Working together in a Philadelphia yarn store, Kate Gagnon Osborn and Courtney Kelley learned how to help customers choose the right yarn for a project, welcome in timid new knitters, and create samples to help move yarn out the door. They learned what didn’t work (donut-shaped balls of yarn that hopped off the shelves and tangled, patterns that used a few yards of a 100-gram skein) and what did (unfussy classic yarns, wearable sweaters, and lots of fun-to-knit hats). They founded Kelbourne Wool...
Jun 29, 2024•1 hr
If you knit, spin, sew, weave, or follow any crafty pursuit, you will not be surprised that many of our most common metaphors come from textiles. They are interwoven in our vocabulary, and whether you like to spin a yarn from words or fibers, you will recognize many of them. But then there are the words whose textile roots are less obvious: Rocket. Bombastic. And we’ve forgotten the regional roots of some kinds of fabric, where the skill and creativity refined in a particular place produced an e...
Jun 15, 2024•39 min
When Jen Simonic and Masey Kaplan’s friend lost her mother, she had the challenge of going through her mother’s things while grieving her loss. Among her posessions was something almost every crafter has at least one of: a work in progress. Jen and Masey had each finished projects for bereaved family members before, but neither of them could take on this one, a pair of crocheted blankets for two very tall sons. If the two of them were happy to finish a loved one’s unfinished craft project, they ...
Jun 01, 2024•1 hr
A career professional at Levi Strauss & Company, Eileen Lee learned about dyeing, weaving, and sewing on an international scale: giant factories full of loud looms weaving 2/2 twill, pattern pieces cut out of four-foot-high stacks of cloth, and no possibility of adding a tuck here or a dart there without retooling. During her years in the industry, Eileen saw major shifts in the market for the company's signature product, as their target customer began to look elsewhere and their manufacturi...
May 18, 2024•43 min
Lilly Marsh creates blankets, shawls, and other cloth, almost exclusively from local wool. Working closely with farmers and the nearby Battenkill Fiber Mill, she gets to know not only her neighbors but the fibers they grow: the surprisingly lovely wool from East Friesian sheep raised to produce milk, the springy Dorset crosses that are popular in the region, and other fibers of the Hudson Valley Textile Network. Formerly a shepherd herself, Lilly knows how important and unique this wool is to th...
May 04, 2024•55 min
The call of complexity draws some weavers to more shafts, more structures, more hand-manipulated techniques. For Annie MacHale, refining the techniques and celebrating the artistry of very simple bands has been a lifelong fascination. Starting when she first picked up a shuttle and inkle loom in her teens, Annie has worked in wool, cotton, and hemp, creating practical cloth that’s just a few inches wide. Any bandweaver has heard the question more times than they can count: “But what can you do w...
Apr 20, 2024•54 min
“Rule number one: Never drink the dye bath.” Indigo and cochineal may be the most widely recognized natural dyes for many fiber artists, and there’s little temptation of sampling an indigo vat or pot of ground insects. But a simmering kettle of dye mushrooms or lichens? That might smell delicious, but if you’re in a class with Alissa Allen, it’s not soup you’re making—it’s an amazing range of colors. Depending on the species you find and the methods of extraction, you may get not only earthy bro...
Apr 06, 2024•55 min
In a period when agriculture moved toward chemicals, genetic engineering, and monoculture, Sally Fox decided to explore what could happen if she collaborated with nature instead of fighting it. With an academic background in entomology, she studied ways to minimize the amount of pesticides needed to grow crops, and the more she saw the effects of those chemicals, the more she wanted to steer clear. Looking to avoid synthetic dyes, she was intrigued when she came across a few seeds of naturally c...
Mar 23, 2024•58 min
When Susan Bateman first opened Yarn Barn of Kansas in 1971, a woman starting a small business couldn’t get a credit card in her own name. Weavers like her had a hard time finding yarns, tools, and other supplies, some of which were only available from overseas, and she thought there must be an opportunity to bring fiber artists more of what they needed. Susan and her husband, Jim, have spent decades building the kind of store she wanted to see when she was learning to weave and hoping to grow h...
Mar 16, 2024•1 hr
There may be no other type of textile that is more art and craft at the same time than tapestry weaving. Tapestry allows the weaver to create images with simple tools, but the skills and materials in tapestry are generally hard-wearing. You might find a tapestry on the floor as a rug as often as on a wall as a piece of art. Rebecca Mezoff became a tapestry weaver after a career in occupational therapy, finding that it suited her artistically and let her use other skills she loved, such as teachi...
