Keeping old weaving traditions alive in new contexts

From North House Folk School to Scandinavia to Vesterheim Museum

Caroline shows off the piece she created for an exhibit at Vesterheim Museum in Decorah, Iowa.

Caroline Feyling
Corvallis, Ore.

I was born to one Norwegian parent and one American. All throughout my childhood, we would travel back and forth to Norway to visit family. I remember sitting on my grandparents’ couch surrounded by stitched pillows and Røros tweed blankets.

But I never really paid particular attention to these pieces of material culture until I received a folk costume, or festdrakt, at age 14. It was a mass-produced design that many young girls have before they receive a bunad from their region. Nevertheless, I was enamored with its beauty. I remember studying the seams and looking inside my festdrakt trying to figure out how it was made. It truly opened my eyes to the richness of Norwegian textile traditions.

Norwegian-American artist Caroline Feyling sets up her loom to create new Nordic designs.

Throughout my textiles degree, I had a special interest in historical textile and garment production methods. In my senior year,  this interest began to combine with my love of Scandinavian material culture. The result was a festdrakt of my own design and making. This project was the catalyst for my pursuit of a career in Norwegian folk art.

In the years following my festdrakt project, I have worked as a seamstress, pursued education in Scandinavian weaving, and sewed a bunad of my own.

All of these experiences have led me to my current position of resident artisan at North House Folk School located in Grand Marais, Minn. The Artisan Development Program at North House is a year-long residency that provides four craftspeople with time, space, and mentorship to develop their craft practice into a business. One of the most exciting perks of the program is funding for Scandinavian travel.

Collaboration with other artists has been an important part of Caroline’s resident artisan program.

In March, my cohort and I packed our bags and left for a month-long research trip in Scandinavia. Our journey began with a week of group travel in Sweden. During our time in Sweden, we saw exhibits of Swedish folk art and toured the countryside, meeting with craftspeople of many different disciplines. Following the group travel portion of the trip, I spent two and a half weeks in Norway conducting similar research.

Throughout my trip, I was struck by how present folk art was in the daily lives of these craftspeople. Their studios were full of antique equipment and beautiful objects made by them or their friends. There was no dissonance between tradition and modernity, no wish to be in an imagined simpler time. Just joy in the act of making.

This trip provided me with seemingly endless ideas. My phone has over 200 photos of museum objects alone. Upon my return, I was very excited to draw on my trip research for my next project: a piece for Vesterheim National Exhibition of Norwegian-American Folk Art.

After reviewing my trip materials, I came to the decision to weave a piece inspired by the overshot coverlets of Norway and Sweden. I was lucky enough to do a collections visit at the Västernorrlands Museum in Härnösand, Sweden, where I studied eight different plattväv (tavlebragd in Norwegian) coverlets. Despite being over 150 years old, the designs had a bold and modern feeling. They were the perfect inspiration for my piece.

All weavings are made by the horizontal weft threads bending over and under the vertical warp threads to create a cloth. In the plattväv technique, there is a cotton or linen warp and two weft yarns, one background and one for the pattern. The background weft is generally the same material as the warp, while the pattern weft is a much thicker wool. The weaver uses two shuttles to alternate between the patterns in wool and the plain weave background. Knowing that the background is a plain weave structure, a plattväv pattern can then be reverse engineered by focusing on the pattern blocks formed by the wool weft.

A pick glass is a magnifying tool used to look closely at the surface of the cloth.

When doing research in museums, I am looking to gather as much information as I can about how a piece was constructed. This usually involves using a magnifying tool called a pick glass to look closely at the surface of the cloth. This can help determine what fiber the yarns might be as well as the density of the threads.

To determine thread density, or sett as it is called in weaving, I count the number of warp and weft threads per inch. Construction details can give us clues as to how an object was made as well as how it was used. For example, the coverlets I viewed at the Västernorrlands museum had a seam down the middle to double the width of the cloth. This indicates that the piece was woven on a narrower horizontal loom, as opposed to a wider vertical loom. Small holes in the selvedge edges also suggest that the coverlets were once mounted on a sheepskin for extra warmth. You can learn a lot from museum pieces if you know what you are looking for.

During my collections visit, I made sure to take clear photos that showed the full pattern blocks of the coverlets. I also took care to count the thread density of the background plain weave as well as the pattern weft.

At the Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo, Caroline saw many weaving artifacts, including a large old loom.

When I returned to my studio in Grand Marais, I translated the block pattern from one of the coverlets to graph paper. This served as the starting point for figuring out the necessary threading to achieve the same pattern. I made the piece my own by playing with the scale of the block design and using low contrast yarns. The end result is a much subtler effect than the piece I drew inspiration from.

Once my design and yarn calculations were complete, I moved on to setting up the loom and sampling my yarns. For my piece I was using yarns I had purchased at Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk in Hjelmås, Norway. It was important to me to use Norwegian wool to best emulate the characteristics of the museum pieces I saw in Norway and Sweden.

The sampling process involves weaving a small piece and then cutting it off the loom and washing it. The cloth transforms considerably with washing, so it is very important to finish the samples before proceeding. The weaving of the piece itself is repetitive yet meditative.

At Maihaugen in Lillehammer, a set of wooden temples (stretchers) made an impressive display.

The biggest challenge I faced was ensuring that the looped edges were all of even length. After cutting my piece off the loom, I gently washed it in the bathtub and hung it to dry. The final finishing step was flattening the looped edges with steam and wool clappers.

Sending this piece to the Vesterheim exhibition feels like things are starting to come full circle. Taking inspiration from pieces in Scandinavia and translating them for Norwegian-American audiences gives me the feeling that I am adding to the history of Norwegians in the United States. I continue to find inspiration in museums and dream of how I can translate heritage motifs into modern contexts.

As I walked through the gallery at Vesterheim and saw my work among so many other amazing folk artists, I couldn’t help but feel proud. It is an honor to be a part of continuing Norwegian textile traditions. I can’t wait to see where my next museum visit will take me.

All photos courtesy of Caroline Feyling 

See also “A modern-day ‘vintage’ photo shoot” by Cynthia Elyce Rubin, The Norwegian American, May 2023.

This article originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of  The Norwegian American.