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 with it?” Annie replies, “The uses are limited only by your imagination.” Her work has found an avid ..read more

“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 browns and yellows but vivid purple, magenta, green, and more. “Mycopigments,” the term that Alissa coi ..read more

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 colored brown cotton, which is naturally pest-resistant. According to conventional wisdom, brown cott ..read more

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 her fiber skills: one with a wide selection of yarns, a lively education program, and lots and lots o ..read more

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 teaching, dyeing, and spinning. She weaves very large pieces in her studio and very small pieces in outdoo ..read more

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 world that you’d like to see. From her first yarn-industry internship at a large international company ..read more

Although she grew up in the freezing winters of New York, Keisha Cameron and her husband decided to move their young family to a rural spot outside Atlanta, Georgia, to set down roots and rebuild their collection 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 and dye plants. As returning-generation farmers, they not only love what they do, they also feel an obligat ..read more

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 you know, a beautiful image that has beautiful colors doesn’t need to go any further.” Some of his b ..read more

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 found herself up to her elbows in wool. Despite the grueling labor and intensely specialized learnin ..read more

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 that word of mouth to sell a few skeins at a time. Lisa saw an opportunity for a new kind of website ..read more