Handweavers Guild of America (HGA) Textiles & Tea
Textiles & Tea takes place online every Tuesday, 4:00 p.m. ET / 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Full
information and registration are at https://weavespindye.org/textiles-and-tea/. All episodes of Textiles & Tea are recorded and are available to be watched on HGA’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. Speakers for April, 2024:
April 2nd, 2024: Christine K. Miller is a lifelong fiber artist with experience in weaving, sewing, basketry, embroidery, felting, dyeing, knitting, crochet, and fiber sculpture. She has been weaving for 50 years, and for the last 30 years she has been weaving with wire to create sculptural expressions. She teaches how to weave with wire as warp and weft in face-to-face workshops, through her online fiber studio, and in her newly published book Weaving with Wire: Creating Woven Metal Fabric. Christine continues bringing fiber arts into the educational world with Visiting Artist programs and workshops. She is a retired visual arts educator with local, state, and national arts education recognition. She continues teaching in K-12 programs through her Visiting Artist program and leads professional development workshops for art educators in school districts across the state of Texas.
April 9th, 2024: Patsy Zawistoski is an innovative, international handspinning teacher and lecturer throughout the U.S., New Zealand, Canada, and Sydney, Australia. For more than 40 years, Patsy has created multiple spinning workshops and presented them at large and small conferences. Loving all fibers, she maintains a wide focus while spinning multi-ply yarns for variety and exciting results. She began sewing at age ten with a button shirt for her dad, then went on to making all her clothes and doing alterations in high school. In 1973, after college and marrying, Patsy learned that she could make cloth by weaving on a rigid heddle loom. A spinning wheel followed eight years later. By 1987, she had spun and secured HGA’s Certificate of Excellence in Handspinning, Parts I and II.
April 16th, 2024: Liz Gipson is a writer, weaver, teacher, and rigid-heddle weaving enthusiast who hosts Yarnworker, a popular site for rigid-heddle weavers, and the associated Yarnworker School, an online, community-funded classroom. Liz has published four books on rigid-heddle weaving and previously worked for Interweave, Schacht Spindle Company, and Craftsy in various editorial, marketing, and video production capacities. Liz embraces the idea that through weaving, we see all things—history, culture, science, technology, personal expression, economics, medicine, and so much more. It is the perfect medium for exploring mind, body, and spirit.
April 23rd, 2024: Demetrio Bautista Lazo is considered by Mexican and international textile experts to be one of the best rug weavers and natural dyers of his generation. He began weaving at age seven at his grandfather’s side. Now aged 50, he has held solo exhibits and workshops in both Mexico and the US and has been featured in Zapotec Weavers (Museum of New Mexico Press)
and Spin-Knit: Colorways (Interweave Press). Demetrio dyes his wool/mohair blend with locally grown plants plus cochineal, a small insect. Through experimentation, he has learned to combine dyes and use a variety of acid and base modifiers to achieve a rich and varied natural palette of over 300 colors for his innovative designs based on Mexican culture.
April 30th, 2024: Kathy Monaghan is a dedicated fiber artist and popular instructor. The author of You Can Weave! Projects for Young Weavers, she has taught weaving at every level for over 35 years.
She loves sharing techniques and inspiration with all students, but particularly with beginners. Kathy excels at breaking complex tasks into easy-to-understand steps to ensure beginners’ success and never tires of seeing the joy in students when they master new skills. Her day job: she’s Director of Marketing for Pendleton Woolen Mills, designing experiences for the public to learn about the complete fabric production process, including fiber sourcing, dyeing, carding, spinning, warping, weaving, and the finishing of goods.