The Long Thread Podcast

Jayna Zweiman wants to wrap the world in kindness and warmth. She founded Welcome Blanket in 2017 as an invitation to crafters to make handmade blankets for refugees who have just arrived in the United States. Originally, she pictured 2,000 miles of blankets, as long a distance as the proposed wall along the southern border. Instead of a barrier, Jayna imagined the distance as an opportunity to we...

The best project books not only combine gorgeous designs with clear instructions, they also expand your fiber-arts horizon with a trip to a new part of the world, a collection of the best ideas of fellow crafters, an in-depth tour of a great technique, or the chance to incorporate your favorite non-fiber hobby. Here are some of the best project books that the Yarn Barn of Kansas loves to share. Cr...

How did people make and use the textiles we’ve created for millennia? From nalbinding to netting to bast fiber processing, Sally Pointer looks for answers by working with her hands. Some fiber crafts are as old as humanity, even recorded in cave paintings. Some fiber crafts are so little practiced now that they’re considered endangered. For textile historian (and prehistorian) Sally Pointer, they’...

How could you possibly improve on wool, the perfect fiber? In the 20th century, scientists thought they could do just that. Some of their innovations have disappeared . . . but some remain. In the middle of the 20th century, with technology promising a modern lifestyle that would be newer and better in every way, wool fiber began to look old-fashioned. The incredible demand for wool up through Wor...

A small group of Vermonters wanted to improve the environment and preserve the rural character of the state. Along with two friends, David Richie and his wife found a way: they founded the Green Mountain Spinnery. David Richie and his wife, Diana, wanted to keep their home state and region green and farm-friendly. Believing in thinking globally and acting locally, they joined a reading group in th...

A love of words, stories, and cloth led Karen Elting Brock around the world and back to PieceWork. ”All This by Hand” appeared on the first covers of PieceWork magazine, intended to capture the scope of material between the covers. Stitching, lacemaking, and other needlework, certainly, but other handwork, fashion, and the artisans who created the work all found their way into the pages of the mag...

As a budding crochet designer, Lir Shilton ran into obstacles and annoyances that many beginning crafters face. But instead of learning to live with them, she and her partner decided to make a platform that offers a different approach. Lir loved to crochet, and she especially loved creating designs to share with other makers. But crochet patterns vary significantly depending where you are in the w...

A pair of silk stockings, mended again and again below the ankle, set Emily Whitted on the path of discovery that has led her through archives and museums of early American history. The stockings belonged to Philadelphia’s Stephen Girard, who was one of the wealthiest men in America. Museum records didn’t mention the mends, though the socks had been repaired several times, making them as invisible...

Book Club Podcast: What lesser-known treasures do Yarn Barn fiber artists love to share? Susan and Melissa share some of their favorites in weaving, spinning, and knitting. Liz Gipson drops by to talk about one of her books that Susan and Melissa adore. Book-loving crafters generally have a few special titles tucked on the shelf between the major must-have references: a self-published monograph, a...

A fifth-generation quilter from the legendary community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, Loretta Pettway Bennett turns well used cloth into her own expressions of color and community. Loretta Pettway Bennett began her quilting journey as a child, threading needles for her mother as she sewed scraps into bedcoverings. The women in the town of Gee’s Bend pieced quilt tops and got together to hand quilt their...

With no background in fiber but a calling to help women in need, Diana Wiley built a thriving organization on handspun yarn, needlefelted gorillas, and a holistic community for over 200 women. Stepping into the Handspun Hope booth at a fiber festival feels like entering a luxury boutique filled with natural fibers, colorful yarns, handmade buttons, and whimsical sculptures. It would be easy to enj...

As Spin Off nears 50 years old, editor Pamela K. Schultz sees herself as the host of a wonderful spinning party that welcomes one and all. Taking a day off from the grind of law school, Pamela Schultz visited an art fair and saw a spinner with a spinning wheel. A longtime knitter, she had resisted suggestions that she learn to spin, but the rhythm of treadling and drafting offered an antidote to h...

