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| Formation | 1969 |
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| Headquarters | Suwanee, Georgia |
| Coordinates | 34°02′05″N84°05′21″W / 34.034745°N 84.089087°W |
Region | United States and Canada |
Membership | Fiber artists, guilds, and teachers |
Official language | English |
| Website | www |
The Handweavers Guild of America (HGA) is an association of fiber artists founded in the U.S. in 1969. The guild provides educational programs, conferences, and scholarships for fiber arts students. It publishes the quarterly journal Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot.
The Handweavers Guild of America (HGA) was founded in 1969. The well-known New York weaver Berta Frey was one of the founders and served on the guild's first board of directors. [1] The objective is "to inspire creativity and encourage excellence in the fiber arts." [2] The organization is non-profit and has an international membership. [3] Members include weavers, spinners, dyers, basketmakers, fiber artists and teachers. As of 2006 the guild was based in Atlanta, Georgia. [2]
The guild holds conferences and provides educational programs. [2] The guild provides Dendel Scholarships to assist undergraduate and graduate fiber arts students in the US and Canada. Selection is based on artistic and technical merit rather than on financial need. [4] HGA scholarships have similar requirements. [5] The HGA website provides a list of spinning guilds in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, and Switzerland. This may be useful to fiber artists looking for local sources of supply. [6] In 1986 the HGA held Convergence '86 in Toronto, Canada, its first biennial meeting outside the U.S. The conference was co-hosted by the Ontario Crafts Council and the Ontario Handweavers & Spinners. About 2,000 weavers and spinners attended the conference and more than forty galleries in Toronto and the region gave weaving exhibitions. [7] The HGA offers the Certificate of Excellence (COE) in Handweaving, Handspinning, Dyeing, and Basketry. [8]
Members receive the quarterly journal Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot. [2] The magazine publishes articles on fiber arts design, history, shows, education, products, books and news, and gives information on HGA programs. [3] The magazine had a circulation of about 6,000 in 2012, with a well-educated and knowledgeable readership in the fiber arts community. [9]
Spinning is a twisting technique to form yarn from fibers. The fiber intended is drawn out, twisted, and wound onto a bobbin. A few popular fibers that are spun into yarn other than cotton, which is the most popular, are viscose, and synthetic polyester. Originally done by hand using a spindle whorl, starting in the 500s AD the spinning wheel became the predominant spinning tool across Asia and Europe. The spinning jenny and spinning mule, invented in the late 1700s, made mechanical spinning far more efficient than spinning by hand, and especially made cotton manufacturing one of the most important industries of the Industrial Revolution.
Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. Other methods are knitting, crocheting, felting, and braiding or plaiting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft, woof, or filling. The method in which these threads are interwoven affects the characteristics of the cloth. Cloth is usually woven on a loom, a device that holds the warp threads in place while filling threads are woven through them. A fabric band that meets this definition of cloth can also be made using other methods, including tablet weaving, back strap loom, or other techniques that can be done without looms.
The spinning jenny is a multi-spindle spinning frame, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of textile manufacturing during the early Industrial Revolution. It was invented in 1764 or 1765 by James Hargreaves in Stan hill, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in England.
A power loom is a mechanized loom, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution. The first power loom was designed and patented in 1785 by Edmund Cartwright. It was refined over the next 47 years until a design by the Howard and Bullough company made the operation completely automatic. This device was designed in 1834 by James Bullough and William Kenworthy, and was named the Lancashire loom.
A spindle is a straight spike, usually made from wood, used for spinning, twisting fibers such as wool, flax, hemp, cotton into yarn. It is often weighted at either the bottom, middle, or top, commonly by a disc or spherical object called a whorl; many spindles, however, are weighted simply by thickening their shape towards the bottom, e.g. Orenburg and French spindles. The spindle may also have a hook, groove, or notch at the top to guide the yarn. Spindles come in many different sizes and weights depending on the thickness of the yarn one desires to spin.
