Treadles to Threads

We are an informal but active spinning guild that welcomes new and experienced spinners, as well as those who want to learn to spin.

Fiber Frolic 2025

Saturday, June 7, 2025
Soul Food Farm
6046 Pleasants Valley Road, Vacaville, CA

Wool, alpaca, Fleece, Roving, Batts, Yarn, Spinning Wheels, Gifts and More!! Spend the day spinning, snacking, shopping, and visiting with your fiber friends.

Featuring California vendors with goodies from raw fiber to finished yarn, spinning wheels, fiber-related items, and a dynamite raffle

Want someone else to process your newly purchased fleece or have unprocessed fleece at home?
Valley Oak Wool and Fiber Mill will be at the event

Bring your wheel or drop spindle if you have one, along with a chair, lunch, and beverage for a truly enjoyable day on the grounds of Soul Food Farms in Vacaville

Admission: $10 per person – Cash only

Contact: t2tFiberFrolic@gmail.com

March 2025 Meeting

March 26, 2025 – Supported Spindles
7:00 pm, Pleasant Hill Senior Center, 233 Gregory Ln, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523

Meeting Slideshow is HERE

This month’s Treadles to Threads meeting was all about Support Spindles.

Our in-house expert, Carolyn B, will be led us through the twists and turns of support spindle spinning. The spindles were specially crafted for us by our wonderful wood turner, Frank O.

This was a hands-on instructional meeting. Each member had access to a support spindle and fiber. Those who fell in love with using the support spindle, orwanted more time to practice skills, had the opportunity to purchase a spindle at the end of the meeting. Spindles remaining after the meeting will be put up for sale at our Fiber Frolic Festival at a higher price. All proceeds will benefit our guild. Thank you, Frank!

A variety of eight supported spindles with colorful yarn cops

Charlie Needs a Cloak

Fleece and yarn with wool cards, on a table

Saturday, March 22, three guild members – Wendy, Amy, and Jane – co-starred at storytime at the Martinez Library. The book was Charlie Needs a Cloak, by Tomie DePaoli, a story about how wool from sheep can be turned into fabric for clothing. The guild members brought a variety of wool fleece (washed, carded, batt, dyed and undyed), spinning wheels and spindles, and a loom to augment the book’s story. After the story, they demonstrated carding, spinning and weaving for the children who attended the event.

February 2025 Meeting

February 26, 2025 -Blending Boards with Roy Clemes

Roy Clemes of Clemes and Clemes will be speaking to us about Blending Boards. Come to the meeting and learn about the many uses of a blending board from one of its original designers! We will have our business meeting after the presentation. We will postpone our scheduled rock weaving presentation/mini-workshop until a future date. Thank you Melanie for being so flexible with your schedule

Guild members are also invited to our Blending Board Get Together at Amy’s house Saturday, March 1 from 1 pm – 4 pm. We will be practicing what we learn from Roy’s presentation amongst ourselves using blending boards that we have rounded up. Roy will not be there, but we will still have fun! If you have a blending board and would like to share it for the day, please let Wendy know. We have seven blending boards now so we should be able to have a great day blending wool. Wool will be provided by the guild, but you can also bring your own if you would like. It takes about 15 minutes to make three or four rolags from about one ounce of wool. It is really fun to do!

See photos of the Blending Board Get Together HERE

Bring a project to work on during the down time and snack/drink. Hope you can join us!

Spring Guild Meetings

March 26, 2025 – Supported Spindle Spinning with Carolyn
Support spindles have been used for thousands of years to spin functional and beautiful yarn. We are currently experiencing a renewed interest in these spindles especially by spinners on social media. At the March meeting we will be using member-made support spindles with the guidance from another guild members to learn techniques used to make these simple and beautiful tools spin luxury yarns.

April 30, 2025 – Paper Spinning
There are many ways to turn different types of paper into yarn for many purposes. At this meeting we will explore several of these techniques. Paper yarn can be used to wrap around a gift and make a bow or weave a small tapestry. You can even make clothing out of paper yarn. Bring your wheel or drop spindles and plan to have an interesting evening exploring the art of spinning paper. Paper and instruction will be provided.

Field Trip to a Farm

November 2, 2024, a group of us visited Jackie Post’s farm in Vacaville. We visited her sheep, alpaca, turkeys and guinea fowl. She demonstrated her mini-carding mill with fleece from one of her sheep. Her mill has 13 drums to card the wool. And, she also demonstrated her felting machine for making wool felt. We had lunch outside, looking over her yard and fields on a beautiful sunny day.

Dye Day 2024