Contributors

Editor/site owner and Main Contributor - Sara from www.SarasTextureCrafts.com

What can I say… I’m a fibre addict!

They say the root to combating your addictions is firstly admitting them, but I’m not so sure that works for me… I’ve not noticed any less resistance to stopping… it looks like I’m hooked for life and what’s more I’ve moved into selling fibre too!

I always had a strong interest in fabric and textile crafts growing up and this continued through out my studies to become a fashion designer. My mother’s encouragement and support saw me learn how to sew, knit, pattern cut and needlework long before I left school and so I never envisaged working in any other industry.

Later working for a number of British Fashion Designers I was lucky enough to visit many mills and textile factories whilst planning my next collections. Here is where my passion for fabric took a more technical turn and I became much more interested in how fabrics were produced and how fibres behaved. Later this would lead to crafts like felt making, spinning, weaving and free machine embroidery where I could create my own fabrics and work directly with the fibres I saw at the mills. Texture is key for me, I love 3 dimensional surfaces, colours and decorations and this has always inspired my work and my choice of crafts.

In late 2006 Sara’s Texture Crafts was born. Initially working alongside my freelance design jobs, it gradually took over as I met more and more fibre artists and has since steadily grown to include the creation of craft communities like Working with Felt and Spinning Web. Now I’m a full-time fibre supplier and artist and have been since mid 2007. What I love most about my day job is meeting and working with fellow addicts on materials for their latest projects and encouraging new addicts through my learning centre. This insatiable appetite for fibre is contagious I’m afraid!

Sara is a Fibre Artist, based in Devon.

Felt Making and Dyeing Contributor – Mariana of www.Florcita.eu

My name is Mariana Ciliberto. I’m a ceramist and fibre artist. I’m also the mother of one little boy and the wife of a very intelligent - also crafty- man…

I was born and raised in the Argentinean Patagonia where the wind blows strong, the landscape is vast and empty and the sun shines even in the cold winters.

A decade ago, whilst travelling around Europe, I met a dutch guy who, only a few months later, was on his knees asking me to spend my life with him. And I said yes. So I packed up my life in Argentina and moved to The Netherlands. Many things have happened since, but one thing I’ve learnt for sure: being involved with arts; experimenting, daring, learning… is what makes me happy. And ultimately, I wish to pass that on to my son: dream, work hard and enjoy the process. That is what life is about:  the trip, not the destination.

Florcita means “little flower” in spanish, and it has been my nickname for ever. My ceramic pieces have always been signed with a  little flower so it stuck!

Spinning and Knitting Contributor – Dionne Westwood of The Long & The Short of It!

Spinning Tuition, offered in Andover, Hampshire

1 – 2 – 1 tuition for beginners and intermediate spinners who would like to

focus on specific technique.

Experience in both wool and plant fibres plus Cat and Dog hair.

Email dionne.westwood@sky.com

Hi, I’m Dee
I was shown knitting as a child by my Grandmother but didn’t become hooked until I reached the age of 39 when I became a grandmother myself and decided “Grandmothers Knit!” The impact of knitting in my life has been amazing. And it’s not just grandmothers who knit either!…. Fibre crafts are enjoying a resurgence of popularity and is enjoyed by people of all ages and abilities all around the world…. the choice of crafts, the materials whether natural, manufactured or recycled and how they interact with one another is astonishing.

Being mainly self-taught using the internet and books I began creating small children’s clothing items. Being a left hander, I had some challenges, however knitting quickly and irreversibly became a passion and my home full of yarn I just had to have. Everyone I know has been given socks, knitted toys and various other creations and 4 years on my experience and knowledge has become quite vast, though there is still so much I need, and want to learn, and so much I will never have time to master.

More recently I found I had begun to get picky about my yarn choices and making larger projects for myself meant I needed to branch off into plant and recycled fibres which were just not available commercially either in the yarn weight or colours I wanted and so the only way forward was to learn to make my own.

My drop spindle came first, with the realisation that I needed a wheel at the earliest opportunity and that I was a natural-born spinner. Again books and the internet have been invaluable in my learning process, as have fibre suppliers such as Sara’s Texture Crafts who have always been more than happy to answer questions and offer solutions.  Becoming a member of the local branch of the Weavers, Spinners and Dyers has also opened some delightful doors. Some months on from there I am generally acknowledged as a hungry learner with a passion to understand fibre, how it is made and why it is suited to particular uses. I strive to know and understand, to utilise fibre for its best qualities and use them to suit a project I wish to do. I will spin with almost anything, recently doing domestic cat and I’m waiting on some Husky hair and hope soon to have a chance to spin some Lion and other usual fibres.

My yarn stash has been largely replaced by a fibre stash and I have found that spinning to create my own yarns, and then creating knitted or woven pieces give me enormous satisfaction, being able to take a natural or manufactured fibre, using both age-old traditional and modern methods and techniques to create a beautiful and unique yarn is both “earthy” and “exciting”.

Sara has offered me this marvellous opportunity to work with her to promote her products, to open doorways and share and encourage knowledge via written, pictorial and video tutorials on her website.

Join me, we can journey together into this endlessly fascinating arena, allow me to share, to help and encourage you in your own creativity. We hope within this learning centre to reinforce basic practice in fibre preparation and how it becomes the yarn you want and also to introduce novelty or unusual fibres that are now becoming available to us fibre enthusiasts…and explore how they can be used for your chosen craft…. I will be concentrating on Spinning and Knitting whilst other enthusiasts will focus on other areas such as felting, crochet, weaving and so on.