Spinning is an ancient textile art in which plant, animal or synthetic fibres are drawn out and twisted together to form yarn. For thousands of years, fibre was spun by hand using simple tools, the spindle and distaff. It was only with the invention of the spinning wheel in the Islamic world circa 1030, and its subsequent introduction to China, India and Europe in the High Middle Ages, that the output of individual spinners dramatically increased. Mass production later arose in the 18th century with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. Hand-spinning remains a popular handicraft.
Syne Mitchell is an American novelist in the science fiction genre. She has a bachelor's degree in business administration and master's degree in physics. She lives in Seattle, Washington and is married to author Eric S. Nylund. Her first science fiction novel was Murphy’s Gambit which won the Compton Crook Award in 2001. Followed by science fiction novels Technogenesis in 2001, The Changeling Plague in 2003, End in Fire in 2005 and the first installment of the Deathless series, called The Last Mortal Man in 2006.
A distaff, is a tool used in spinning. It is designed to hold the unspun fibers, keeping them untangled and thus easing the spinning process. It is most commonly used to hold flax and sometimes wool, but can be used for any type of fibre. Fiber is wrapped around the distaff and tied in place with a piece of ribbon or string. The word comes from Low German dis, meaning a bunch of flax, connected with staff.
The Ontario Handweavers & Spinners (OHS) is a non-profit organization based in Ontario, Canada that helps individuals interested in the fiber crafts to communicate and develop their skills, including weaving, spinning and dying, basket makers, braiders, tablet weavers and paper makers. The OHS communicates to its members through a quarterly newsletter, Fibre Focus, provides educational programs in spinning and weaving, provides scholarships and organizes several seminars or conferences each year.
Salish are skilled weavers and knitters of the Pacific Northwest. They are most noted for their beautiful twill blankets many of which are very old. The adoption of new fabrics, dyes, and weaving techniques allow us to study a wide variety of Salish weavings today.
Polly Barton is an American textile artist.
Berta Frey was a well-known New York weaver, who spoke and taught about weaving techniques for many years. She was one of the founders of the Handweavers Guild of America.
The Fletcher Farm School is an arts and crafts school in Ludlow, Vermont, USA, operated by the non-profit Society of Vermont Artists and Craftsmen. Courses are given on weekends in winter and spring, and during the summer. The school teaches a broad range of skills including fiber arts, woodworking, pottery, jewelry and photography.
Anne Catherine Hof Blinks (1903-1995) was an American botanist and textiles scholar.
Mary Meigs Atwater was an American weaver. She revived handweaving in America by collecting weaving drafts, teaching and writing; Handweaver and Craftsman called Atwater "the grand dame and grand mother of the revival of handweaving in [the United States]".
Suzie Liles is an American fiber artist, master weaver, the owner of the Eugene Textile Center and co-owner of Glimakra USA, in Eugene, Oregon.
Eugene Weavers' Guild is a non-profit organization of weavers, spinners, and other fiber artists in Eugene, Oregon, in the U.S. It was founded in 1946 and has been meeting monthly for more than seventy years. As of 2016, the Guild included 85 members, ranging in skill from hobbyist to professional weavers, from Eugene, Springfield, and rural communities of surrounding Lane County, Oregon, USA. The Guild sponsors workshops, a lending library, skill demonstrations in a variety fiber arts, equipment sharing, and events to raise funds for local charities.
Abigail M. Franquemont is an American textile crafts writer, lecturer and educator, based in Cusco, Peru. She spent her early childhood among the Quechua people of Chinchero, Peru, where "women spun to eat and pay for the home they lived in." As a revivalist of the ancient art of hand spinning with the spindle, she published her book, Respect the Spindle, in 2009.
Ruthadell Anderson was an American fiber artist. She was known for her sculptures and textiles.
Mary Zicafoose is an American textile artist, weaver, and teacher who specializes in ikat, an ancient technique in which threads are wrapped, tied and resist-dyed before weaving. Zicafoose is the author of Ikat: The Essential Handbook to Weaving Resist-Dyed Cloth (2020). Her works are part of private and public collections, including at least 16 embassies around the world as part of the U.S. Art in Embassies Program.
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