2018 Convention Part 5--Sew what?

One of the highlights of the tour is the machine shop. Not only was water used to power the looms, but to run all of the power tools as well. And the tools were HUGE! Saws and drills the size of a human body! That one water wheel turned a series of pulleys and drives so that the power was portioned to where it was needed. 

You might remember this layout as it was posted for one of the Lasting Moments Challenges. Refer to this post to refresh your memory of the layout. Oh, and Jim says he was definitely NOT loafing 😁.

My last stop was in the weaving rooms. I had never seen such complicated looms. They could make argyle patterns, tube-shaped cloth, and a wide variety of other sizes and shapes to fit the needs of the everyday housewife or workman. And again, it all worked thanks to the water power nearby. I wonder if we will return to that as a power source for industry with the problems we have with fossil fuels. Not that there were no environmental issues with water, but at least it didn't produce as many air pollutants.

I'm fairly certain I followed a sketch for this layout, but I cannot find a copy of it. I do know that the papers are from the Paper Loft Euphoria collection. I had saved the diamond papers specifically for these pages as I wanted to highlight the argyle photo. I made this at a crop in Lancaster and while I had taken the rope border maker cartridge for the nautical aspect (those pages are coming soon) it certainly worked for the weaving room as well! The embellishments are mixed from several different collections.

2018 Convention Part 4--What Once Was Modern

 Our bus trip headed to Pawtucket, RI to see the Slater Mill. This is one of the large weaving mills found along the rivers in the Northeast. They've gathered several buildings into the complex and we split into a couple of groups to take a guided tour. 

I created this layout based on an idea in my summer class. I saved this photo from when I originally posted my take on the challenge but I have added punched fence borders along the bottom. I didn't have them with me at the crop when I made the pages. I used Eureka papers from the Paper Loft. The word art is theirs as well but the rest of the embellishments come from an older Croptoberfest pack.

The site covers the history of the area for several hundred years and shows a variety of daily life examples from fancy houses to worker houses. One thing I learned here is that tea was shipped in decorative bricks--there's a sample on the table on the left page. I just assumed everything was loose but it made more sense to compact it to save space. They also went into the weaving process before industrialization. 

The challenge I mentioned above created remnant arcs, so the second part of the challenge was to use them in a follow-up layout. I added a couple of laser-cut borders to finish the pages and more of the Croptoberfest stickers.

2018 Convention Part 3--Well, Well, Well

On Friday Jim and I participated in the club's all-day bus trip. These events are a standard part of our club activities now and offer a way to get to some far-reaching park sites with minimal environmental impact (1 bus rather than 58 cars for example). Our first stop was the Roger Williams National Memorial. I had confused him with Will Rogers and kept thinking this was someone who "never met a man he didn't like". No, Roger Williams is the founder of Rhode Island. The visitor center is sort of small so we split the group in two with one half staying at the site and the other half touring the state capitol up the street, then we switched. My state capital pages won't be part of the blog, but the building itself is quite interesting.

In the visitor center, we watched a movie on the founding of the state. Supposedly he chose this site due to a natural well supplying water for the colony. There is a well in the courtyard but it is symbolic. Roger Williams built the colony on religious tolerance (after getting kicked out of several other puritanical villages). This was even earlier than William Penn's similar concerns when founding Pennsylvania. It's also a premise that found its way into the Declaration of Independence. Truly remarkable and historic.

I made this layout during a summer challenge class. The handout did call for 3 different double-sided pages. I ended up with 3 papers but with the same designs so there was less variety in my cuts. So when I made the layouts, I decided to use them a little more symmetrically, creating wide bands stretching across two pages. The papers are from a very old Croptoberfest kit but I liked the striped paper and floral design. I thought they went well with the garden photos and the heavy yellow presence in the interior photos.

2018 Convention Part 2--Back to School

Our first stop was in Norwich, CT. I had not heard of the Last Green Valley Heritage Corridor until I started planning this trip. The agency protects cultural, historical, and natural heritage in the Connecticut and Massachusetts areas. Our stop at the visitor center was brief. I did enjoy their displays of the historic school furniture but much of it had been turned into a visitor center with racks of brochures of the area. 

It doesn't happen often, but this is a page of my own creation! This uses Graphic 45 papers. I had purchased a sheet and cut it apart to rearrange it onto a base cardstock. I didn't plan this ahead and in hindsight, I wish I had not cut every object from the sheet individually as I could have used more of the larger sections for matting. I did get a little of the yellow/red by turning over a few of the items I wouldn't use on the page. Of course, that means I can't use them on a future page so I'll have to be on the lookout for more of this paper. I've seen a number of old schoolhouses in my travels.