Unlike Any Other
VAVAVA blankets are created by Pam Magee at her mill in Robert's Creek, British Columbia.
Meet Pam
Located in Roberts Creek, British Columbia, Canada, the Macgee Cloth Company is a bespoke textile company specializing in blankets and throws made on antique English shuttle looms. The blankets have a true selvedge edge which can only be made by a shuttle loom weaving a continuous weft thread. Pam has sourced and imported Dobcross looms from Wales and Yorkshire in the UK manufactured from 1936 to 1953 as well as a Charlesworth warper from 1899 to craft blankets in the great tradition of heirloom weaving.
The company was started with the desire to create a blanket in the tradition of heirloom textiles craft but with transparent sourcing and environmentally sound provenance.
Pam is the dreamer and the weaver that makes every VAVAVA blanket. She is the visionary behind the looms, the woman that salvaged the forlorn and neglected antique machines from another continent, and brought them back to life in her mill among the towering evergreens deep in the heart of Robert's Creek.
Without Pam there would be no VAVAVA blankets, no threads that pull on our hearts every time we run our palm over the organic cotton blankets she designed, wove, and finished.
©Alana Paterson
Our blankets are handcrafted on antique machinery and equipment from the 1890s to the 1950s, of which very few of still exist in the world today.
Woven from the Past
These steel dinosaurs, remnants of a bygone era, are some of the most beautiful machines you ever could see. Solid and built to last, they hammer on, long beyond those who built them.
A rare find: the warper at Macgee Cloth. Dated from the early 20th century, this mystical piece of machinery is part of creating the warp - the vertical threads of the weave.
It all begins on the creel, a large moveable rack where cones of threads are set to form the pattern that will become the warp (the vertical threads) of the blanket.
Our blankets are woven on Dobcross Shuttle Looms circa 1936. Machines engineered to create a continuous weft of thread called a selvedge. These self-sealing edges offer a supremely smooth blanket with no sewn seams or folded hems.
As many things of yesteryear, over time these hulking looms were replaced by bigger faster machines, but when technology gives it also takes, making a true selvedge edge almost a thing of the past. Thanks to our weaver Pam, who acquired and salvaged an old Dobcross, the steady beat of the shuttle loom and the selvedge edge live on.
Threaded to History
A Dobcross Shuttle Loom at Macgee Cloth
The Selvedge Edge Tells a Story
Selvedges are the edges parallel to the warp (the perpendicular threads that run the entire length of the fabric), created by the weft thread looping back at the end of each row, finishing the edge of the fabric as it is woven. This means there is no real front or back to the blanket, due to the flat seamless edge.
Dobcross looms created a selvedge edge, but as these machines were replaced by faster more modern technology the selvedge gave up the ghost, and a true selvedge is now a rare and special thing.
A true selvedge edge created by a Dobcross Loom
Each blanket is hand finished with detail and care by Pam. Once the woven fabric comes off the loom it is sewn by hand on the fringed end, the fringe is cut with precision and then the blanket is washed and dried to soften the fibres into each other.
Every VAVAVA blanket is a work of skill, craft, and heart.
Handsomely Finished
Truly organic cotton
Pam sources only certified 100% organic cotton from the Texas Organic Cotton Collective, certified by the Texas Department of Agriculture, where most Co-op members practice dryland farming techniques, relying on natural weather cycles rather than large amounts of irrigation water to grow their cotton. This means we know exactly where our cotton was grown - on what family farms and how it was treated.
Pam's dedication to transparency is something we admire and revere.
