Aimee Abernathy

Aimee Abernathy is a knitter, spinner and weaver. Aimee has been knitting for 8 years, learning from a book shortly after being diagnosed with Lupus and credits knitting for keeping her sane in doctors’ offices, lines at the post office and long conference calls. Aimee is located in Charlotte, NC, where she enjoys teaching at Yarnhouse in NoDa and meeting new people. She has been lucky enough to take classes from such fantastic knitters as Wendy Johnson, Cookie A., Anne Hanson and Charlene Schurch. Aimee can also be found at fairieknits.com and on Ravelry as funfairiegirl.

Cindy Alexander

Cindy Alexander began her fiber addiction with an innocent trip to the local library to watch a spinning and weaving demo. Learning to spin quickly led to a love of all wooly creatures big and small. Cindy has had an alpaca farm since 1999, that has also been home to many other wooly/feathery creatures along the way. Cindy has taught spinning, weaving and dyeing at her farm and other venues. Her work has won awards and she hopes to inspire others to explore new possibilities with fiber.

Vicki Bennett

Vicki lives part of the year in Asheville, NC, where she teaches feltmaking and works in the garden of her mountain home. She lives the rest of the year in St. Petersburg, Florida where she teaches at the Morean Arts Center, exhibits and sells her craft at Florida Craftsmen Gallery. Her website is tan When not tangled up with wool (her website is tangledupinwool.com), she works with raptors in permanent rehabilitation.

Angie Buchanan

Angie Buchanan is a fiber artist living in Greer, SC who raises alpacas and angora goats and incorporates their fiber into her work. She is a weaver, felter, dyer, and crocheter… pretty much all things fiber. She started drawing and painting at an early age, and in 2005, got hit with the “fiber bug” and began learning and using it in all of her work. Professionally, she is a private tutor for children and young adults with dyslexia. By teaching fiber arts classes, she has found a way to combine her love of fiber with her love of teaching.

Suzy Carson

Has been facilitating creative and self-reflective workshops for women for over 15 years. A few years ago I happened to see a needle felting demonstration on television and was captivated immediately! I spent time teaching myself the technique and later attended a week-long workshop at the John Campbell Folk Art School. The marriage of these two loves—needle felting
& inner exploration—has resulted in The Time is Ripe workshops. Originally from southern California, I moved to the upstate of South Carolina
over 40 years ago and now live on family land among 4 generations.

Jean Castle

Jean learned to crochet from her grandmother when she was 5. In later years she began raising fiber animals to supply the kind of materials she wanted to work with when the local stores carried ONLY acrylic yarns. She has taught crochet at venues for many years and currently lives in Candler NC with about 18 alpacas, 2 parrots and 4 cats, all of which end up in some of her projects, intentionally or otherwise.

Pat Cothran

Pat Cothran is a North Carolina Adoption Coordinator, and past member of the Board of Directors of Southeast Llama Rescue. She and her husband own Soggy Bottom Farm in western North Carolina, which is home to llamas, alpacas, a horse and a donkey, and five dogs. At an early age, Pat got involved in sewing, knitting, cross-stitch, needlepoint, ceramics, and other creative endeavors. Her current fiber-related interests include needle-felting, repurposing wool, and creating items from raw materials using the Taravia. She enjoys participating in the annual pack llama trials near Asheville, NC, as a member of the Pack Llama Trial Association (PLTA).

Vickie Clontz

Vickie’s love of fibers, wool and folk art shine through in each of her classes and the 70+ patterns she has designed for her company, Annie’s Keepsakes, which celebrated its 20-year anniversary in 2010! Vickie’s projects have appeared in magazines across the nation and abroad, and she brings an easy-going style and award-winning expertise to each of her classes and workshops. See more of Vickie’s work, on her web-site at http://www.annieskeepsakes.com

Gail Mac Lean Johnston

Gail is a knitter, quilter, spinner, felter and all around crafter. Gail has lived in Western North Carolina for 7 years. Living with her husband Dr. Timothy Johnston in Cullowhee where he practices family medicine across the lawn from their home. She and her husband have a Llama, miniature horse, pygora and angora goat farm. Most of the Animals have been rescued and now have a forever home. She became enchanted with all fiber art during a weekend retreat to East Bend North Carolina when she attended “Everything Fiber” at another llama farm. Self taught she operates Hippiechix Fiber Art Design Studio and can be found on www.hippiechixfiber.etsy.comand www.hippiechixfiberart.com. She also teaches all fiber classes at Southwestern Community College. These classes are part of the Extension program.

Rita de Maintenon

Rita de Maintenon is a retired educator, speaker and business owner who moved to Asheville in 2009. She was raised in Germany and learned all dimensions of fiber arts while growing up. She has taught workshops for many years to encourage participants to create their own heirloom treasures and now concentrates on crochet heritage techniques like broomstick and hairpin lace, Tunisian, Aran and Irish crochet. Rita is a member of the Southern Highland Guild, HandMade in America and a Blue Ridge National Heritage Artist.  Her business is Heirloom Treasures and her website is: www.heirloomtreasuresfiberarts.com

Cassie Dickson

A member of the Southern Highland Craft Guild, Cassie Dickson is a traditional pattern weaver who specializes in the weaving of coverlets and the processing of the flax plant to linen cloth.  She has been spinning, weaving and natural dyeing for over 30 years and has raised silk worms for silk for the past 20 years.

