This Spotlights honors one of our members as part of our 75th Anniversary Celebration.
- by sandy mclain hochmuth
Meet Maxine Mar, our Guild Librarian. A fierce advocate for all publications in the Guild’s comprehensive weaving and fiber collection, she is also a ferocious tracker-downer of all overdue materials. Here is Maxine’s story.
Maxine’s introduction to weaving knocked her metaphorical socks off, and she was in love. But Maxine being Maxine, she put family before passion. In 1977, she had taken a four-hour night course on a table loom, “but I never got far on my project before my family needed me. I headed back to help my parents with my sick grandma, which was my absolute pleasure.”
Time passed, marriage, family, young kids, kids growing older, independent. When her youngest was a few months shy of her 18th birthday, it was decided that mom no longer needed to accompany her on those athletic travels. Maxine sighed a wistful maternal sigh, then with one great “AHA,” thought about weaving. And celebrated with a class at Tammy’s. She “was hooked.” If you do the math, she appeared at Tammy’s door 32 years after that first table loom class.
It was several years before Maxine worked up the courage to join the Guild. Despite Tammy’s strong encouragement, Maxine felt too “beginner-like to associate with all those fabulous weavers” that Tammy had told her about. However, once she joined the Guild, she “…found our group so welcoming and also so gifted in weaving, color, sewing ….. [she] was in awe.”
Weaving Loves/Hates? Maxine’s not sure what her favorite love is, maybe the technical side? “I still marvel at the treadle reduction programs. It’s amazing how quick and accurate the programs are. Also, how unbelievably useful they are too – I only have eight shafts and ten treadles.” And like many of us, she “HATES loading the loom.” And, ugh, she loathes bad tension – if doing it too often counts, it’s her forte!
What does Maxine weave? She “once wove a huppa for a wedding gift. I arrived there, ready to put it up for the ceremony – and IT DIDN’T FIT; the posts that were to support the canopy were huge!” Anguish! Desperation! YES! Inspiration! During the family pre-wedding dinner, she ripped out the huppa’s joining middle seam, and voila! Two beautiful table runners! And under her breath “oh well…”
She tells us that week to week, month to month, she “mainly weaves boring stuff,” (a description with which this author does not agree) –“lots of towels to stain, rugs and scarfs for my husband and family.” She does enjoy her rep weave rugs, and has just gifted one to her daughter. “Hopefully, she appreciates the time and effort loading all those threads took.”
What Maxine weaves, she gives to the family and the people who help care for her dog, Quincy. She made a neighbor a tote for her diaries. A favorite scarf is a pattern copied from Barbara Holman and given to her THEN 90-year-old favorite aunt. Her aunt passed and all the cousins took a special remembrance from her apartment. “I, of course, took my scarf back. When I wore it, I always thought of my favorite aunt.” Recently Maxine flew to California to see a cousin in hospice, and the scarf is now shared by Maxine’s aunt’s daughter-in-law and granddaughter. “Our families were close growing up, so it was the right choice to share the scarf again – despite being my favorite scarf. Guess I’ll have to weave it again.”
Illinois Prairie Weavers Guild 