Mar 09, 2024•38 min
For Hannah Thiessen Howard, slow knitting isn’t about the speed of making stitches or finishing projects. Swift and leisurely knitters alike can embrace the purpose and experience of knitting and how it connects crafter to community. Selecting materials, choosing projects, and approaching your work with an open mind all contribute to a meaningful knitting life. Knitting can offer refuge, inspiration, and self-expression. It can also be a step, large or small, toward bringing about the kind of wo...
Feb 24, 2024•56 min
Although she grew up in the freezing winters of New York, Keisha Cameron and her husband decided to move their young family to a peri-urban spot outside Atlanta, Georgia, to set down roots and rebuild their connection to the land. They began with raising what their family needed for food and other daily necessities, but over the past decade, High Hog Farm has developed stocks of rare-breed sheep, angora rabbits, and chickens. In their gardens, the family cultivate produce as well as medicinal an...
Feb 10, 2024•49 min
Justin Squizzero loves exploring the frontiers of technology, seeing how he can tune a piece of equipment to produce a complex textile. The technology that fascinates him reached its peak before the 20th century. Weaving on an old loom doesn’t mean trying to turn back time, though—it means choosing the most refined technology to create the handwoven fabrics that he envisions. If a modern tool is better than the historic one (like the laser cutter that produced the small metal rings called mails,...
Jan 27, 2024•42 min
Kaffe Fassett doesn’t play favorites in his work—he doesn’t have a favorite medium, and he definitely doesn’t have a favorite color. What he has is a powerful delight in combining the simple elements of color, line, and image, and a passion for helping other people share in that joy. For someone whose career is inextricably linked to stitching, his needlework techniques are surprisingly simple. “I’m never interested in technical acrobatics,” he says. “I think that color is what is fabulous, and ...
Jan 13, 2024•30 min
Between the sheep in the field and the lovely yarn in your hands lies the complex network of the wool industry. Fiber must be scoured, spun, and maybe dyed, and it all starts with shearing. Attending a Fibershed symposium in 2012, Stephany Wilkes was surprised to learn that one of the barriers to local fiber production was a lack of trained shearers. A knitter and software developer, she had no hands-on livestock experience when she signed up for a shearing class through an extension center and ...
Dec 30, 2023•51 min
What do you get when a crafter who loves colorful hand-dyed yarns (and hates stalking shop updates) crosses paths with a fresh, new yarn producer? Like many of her knitter friends in 2013, Lisa Chamoff was enchanted by the artful and expressive work of the independent dyers whose skeins were cropping up around the yarn world. Shoppers found new favorites by word of mouth, hearing about a new colorway or restock here and there. At the same time, talented dyers with fledgling businesses relied on ...
Dec 16, 2023•57 min
[Sponsored Content] If you’ve been weaving, knitting, or playing with fiber for long—or if you’ve passed some fiber animals in a field—you probably think you know what an alpaca looks like: a fluffy creature with a long neck and spade-shaped ears. But you may not know that there’s a different kind of alpaca, one whose coat grows in long, silky ringlets instead of an allover fluffy halo. Suri alpacas make up a small fraction of the alpacas, both worldwide and in the United States, but their speci...
Dec 09, 2023•51 min
The scale of Sarah Neubert’s work varies from miniature to monumental, from small pieces such as earrings to room-sized installations. She dreams of creating entire woven environments that are sensory and tactile, like cocoons or sanctuaries of fiber. Working on a large scale allows her to explore new techniques and push the boundaries of her art. However, she also appreciates the sense of accomplishment that comes from creating small, wearable pieces. Her classes at the upcoming Weave Together ...
Dec 02, 2023•45 min
The picture of a flock of primitive-breed sheep, the last of their kind, living on an island off the northeast coast of Scotland, has a certain romance to it. Plenty of knitters, spinners, fiber artists, and citizens of the modern world might idly dream of living on such an island and tending such a flock. With no background as a farmer and only a few years as a shepherd, Jane Cooper decided to bring that dream to life. Enchanted by the fiber of the Boreray sheep, and with her life transformed b...
Nov 18, 2023•1 hr 14 min
Felicia Lo spent most of her college years wearing a lot of black. The bright, happy color combinations that she loved as a child—lime green and hot pink, pink and yellow—didn’t fit other people’s idea of what colors went together, so she avoided wearing colors altogether. It took years to begin introducing color into her wardrobe again. As handdyeing began its groundswell in the early 2000s, Felicia began experimenting with dyeing fiber and then yarn. As it turned out, fiber artists across the ...
