Designer Spotlight Blog Post – Jacey Boggs Faulkner
Welcome back to another Designer Spotlight Blog! This month's feature is a name we are sure many of you know....Jacey Boggs Faulkner....who is also known for PLY Magazine, WEFT Magazine, and the newly announced ...PURL Magazine! Jacey has navigated the road of spinning, weaving, and knitting through a set of "different eyes", and we appreciate the SPIN (pun intended) she has brought to the Fiber Arts World....here is Jacey's Designer Spotlight Blog!
Please note that all photos are used with Jacey's permission, and all the photos belong entirely to her.
Meet Jacey Boggs Faulkner!
Tell us about yourself.
My name is Jacey Boggs Faulkner and I wish I could say I’ve been weaving for 25 years. I wish I had been weaving for 25 years. I lament that I didn’t come to weaving until I was 45 years old. At 50 years old, I worry that I won’t be able to weave all I want to weave, learn all I want to learn about weaving in the 40 (50?) years I have left. I haven’t really found something I don’t like to weave because every new thing I weave is a delight and an education. As a hand spinner who has been spinning for 25 years, I am particularly focused on using handspun and I’m entirely taken with overshot because of the way it makes handspun yarn shine.
How Did You Get Started?
Since I started PLY Magazine (2012) people have been telling me that I should start a weaving magazine. I’d respond that one of the main reasons that PLY has been successful is because I know and love spinning. Friends countered by telling me that I should learn to weave, that I’d love weaving. I didn’t believe them. Boy was I wrong.
Four years ago my guild (COSWG) offered a 2-day multi-shaft weaving class (taught by Patty Huffer). It was very inexpensive and all-inclusive (a wonderful thing about guilds, right?). Thinking it would be a nice way for my 15 year old and I to spend a few hours together, I signed us up. After 3 hours I knew weaving was the love I’d been looking for — exciting, satisfying, and challenging.
I spent my first years (and still to this day) inviting the charming and knowledgable Jane Stafford into my home for morning tea (via her online school, JST). I’ve learned so much and been so inspired by her and her dream team. In fact, I started an online guild (The PLY Spinners Guild) modeled off her school and she was kind and gracious enough to help me along the way. As is my way, I also collected and devoured all I could in terms of weaving resources. I looked at old Handwoven magazines and got inspired, I devoured all the issues of Heddlecraft, absorbing what I could and making note of all the things to come back to when I knew more.
I also had the extreme good luck to post a few reels on the socials of me beaming my warp in a less-than-ideal manner and Lisa Graves of Kawartha Weaving reached out to gently and generously ask if she could help. She did and we became friends and within the year decided to start a magazine (WEFT). I still don’t know enough about weaving to start a magazine but Lisa Graves (my partner and WEFT’s managing editor) and Jette Vandermeiden (WEFT’s technical editor) have that knowledge part covered and between the three of us, there’s more than enough love of the craft.
What Looms Do You Have?
By the end of the first day of class with Patty Huffer, she had located a wonderful old 40 inch 4-shaft Fireside loom and by the end of the weekend that loom sat in my loft. By the end of that year, I also had an Ashford table loom, a Jane 8-shaft table loom, and a Schacht Baby Wolf 8-shaft. Right now, I mostly weave on an 8-shaft (adding more shafts soon) Louet Spring II, a loom that fits me like a glove.
Favorite Weave Structure?
I haven’t met a weave structure I don’t like! Right now I’m a little in love with crackle and overshot (especially Bertha Gray Hayes beautiful designs) but I can’t wait to fall in love over and over again as I branch out into more structures.
Favorite Lunatic Fringe products?
Uh…Tubular Spectrum™ mercerized cotton yarn! The colors are so exciting. I’ve done several kits and those yarns wove up so beautifully and have worn so well. We use our kaleidoscope napkins every night at family dinner. I almost wish they weren’t still in perfect shape because now that I’m a better weaver I can see all my mistakes and want to reweave them! Someday that Full Spectrum kit will be mine!
What Inspires You?
I’m inspired by everything. I know that sounds like a shine-on but really. I’m inspired by my children, by the night sky, by moss on a stone, by Ezra Furman songs, by Andrea Gipson poetry, by a perfect persimmon, by my imperfect best friend, by the love I feel for my partner, by my cat’s nose. It’s not hard to inspire me, everything pushes me to be better and do more.
Why Do You Weave?
I weave because weaving is exciting, satisfying, and challenging. I love creating, I think beauty and art are vital to humanity, and I find satisfaction in making useful things. Weaving gives me all those things — creation, beauty, art, and usefulness. When I learned to weave, weaving met me where I was, and it continues to do so to this day. The more I learn, the more I find there is to learn. The more I understand, the more I discover there is to understand. Isn’t that what we’re all looking for? Something that meets us just where we are but that excites and challenges us enough that we don’t stay where we are for long! What a perfect craft!
What Else Are You Up to?
I’m always doing a lot (I’d be lost without my bullet journal). At this very moment I’m working on five issues of PLY and five issues of WEFT. I’m writing a new book about spinning. I’m spinning yarn for a sweater. I’m spinning yarns for the PLY Spinners Guild season 3 wall hanging (I spin yarns based on the season’s teachings and then weave a 6’x3’ wall hanging that is the backdrop for that season’s episodes). I’m finishing some crackle towels for holiday presents. And after 2pm each day, I hang with my teenage kids (two are still at home), roller-skate, rock climb, and eat just the right amount of salted dark chocolate.
I also might be thinking about a new magazine…PURL.
Last Question...Cake or Pie?
Pie 100%
Thanks Jacey!
Thank you for sharing with us! We can’t wait to see what you are up to next!
If you want to see what Jacey is up to, here are links to websites that she is part of: