Teachers
Showing teachers who practice Fiber
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AnnMarie is a mostly self-taught crafter who has worked in many media. A children’s book editor and writer, she moved to Vermont from Brooklyn in 2021. For many years, she sewed and sold sock monkeys for a small NYC-based nonprofit that organized fine art and craft exhibitions and workshops for underserved artists, including seniors, those in recovery, and the unhoused. She also once organized a community art project for kids that involved weaving on old CDs with recycled yarn.
These days she experiments with needle and wet felting, knits, and weaves a bit. She is excited to join the fiber community at the Craft School, where she aims to learn as much as share her skills. She lives in Shelburne with her two kids, one husband, and a very old cat.
Arianna Soloway
Burlington, VT
· Fiber
Arianna is a knitter, knitwear designer, and manager of Must Love Yarn in Shelburne VT. She's been knitting for nearly 25 years and loves teaching knitters of all ages and skill levels.
Ashley Farren
Shelburne, VT
· Fiber
Ashley began her weaving journey in Scotland in 2018 learning how to weave Harris Tweed on a Hattersley loom. She then began to create highly textured woven wall hangings from all natural and eco friendly fibers while incorporating other fiber art techniques, like macrame and embroidery. Each piece is designed to preserve ancient ancestral craft and inspire inner healing and growth. Ashley creates in unison with nature by foraging for materials for natural dyes and paint pigments.
Bradie Hansen
Shelburne, VT
· Fiber
Bradie Hansen is a fiber crafter, artist, author and psychologist. She was raised in northern New Jersey and Southwest Florida, and came to Vermont in 1996 to go to graduate school at St. Michael’s College. Vermont became her home after that. Always having some knitting project going, in 2011/2012, she started crocheting, then spinning wool, and then weaving. She’s taught fiber art classes at the Shelburne Community School and is passionate about making fiber art accessible to all people. She is excited to work with students on all things wild and wooly and textured on handlooms, rigid heddle looms, circular looms and anything else that provides support to a warp.
A student of Lausanne Allen’s, Bradie loves floor loom weaving, too, and will be around to help students with their projects.
Bradie’s current work is both on her floor loom and on “found” looms, like those made out of driftwood and one made out of a wooden door pane. Bridging her loves of psychology and handcrafting, Bradie is compiling a series of tapestry weavings and other handwork pictures that will become a shawl depicting “golden moments” in her life, a project part of her Weaving a Life © journey. She is also the co-author of The Long Grief Journey which is about long-term and unresolved grief.
claire graham-smith
burlington, VT
· Fiber
Claire has been a lifelong Maker. She studied studio art in Ontario, Canada and has a degree in art photography and painting. She came to quilt making when her children were young, making her own clothes while teaching herself to sew on a treadle machine. Early on she began quilt demonstrating at the Shelburne Museum and developed a fondness for antique quilts. Through teaching her kids to sew and quilt, Claire developed classes for children in the homeschool community and taught adult workshops. She branched out to art quilting, incorporating unusual fabrics, clothing and many embellishments. As the modern quilt movement took hold, she found connection to a simpler aesthetic. It aligned with her intuitive approach to art making. She has many pieces which include both handwork and machines. She has served on the board of Champlain Valley Quilters Guild for the last four years.
Memberships include:
Vermont Modern Quilt Guild
Studio Art Quilters Associates Surface Design Associates
Artist in Residence co-op gallery St Albans
Claire always has hand work projects on the go. Travel or movie watching, she lives by the ‘no idle hands’ philosophy.
Claire has made her home in Burlington for thirty years.
I have often said that my greatest strength as an artist is my very low standards! I love learning new things, and the best way I have found is to get comfortable with being bad at them. My lack of focus means that whenever I have the opportunity to try something new, I jump at the chance, and I am always excited to pass on whatever I have learned! I have been making art in all kinds of media for most of my life. After growing up in Washington, DC, I moved here and graduated from the University of Vermont in 2013 with degrees in Studio Art and Classical Civilizations. I have worked in clay, paint, charcoal, ink, glass, fiber, wood, watercolor, and anything else I can think of! I work as a baker and, occasionally, as a yoga teacher and live in South Burlington with my spouse, our cats, and arguably too many plants.
Davey DeGraff
Hinesburg, VT
· Fiber
Davey is a native Vermonter who has been rug hooking for over 25 years. Her focus for the past 5 years has been the natural landscapes of Vermont. She uses wool fabric and yarn to "paint" these landscapes.
She is a member of the Green Mountain Rug Hooking Guild, was Show Chairman twice for the Hooked in the Mountain annual show, and was a featured artist in 2016.
Davey has attended many workshops and classes over the years and her hooking style has been influenced by those experiences. Today, her inspiration comes from the local landscape and more specifically the places that are familiar to her and evoke personal memories. That and her interest in impressionistic art and watercolor painting leads her to describe her approach to rug hooking as painterly.
She lives on Lake Iroquois with her husband and their dog. There is an active group of rug hookers in the area that have gathered every week for years. Davey enjoys a creative life and today calls herself a fiber artist.
Diane Burgess
Hinesburg, VT
· Fiber
Diane Burgess has been hooking rugs since 1998; teaching beginner and intermediate classes as well as wool dyeing workshops since 1998 throughout Vermont and for the Access to CVU High School evening program as well as for the Green Mountain Rug Hooking Guild 2004 to 2016 at the” Hooked in The Mountains Rug Show” to be held at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, VT in November 2022. Member of the Green Rug Hooking Guild since 1998.
Heather Layn
Bristol, VT
· Fiber
I was born and raised on a farm in Vermont. After graduation I left to explore the world in The United States Marine Corp.
When I returned, I was drawn back to farm life. I joined my husband on his family's dairy farm where I added my own special touches (animals) to make it the amazing place it is today.
I began playing with fiber several years ago, first by joining the Twist O' Wool group. There, I got to learn many different crafts related to fiber. But I was always drawn back to felting!
I began as a self-taught artist. Once I found other fiber friends, I took classes with them to learn more skills. There is always something new to learn, so I keep growing as a fiber artist all the time!
Jen berger works as an interdisciplinary, community and socially engaged artist and educator. Using street, stage and guerilla theater, visual arts, painting, printmaking, puppetry, video for education and dialogue she seeks to raise awareness and intervene in social issues that affect us all.
Jen is also works as a teaching artist, working with students in, and out, of the public schools, who are in early childhood through adult aged students.
Jessica is originally from Alaska, but has lived all over the west coast in places like San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. She now resides in Vermont with her husband and golden retriever. A programmer by trade, she runs an independent game studio with her husband. When she’s not coding, you can find her knitting.
Jessica learned how to crochet as a child, but knitting never stuck. As an adult, she attempted learning how to knit again, and luckily this time it all came together! She now tries to bring her joy and knowledge of knitting to other people, giving patience to those who aren’t getting it quite yet. With time, she believes anyone can learn to knit, and that it can become a joyful and enriching hobby that will last a lifetime.
Jodie is a felt artist focusing on colorful, wearable art and the 3d form. She began her felting journey in 2014 when she saw a needle felting demonstration. Intrigued and wanting to learn more, she took a wet felting continuing education class at Rhode Island School of Design and was hooked. Jodie primarily wet and nuno felts with resists to create hats, purses, and vessels. Her creations are often eclectic in nature. She loves to play with texture and color.