Carla Filippelli

Carla Filippelli has been weaving baskets and sculpture for over 20 years. She and her partner Greg have developed a free form style of weaving known as random weave and their fluid designs and shapes have evolved into functional baskets for homes and sculptural art for the wall.  Represented by galleries and exhibitions nationwide, Carla and Greg are exhibiting artists in the US State Dept Artists in Embassies Program, available for private lessons and teach group workshops to area school students and craft schools. Cranberry Creek Studios, their business of over 25 years, is open by appointment.

Chad Alice Hagen

Chad Alice Hagen has been a felt maker since 1979 and exploring and teaching the resist dyeing of hand felted wool since 1990.  Richly dyed colors and multi-layed surface markings are the trademarks of her years of intensive explorations on Art pieces, hats, scarves, jewelry and currently stitched and beaded books and brooches. Her work with hand made felt can be found in major collections and has appeared on the covers of Surface Design Journal, Fiberarts and Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot Magazines. She is the author of three books;  “The Weekend Crafter: Feltmaking; “Fabulous Felt Hats” and “The Fabulous Felt Scarf”.  She has her BA and MS from University of Wisconsin and MFA from Cranbrook.

Eileen Hallman

Educational background is in engineering. She has been spinning and weaving cotton since the early 1980‟s. “While I do spin and weave with other fibers, the environmental cottons are my passion”. Worked previously for Sally Fox, managing Vreseis Limited and performing research on fiber, yarn and fabric made of the naturally pigmented cotton.

In my current work with New World Textiles, I am involved in research on organic, naturally pigmented, and recycled cottons and in the development of spinning slivers and yarns from these cottons. I am not committed to 100% cotton products; I also blend these cottons with other natural fibers.

As a cotton enthusiast, I also develop tools and techniques; the Khadi Khanoo  shuttle, a shuttle that holds the spindle for a book charkha, allows the use of singles as weft. The technique of the long draw allows for fairly consistent color sections to be spun, which can be woven as stripes on a plain warp or a “single shuttle plaid” on a striped warp. The simplicity of technique and the availability of colored fiber allow the spinner and weaver to create dynamic fabrics.

Articles

Arm’s Length Spinning, or Single Shuttle Plaid, Spin-Off Fall „96, Spinning Crepe Yarns, SS&D Summer „97, The Carolina Flax Project, SS&D Fall „97, Spinning for a Single Shuttle Plaid, SS&D Winter „98, The Whole Truth about Sett, Weaver‟s, Spring „98, Lyocell , Weaver‟s , Fall „98, Crepe & Shape, Spin-Off Fall „99, Spinning Hope in Stecoah, Fiber Ethics, Winter

Jenny Raymond

Jenny Raymond picked up needles and a hook in 1996 but came to them nearly full time in 2007 when she started designing and teaching to combat the insanity of being a stay at home mom. She lives in Charlotte, NC with her husband, 3 children and dog.

Melissa Ricks

Melissa Yoder Ricks has been crazy for yarn and fiber since learning to crochet from her great-grandmother when she was a preschooler.  She’s been knitting since elementary school and spinning since 1990.  In addition to earning a BA in fine art/design from Duke University, she’s taken spinning classes from Rita Buchanan, Lexi Boeger (pluckyfluff) and Jacey Boggs (insuboridknit).  Since 2008, Melissa has pursued her love of fiber arts full time as the owner/fiber artist at Wild Hare Fiber Studio (http://www.wildharefiber.com) and by teaching classes and workshops, particularly in creative spinning and fiber preparation.  Her knitting designs and handspun yarns have appeared in ‘Knitters’ magazine and ‘Spin Off.’

Esther Rogers

Esther Rodgers is a fiber artist who lives in Mebane, NC, though originally from Chicago IL.  She is inspired by everyday life- through music, nature, television, she’s always thinking “how can I spin this into a yarn?”  Esther loves to play with color and texture, and her one of a kind art yarns and art fiber batts continue to prove it.  She’s spun yarn that includes shredded money, cassette tape, sequins, beads, sparkly pom pom’s, flowers…nothing is off limits!  Her most was featured in the Winter/Spring 2011 issue of Knitscene magazine and the Fall 2010 issue of Spin Off.

Kathleen Taylor  

Kathleen Taylor is a wife, mother, grandmother, spinner, knitter, designer, and writer. Her knitting books include: Knit One, Felt Too; Yarns to Dye For; I Heart Felt; The Big Book of Socks; and Fearless Fair Isle Knitting. She lives in South Dakota, and absolutely loves coming to Asheville to teach. She has a blog at  http://kathleen-dakotadreams.blogspot.com/

Vasanto

Vasanto   has been working with wool and color since she learned to knit as a child. She has been spinning dyeing, knitting, crocheting, weaving and felting it. She says, “wool is one of the first man-made fabrics. It is soft, rich, and extremely versatile.” She began to felt by learning to make hats from Beth Beede, creator of the hat-on-a-ball technique.

Julie Wilson

Julie Wilson and her family own a farm in Fines Creek, North Carolina.  In 1990, two sheep came to the Wilson’s family. Since then, Jehovah Raah Farm has grown to Shetland sheep, alpacas, llamas, Angora goats, Angora Rabbits, and Scottish Highland cattle.  Julie has been spinning since 1990, and has retired from teaching high school Special Education for over 30 years.  Satisfaction guaranteed by Julie.