Karen Gwinnell is a home crafter who likes to work with waste materials. She uses selvedge from tweed production and a handmade peg loom to weave mats and rugs. Selvedge is the woven strips of material leftover when removing the tweed from the loom. Historical mills struggled to repurpose this waste product but more commonly now mills sell selvedge on to crafters like Karen preventing it from being burnt or sent to landfill.
Karen started by making fireside rugs for her own home but found she was building up a stash of small lengths of material not suitable for rugs. This led to her trying the smaller mats which now reside under almost every plant-pot she owns. Now every piece of selvedge is utilised, and as a bonus her new handmade loom is small enough to set up in front of the TV.
She calls her craft Gwinnell Made as a word play on Well Made but as everybody pronounces Gwinnell wrong the joke is miss. Gwinnell – rhymes with well, not with nil.
Lived in Oban for 15 years. Work for a local charity (GRAB Trust) before this I worked in aviation and marine robotics.
