Two doyennes of the weaving world reunite

Until I met Rachel Swett, I knew little about looms and the weaving world, except for having an appreciation of Navajo rugs we’d seen while traveling through the Southwest.

I was introduced to Rachel last spring through South Whidbey at Home–an aging-in-place non-profit I have volunteered with since 2016. Most Tuesday mornings we circumnavigate the track behind the former Langley Middle School, now part of the South Whidbey Community Center. While walking with Rachel, I learned about her deep interest with weaving and looms. Rachel and her former husband Gary Swett owned Fireside Looms, custom built, top-of-the-line hardwood looms, which they sold in 2007. Later they ran a fiber arts gallery and supply store with a few classes from a storefront in uptown Port Townsend.

“They are weaver friendly,” Rachel said of the looms, adding that many of their customers were medical doctors, who found weaving to be a relaxing past time. “Our looms attracted people with high intellects who wanted to use their artistic side, too. We called them our ‘A-loom-nis.” We designed them so that every operation would be easy. We made everything so you could get at it without obstacles.”

Fast-forward to New Year’s Eve 2024, where, while attending a John Denver birthday tribute concert hosted by singer/DJ/emcee Judy Lunn, I met one of Judy’s neighbors, Madelyn van der Hoogt, founder of the Weaver’s School in Coupeville. Judy described Madelyn as being in a world class of weavers. I turned to Madelyn, who was sitting behind me, and asked if she knew Rachel Swett. Madelyn’s expression brightened, and she told me that she has known Rachel for years, and wondered where she was living nowadays. Madelyn recalled Rachel and Gary’s business, Fireside Looms, and how much she enjoyed seeing the couple while attending regional and national weaving conferences in the past.

It was arranged for Madelyn to stop by at Rachel’s home Jan. 14. Their reunion was a pleasure to witness. Rachel wore a vest she designed, woven in a twill pattern of reds, blues and greens.

When asked how weaving found them, Rachel said she discovered her love of the craft while spending time as an exchange student in Copenhagen during the 1960s. “Everyone had hand woven mats and clothes,” Rachel recalled. “I loved them. They were so beautiful. I enjoyed the simplicity, which rang true. When I came back home, I wanted to learn how to weave.”

She took community college courses, and began weaving fiber between tree branches to make basic items. By 1969 with a new baby and living in Marin County near San Francisco, Rachel learned more skills, and wove while her baby slept.

During a camping trip to Europe in 1971, the Swetts met with a maker of traditional looms and the weavers who used them in Granada Spain. Gary endeared himself to the loom builder–he was experienced in woodworking, having learned from his father who was a carpenter. Gary brought the knowledge back to the states. Meanwhile, Rachel watched the Granada weavers, and returned home to practice her new skills on a loom Gary built for her.

“We got back to the states and I took a class at the  De Young museum (a fine arts museum located in San Francisco) on weaving,” Rachel said. “They had looms, but not decent benches. I volunteered Gary, and they hired him to do benches for their looms. That’s how he got started with our business.”

It was Mexican and Central American textiles that sparked Madelyn’s immersion into weaving.

“I went to school in Berkeley and was influenced by the hippie movement, though I grew up in L.A., with beige everything,” Madelyn recalled. “I earned a teaching credential and taught English in Oakland. At the end of that, I had a sabbatical to prepare a course for teaching Hispanic kids. My husband and I went to Oaxaca, and I saw my first incredible weaving. I thought, you can do that. We went around Mexico and Guatemala and saw the best weaving there. In Guatemala, I learned to weave on a back strap loom and loved it.”

The young women and their husbands were attracted to the early 70s back-to-the land movement.

Rachel and Gary moved with their family to an intentional community on 80 acres outside of Eugene Oregon, and they opened their Fireside Loom cottage industry, which supported them and their three children for nearly three decades. They later moved to Jefferson County, and later owned a fiber arts store in uptown Port Townsend. Rachel fondly recalled coordinating weavers’ work at the annual Jefferson County fairgrounds in Port Townsend.

Madelyn founded the Weaver’s School in Fayette, Missouri in the fall of 1984. As “back to the landers,” she and her husband had moved to a home without electricity and running water in the early 1970s. At first Madelyn taught high school English. She tried weaving outdoors with a backstrap loom which had to be hooked to a tree when the weather permitted, but it was difficult, and the chiggers proved to be too much of a distraction. Fate stepped in via a now long gone woman–Alice May Alexander with a station wagon full of Dorothy table looms.

“She demonstrated weaving to the high school students,” Madelyn recalled, “and I was hooked again. I took classes from her and then bought a Norwood Loom, based on the only word I really understood about it: ‘cherry.’ Then more classes!”

Discovering that different looms were needed to weave more complex designs and structures, Madelyn began buying different looms. She started a weaving school, teaching the techniques she’d learned.

“Then I had too many looms, and we bought the farm next door,” Madelyn said. “I advertised and thought I’d get people from only as far as Columbia Missouri. I got people from all over. It was 1984. We had no air-conditioning at first. It was unbelievable.”

By 1990, the school was so popular that Madelyn built a new building to accommodate the growing number of of looms that were bought to teach different weaving techniques. Air conditioning was installed.

Serendipity–and escape from Missouri’s summer heat–found Madelyn being invited to teach weaving in Coupeville by Judy Lynn, one of the founders of the Coupeville Arts Center.

The first time was in ’89,” Madelyn said. “Judy brought me here and she was the head of the school. And they had the conferences at Camp Casey.”

By 1992, Madelyn packed up her looms and moved to Coupeville, where she converted the basement of her home–with expansions since–to accommodate 34 looms and 14 students in each class. There they learn designing, drafting and weaving fabric in different patterns. Madelyn published ” The Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers.”

“Most important to me is helping students understand how weave structures work,” Madelyn said.

Over the years the women grew to know each other, meeting at conventions and weavers’ convergences every two years.

“We’re professionals in the weaving world–a niche market,” Rachel explained. “One of the major ways of developing new weavers and promoting new ones were the conferences. There’s regional ones in odd years and national ones in even years. A real variety, and a big market place where vendors set up and take orders. People like us, we’d chat and go to dinner.”

“I remember the two of you in the Fireside booth–I’d come running,” Madelyn recalled.

Nowadays, Rachel still enjoys learning new techniques from regional conferences she attends..

For Madelyn, after 40 years of teaching a craft she loves, she notes: “Nothing is more wonderful than seeing people fall in love with weaving.”

To learn more visit the Whidbey Weavers Guild, which hosts monthly meetings. To find out about classes offered at the Weaver’s School, visit this webpage.