Hello, I’m Laura
I aim to bring you the highest quality products woven from wool gathered predominantly from farms in the Yorkshire Dales and Cumbria. My goal is to create beautiful wool yarn then turn it into classy designs that show off the yarn at its very best. In the process I recognise and celebrate my partners - the farmers who raise the sheep and tend the landscape, and the spinners and weavers, dyers and cloth finishers who help me create my products.
I learned to weave in the USA
I first learned to weave in the USA while working in Boston, MA as a Geographic Information Systems Analyst (GIS to avoid the mouthful!) My first loom, which I still use, was a Harrisville 50″ wide 8-shaft floor loom. Today it feels like an extension of myself; I love weaving on it! That loom has travelled with me to Europe and now to England where I live and work in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales.
Laura’s Loom became official in 2002
Laura’s Loom became ‘official’ in 2002 when I moved to Sedbergh on the edge of Cumbria, where the Lake District meets the Yorkshire Dales and where I opened a studio at Farfield Mill, a former spinning and weaving mill now renovated into a vibrant Arts and Heritage Centre. The fit seemed auspicious. After 10 years of weaving as an occasional hobby fitted in around work and family I had the opportunity to focus on it full time and so I made the most of it, weaving lots of scarves and trying out lots of fibres, designs and colours.
In 2004 I undertook the ‘Bradford Course’, an HNC in Handwoven Design at Bradford College where I was pushed out of my comfort zone but started to truly experiment, trying new ideas and being as weird and wacky as I liked. Out of this course came my stonewall series of scarves and throws, which I’m still working on. A tweak here, a tweak there and the whole thing changes. I find this endlessly fascinating!
I have more recently added a new loom to my studio, a 16-shaft LeClerc Weavebird which I am sure will provide me with a lifetime of experimentation as I learn to play with more blocks and in more than one dimension.
Laura’s Loom
015396 22043