Our limited edition Foulden Hills collection of scarves and wraps are woven with ultra-fine Merino and are entirely New Zealand grown and crafted.
The Merino yarn was grown on the Gibson farm Foulden Hills, near Middlemarch, inland from Dunedin. It was then woven by Rod McLean in Oamaru. Both these rural Otago communities have been involved in wool production since the 1800's.
The light brown and chocolate brown yarns used are all undyed natural colours, just as they came off the sheep,
The traditional tartan design of this collection represents strength and unity, and references the heritage and values of McLean & Co and our passion for preserving traditional textile skills using the finest New Zealand yarn.
The Foulden collection is made to be worn; it is durable, holds its shape, and is incredibly soft. You may notice slight irregularities in colour and texture - a feature inherent in hand crafted textiles, and one that sets the hand woven apart.
Wrap yourself in luxurious New Zealand quality, very limited edition with only a small number of scarves and wraps woven in this collection.
YARN: 16 micron New Zealand Merino wool, in natural light brown and chocolate.
Shop the Foulden Hills Collection
Available online, at Revology Concept Store in Wanaka, and Crafted Artisan Gallery in Oamaru.
Weaving our Foulden Hills Collection.
We wanted our Foulden collection to reflect the land and the people of Foulden Hills. Our design references the vision, strength, solidarity and fortitude of the Gibson family who farm Foulden Hills.
The yarn arrived in our weaving shed on 1kg cones. It was then wound onto bobbins on the bobbin winder, the only electricity powered piece of our Hattersley Domestic Weaving System.
The bobbins are then placed on the warping frame to create the first four inch width of warp. These are the chocolate brown bobbins which will make up alternating chocolate brown stripes.
Showing the stripes on the warping mill. Each stripe has to be wound individually onto our sectional warping mill, meaning the chocolate bobbins come off and the taupe bobbins go on.
The next stage is organising the metal heddles onto the four shafts. Each end (strand) of yarn is threaded through a heddle of it's own, on one of the six shafts to create a twill weave.
Sue sits inside the threading frame and hands each individual strand of wool to Rod, who threads it through it's correct heddle on it's correct shaft. This is time consuming, and if a mistake is made, it's not usually found until it's on the loom and you've started weaving. This is not good.
Here Rod is tuning the loom, making sure everything is tensioned evenly, the weights are adjusted and everything is ready to go.
The front of the loom with the first few centimetres of weaving. Everything looks good. There are no threading errors, and the loom is well tuned.
Our c1895 computer system that tells the rotating shuttle box when to turn clockwise or anti-clockwise to change the weft stripe colours. The Foulden collection had such a long chain that Rod had to design and make a larger box to hold it all.
The wooden shuttle with the pirn inside it takes the woollen yarn across the loom and back. These shuttles travel across the loom at up to 50kph so they have to be very durable. You can see the metal components at either end.
After many hours of pedaling the loom, the length of fabric is complete. Now it is time to check all the fabric and darn in any loose ends or knots. Although this can sometimes take two or three days, this warp is really clean and only took about six hours to check.
Then it's time to full the fabric. This is the washing process where the yardage is immersed in warm soapy water and fed through a mangle with wooden rollers until the threads start to felt together.
CARE INSTRUCTIONS
As this fine merino yarn is not chemically shrink resist treated we recommend washing
gently by hand using and eco-friendly wool wash. Dry flat. Cool iron.
DO NOT MACHINE WASH OR TUMBLE DRY!