in Coventry, visitors can find out about the importance of the city during this period.
This one-off event will be on Sunday 5 May, running from 11am until 4pm. You can also keep up with the latest from The Weaver’s House on Facebook and Twitter. Come and say hello!
Join us this Saturday, 13 April, for our first Open Day of the year with some added springtime fun! Follow a trail, have a go at crafts, and explore the house and garden. Find out how to use natural dyes to colour eggs for Easter with our take-home worksheet.
Experience how John Croke, a Coventry narrow-loom weaver and his family would have lived and worked including a full-size replica of a medieval loom (Please note the solar room containing the loom is accessed by ladder). Explore the working medieval garden showing the plants that would have been grown for food, flavouring, medicine and household use.
Pics from our previous Easter Open Days.
As always, entry is free! We’ll be open from 11am until 4pm.
Tea, coffee and homemade cakes are served on Open Days.
It’s certainly been cold today. Christmas seems a distant memory and summer a long way off. Yet the mornings are starting to feel a little bit brighter a little bit earlier, and a close look will reveal green signs of life outside.
At The Weaver’s House, we’ve been planning our season of Open Days for this year, and you can find the full list of dates here.
First up to look forward to, we have Signs of Spring on Saturday 13 April, from 11am until 4pm.
This will be our first Open Day of the year with some springtime fun. Find out how you can use natural dyes to colour eggs for Easter, follow a trail and explore the house and garden. As usual, admission is free and tea, coffee and homemade cakes will be available.
If you’re looking for something to occupy you during the rest of the wintry weeks ahead, why not give weaving a go? The Weavers’ Workshop group aims to promote the craft of weaving, its use as a creative medium and its place in Coventry’s history. They have open drop-in sessions to try out weaving techniques here at The Weaver’s House each Monday and Thursday from 10am until 12.30pm. There is a small charge, tea and coffee is provided, and everyone is welcome.
This is a centuries old tradition done at Easter-time to signify the coming of spring and new life and is also thought to be the origin of today’s chocolate Easter Egg. Egg dyeing involves hard boiling eggs in a pan with various plant dye materials– this colours the egg’s shell depending on the dye colour released from the plant – and is not always what you expect!
Sara from the Weavers’ Workshop dyed these beautiful eggs using natural dyes – can you guess what was used?
The following instructions tell you how to have a go.
What you need for a single dye pot:
• A large stainless steel pan
• 2 pints of cold water
• 1 Tablespoon of Salt – helps the dye to be absorbed into the shell.
• 1 Tablespoon of Vinegar – helps the shells to stop breaking but not a guarantee!
• 3 or 4 raw eggs – you can buy large trays of mixed size brown eggs from supermarkets if you want to try lots of ideas – white eggs other than duck eggs are almost impossible to come by in the U.K.
• A source of natural plant dye – this could be plants, flowers, vegetables and spices. There are many sources of natural dyes in the home and in the wild which give up colour – but some e.g. beetroot don’t work that well – so the results are unpredictable.
Don’t be afraid to try all sorts of possibilities – below are just a few suggestions to get you going – the results can be surprising. White eggs are hard to come by but brown eggs work just as well – they may produce a darker tone but it’s all part of the fun.
Yellow Onion Skins – work brilliantly
Collect the outer skins of ordinary cooking onions – you need a fair few to get a rich colour –probably as much as the weight of the eggs you’re going to use.
Put the cold water, salt and vinegar in the pan along with the onion skins. Tuck the 4 eggs into the pan and put on a low heat – bring the water up to boiling point slowly and cook for 10 – 12 minutes to hard boil the eggs. Then leave the pan to cool. You will be amazed at the colour!
Red Cabbage – a whole red cabbage shredded. Put into the 2 pints of cold water with the salt and vinegar. Put in 3 – 4 eggs. Bring up to the boil as above, cook for 15-20 minutes, during which time dye will be released from the cabbage. Switch off and leave to cool. The eggs take several hours to take up this dye – so be patient.
Turmeric. Use 6 tablespoons of turmeric powder, available from supermarkets and dissolve in hot water along with salt and vinegar. Boil the eggs in the solution as described above and leave to cool.
A mix of natural and artificially dyed eggs using resistance technique
When decorating eggs, try sticking things to them e.g. masking tape, leaves and flowers which can be removed after the dyeing process. Use old tights and stretch them tightly round the egg and knot it to keep the bits firmly in place – this process is called resist dyeing because the area which is covered by the stuck on material resists the dye, leaving behind the shape of the stuck on material on the shell – this is how traditional tie dyeing is done.
In Medieval times natural dyes were all that was available so clothes reflected the colours of the local dye plants. Usually, browns, yellows and greens and occasionally red (madder root) and blue (woad).
Today we manufacture chemical dyes and we can produce any colour we like. As a result we buy our favourite colours off the shelf in the form of paint, fabric, clothing, cars, and egg dye kits! So if you want to be sure what colour your egg will be, buy an egg dyeing kit or alternatively try using food colouring! But it’s nowhere near as much fun as experimenting.
Thanks to Sara from the Weavers’ Workshop for putting these instructions together and dyeing the eggs.
We were lucky with the weather on Saturday! What a great start to our Open Day season, with lots of visitors coming to enjoy Tudor Games in the sunshine.
We had games set up throughout the site including quoits, skittles, Shove Ha’penny, and Tudor favourite Nine Men’s Morris.
Quoits
Quoits
Shoving the ha’penny!
Nine Men’s Morris
Volunteer Tina made the two board games completely from scratch especially for this Open Day. We’ll definitely be getting these back out in the future!
Keith from the BBC dropped by to have a chat to Tina about Tudor Games and the house.
In addition to the games theme, it was also Easter so we had an Easter trail and the opportunity to learn how to dye eggs using natural materials.
Sara from the Weavers’ Workshop dyed these beautiful eggs using natural dyes – can you guess what was used?
A basket of naturally dyed, unspun wool.
Throughout this year we’ll be weaving a piece of material to mark our tenth anniversary of being open to the public. Part of this is following the life of a woven fabric starting at the point of dyeing the wool.
The dye pot
Freshly dyed wool
The table loom
Weaving in progress
Come along and have a try at weaving on one of our future Open Days, or just find out more about the spinning and weaving process.
It wouldn’t be the Weaver’s House without cake of course, and there was plenty on offer including special Easter treats!
The next few weeks will see us getting the house and garden ready for the spring and the start of our Open Day season which runs through until September.
Our first Open Day is Saturday 8 April which is will have the theme Tudor Games & Easter!
Come along to our first Open Day of the season to find out about the games the Tudors played including skittles, Nine Men’s Morris and quoits. Have a go at our Easter trail and learn about natural ways to dye eggs.
We’ll also be launching our weaving project for 2017: to create a piece of cloth woven throughout the year, beginning with dyeing the wool using traditional dye.
Dyeing demonstrations at: 11.30am, 1pm, 2pm and 3pm approx.
A basket of wool dyed with natural dyes.
As usual there will also be the opportunity to have a look around the house and garden and learn about the life and times of a medieval weaver and his family, find out how the preservation project began and enjoy a slice of homemade cake!
We’re open from 11am – 4pm and are looking forward to seeing you there!
