Organizations
Handweavers Guild of America (HGA)
Founded in 1969 to inspire creativity and encourage excellence in the fiber arts, Handweavers Guild of America brings together weavers, spinners, dyers, basketmakers, fiber artists, and educators. HGA provides educational programs, conferences, and an award-winning quarterly publication, Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot, to its members as it seeks to increase awareness of and appreciation for the fiber arts. We are a member of HGA, and individuals may also join to enjoy member discounts in the HGA shop and registering for Convergence.
Midatlantic Fiber Association (MAFA)
The MidAtlantic Fiber Association (MAFA) represents and supports a community of fiber arts guilds in the greater Mid-Atlantic region with the goal of promoting fiber arts education. Although MAFA is best known for its biennial conference, the all-volunteer, not-for-profit organization provides ongoing financial grants, fellowships and scholarships to promote education, development and public outreach in the fiber arts. We are a member guild of MAFA.
Publications
Handwoven Magazine – a magazine that is published 6 times a year, containing articles of interest to handweavers, particularly specific projects with complete drafts and instructions.
Heddlecraft – an online magazine for weavers who already know how to weave and desire to learn more about weave structures and weaving.
Weavers Craft – a publication by former Handwoven editor Jean Scorgie, features well-designed projects with special emphasis on creative expression in color and design. The projects are for beginning and intermediate weavers on four- to eight-shaft table or floor looms, with most of the projects for four-shaft looms. The website also has some tips on weaving.
Weaving Supply Businesses
The Woolery – Located in Frankfurt, KY, with both a physical store and online shopping .
Yarn Barn of Kansas – Located in Lawrence, Kansas, with both a physical store and online shopping .
WEBS – America’s Yarn Store. Located in Massachusetts, with both a physical and online store.
Halcyon – Located in Maine, with both a physical and online store.
Educational Opportunities
We do not offer a basic “learning to weave” class. Below are some links to places that do offer beginning weaving instruction.
Yadkin Valley Fiber Center – They offer beginning instruction on a quarterly basis on the four shaft, inkle, rigid heddle and tapestry looms. They are located in Elkins, NC.
Laurie Duxbury – Laurie sometimes has beginner classes, and also offers private lessons in her studio. She is located in Charlottesville, VA.
Treeditions – Patricia Morton sometimes offers beginner classes. She is located in Appomatox, VA.
Red Stone Glen Fiber Arts Center – They are a bit further away from our area, but their beginner weaving classes are exceptional, and worth the trip. They are located in Newberry Twp, PA.
Miscellaneous
Handweaving.net – Handweaving.net is a digital weaving archive with drafts, historic weaving documents, and more. This website contains over 70,000 hand weaving drafts, many of which are public domain.
Useful Resources
Camilla Valley Farm has a wonderful page of all the Weaving/Spinning/Knitting books, magazines and videos they have on hand. Of special interest are the “Weaving Magazines” section on this page: https://www.camillavalleyfarm.com/books/books.htm where you can find great listings of Weaver’s Craft and Weaver’s Journal issues. Our guild library has many of those issues!
http://www2.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/periodicals.html has a huge list of weaving related periodicals. And you may note that they have PDFs of many of the Weaver’s Journal.
Did you know that MAFA has a database of several years of exchanges and samples. Many of the items that are shown have a .wif file that you can download. .wif files are used by many weaving software applications like Fiberworks, WeaveIt, WeavePoint. These .wif files are free on the pages found at this MAFA link:
https://mafafiber.org/samples-and-exchanges/
Heddlecraft has an online index to all their issues; it can be found at https://heddlecraft.com/heddlecraft-index.html