Nov 04, 2023•44 min
In 2009, Mary Jeanne Packer founded Battenkill Fibers Carding & Spinning Mill to work with small farms, yarn companies, and even individual handspinners who wanted great yarn. The partnerships built around the mill are helping revitalize the regional wool economy and sustain shepherds and shops alike. We are far from the days when 13 water-powered mills lined the Battenkill River in Greenwich, New York, all processing American wool, but through collaborations across the textile industry, the...
Oct 21, 2023•50 min
Many weavers find their inspiration by asking, “What if...” Since she first sat down at a loom, Deb Essen has pushed the limits of her weaving by asking, “Why can’t I?” Deb has followed that question since childhood, right through her career as a weaving teacher and author. Since she first neglected her table-clearing duties to watch a weaving demonstration at the age of 9, the craft of weaving has held her fascinated. And despite the disciplines of teaching, designing, and writing, that childli...
Oct 07, 2023•58 min
Most of us avoid nettles, thinking of them as weeds whose little stinging hairs can inject a painful toxin into the unexpecting walker. But strolling through the woods near his home in England, Allan Brown was captivated by the tall native plants. Knowing that textile cultures across the world have produced cloth from nettles, he wanted to learn more about cloth made with nettle fiber. Except for a few exceptions—giant Himalayan nettles and ramie, which is a non-stinging plant in the nettle fami...
Sep 23, 2023•56 min
Kristin Nicholas lives in an idyllic historic New England home at the end of a dirt road, the interior handpainted in whimsical, vivid motifs. In neighboring fields, her family's hundreds of sheep graze in historic pastures. “From the outside looking in, it looks like a very romantic life,” she says. “But it is a ton of work. Most sane people wouldn’t do it, as far as I’m concerned.” Kristin has never had a hard time reconciling her creative and practical sides, and in fiber art, she found a hom...
Sep 09, 2023•56 min
When she married her husband, "polyester kid" Anita Luvera Mayer received an extraordinary wedding gift from her mother-in-law: a loom and weaving lessons. A weaving store owner, Marcelle Mayer gave the same gift to each of her daughters-in-law. The others didn't take to it, but for Anita it was the beginning of a whole new life. Although she preferred making simple cloth to complex patterns, weaving opened the doors to meeting other fiber artists, teaching across North America, and learning to ...
Aug 26, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Susan Druding was a graduate student at the University of California-Berkeley when she first learned to spin and weave. In the Bay Area of the 1960s, fiber interest and social tensions both ran high. Without a business plan but with a lease on a small storefront, Susan and a business partner opened Straw Into Gold, a store devoted mostly to spinning and dyeing. Spinning legend Bette Hochberg, author of Handspinner's Handbook and Spin Span Spun, was a regular, and legendary spinning wheel maker A...
Aug 12, 2023•55 min
After you finish weaving fabric that you love and are proud of, cutting it up can be an unappealing thought. What if it falls apart? What if you make the wrong cut? What if the finished piece doesn't turn out like you picture it? For Daryl Lancaster, the challenges of transforming a handwoven fabric into a wearable garment are the real pleasure—and if problem-solving is the goal, then what looks like a problem is really a creative prompt. As she tells her students, "This is fiber. There's always...
Jul 29, 2023•1 hr 13 min
"All This by Hand"—that's the promise of PieceWork magazine, which was first published in 1993 to honor the handwork created through the ages, mostly by women, mostly with little fanfare. "Handwork reflects peoples history, daily lives, and cultures. In this issue's stories, handwork means physical survival, personal hope, and cultural identity," said Veronica Patterson in the first issue. To celebrate where the magazine came from and what sustains us, we interviewed two delightful women: Veroni...
Jul 15, 2023•45 min
Don't try to put Sarah Swett in a box—if you do, she might just weave a bag on it. (https://handwovenmagazine.com/inspiration-everywhere-handspun-yarn-tapestry-weaving/) Growing up on the East Coast, Sarah found herself more enchanted with knitting sweaters from farm yarn than the traditional college track. She spent her young adulthood as a ranch hand and cook in Montana and Idaho, where she brought her yarn in by pack mule. She fell in love with the Palouse region of western Idaho for its roll...
Jul 01, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Clara Parkes became many knitters' guiding light and best friend when she launched Knitter's Review in 2000. One of the early standouts in the early online knitting landscape, the site developed a devoted following for its in-depth, objective yarn reviews and lively forums. Several years after the site's inception, she began writing books, starting with The Knitter's Book of Yarn, which was followed by The Knitter's Book of Wool and The Knitter's Book of Socks. As she explored the yarn industry,...
Jun 17, 2023•49 min