Among four-shaft weavers, A Handweaver's Pattern Book is commonly referred to by just the author’s name—Davison—or as “the green book,” a reference to the iconic cover of many of the book’s printings. Since Marguerite Porter Davison first published it in 1944, it has been a foundational reference, the first book that many weavers buy and the one they keep close at hand. Packed with drafts and phot...

Editor, teacher, and shepherd Kate Larson makes the case that every knitter is already part of the farm-to-fiber story—whether they know it or not. Kate Larson is the editor of Farm & Fiber Knits and a beloved teacher of spinning, knitting, and weaving. She took time out from lambing season to talk about the magazine’s goals. Kate Larson isn’t making a magazine only for farmers and handspinner...

Book Club Podcast: Fiber art veterans Susan Bateman and Melissa Parsons compare notes with host Anne Merrow about the books every weaver, spinner, knitter, and crocheter should have on the bookshelf—plus big news about a classic weaving directory. They’re the first books you reach for, the ones you’ll never part with, and the first thing you recommend to every new crafter. If you have only one boo...

Knitters and crocheters know Angela Tong as a designer with hooks and needles, while weavers recognize her work in rigid-heddle and pin looms. Visitors to galleries and artisan markets know her as a potter. Angela thinks of herself simply as a maker, always drawn to creating beauty with her hands. Her first professional job set the tone: after earning a degree from the Fashion Institute of Technol...

Before Ravelry, before knitting podcasts, before the internet fully found its craft obsession, there was Knitty. Amy Sadler shares the inspiration and evolution of the online knitting phenomenon. In the early 2000s, as the internet became part of daily life for millions, Amy Sadler began a knitting blog. The blog movement connected knitters around the world (whether newbies or longtime stitchers)...

What new craft books are can't-miss? Which are the classic reference books that every crafter should have on the shelf? In the Yarn Barn of Kansas Book Club, teachers and book lovers talk about the books they wouldn't be without. Sponsored by Yarn Barn of Kansas Learning how to weave but need the right shuttle? Hooked on knitting and in search of a lofty yarn? Yarn Barn of Kansas has been your par...

Best known for his work with peanuts, renowned agricultural scientist George Washington Carver had a lifelong passion for needlework. Park Ranger Curtis Gregory shares stories about Carver’s interests in handwork and natural dyeing. Born in 1865 near Diamond, Missouri, George Washington Carver is one of the best known and most respected agricultural scientists in the history of the United States....

Gudrun Johnston has a deep legacy in Shetland knitting: her father’s family comes from the islands, and her mother founded a knitwear company that blended contemporary silhouettes with Fair Isle motifs, a business she called the Shetland Trader. But although Gudrun grew up wearing her mother’s designs, she didn’t learn to knit from her. Growing up largely elsewhere in Scotland, she learned the cra...

Christina Garton didn’t get to be the editor of Little Looms by taking weaving too seriously. First introduced to weaving in a class post-college, she joined Handwoven as assistant editor in 2011. She developed her passions for editing and weaving while working on both multishaft and rigid-heddle looms. Although she still loves working on her four- and eight-shaft looms, she was surprised to disco...

Small textile towns were once common in New England, with stout brick buildings harnessing the power of the region’s water to mill yarn and cloth. The Colony family had been owners of a mill in Harrisville, New Hampshire, since before the Civil War, but by the mid-twentieth century, such factories had begun to disappear. In 1970, 53 mills closed in New England, the Colony family’s among them. John...

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 br...

When you picture lace, what comes to mind: an old-fashioned once-white piece of Victorian embellishment? The elegant, possibly itchy decoration on a wedding gown? If you are a needleworker, you might picture an array of bobbins leashed to a cluster of pins and arrayed on a pillow, or a tatting shuttle, or a steel crochet hook. All of these images would be correct—but capture the tiniest slice of t...