Sara Bixler
Sara is the owner and resident instructor of Red Stone Glen Fiber Arts Center. Many of Sara’s students praise her ability to guide students through the challenging world of color theory, specifically relating to weaving. Sara has spent many years experimenting with color in weaving focusing her studies in how color relationships are affected by yarn size, luster, sett and weave structure. She loves giving students core principles to follow so they become more confident in their color decisions when designing new pieces. Her frequent contributions to Handwoven Magazine and Little Looms allow her to expand her reach to new students and inspire creativity through simplicity. www.redstoneglen.com/instructors/sara-bixler
Liz Spear
Liz Spear has been working with her hands since 1978, and has been a full-time craftsman in Western North Carolina since ’95. She is primarily a weaver of cloth and a maker of fine garments and accessories, as well as a line of exhibition-worthy coats, incorporating other fiber artists’ cloth and colors. For several years, Liz has also been making nuno-felt yardage with silk fabrics dyed and/or printed by others. This nuno-felt collage fabric is cut up and combined with the handwoven fabrics.
Teaching and demonstrating for craft schools and craft organizations are an important part of Liz’s mastery of her craft. She conducts workshops in both nuno-felting and sewing with handmade fabrics, concentrating on garment design and sewing. Liz is a member of several fine craft guilds and has taught at Penland and Arrowmont Schools of Craft, John C. Campbell Folk School, and Appalachian Center for Craft, as well as presenting workshops for weaving and fiber guilds across the country. www.lizspearhandwoven.com/
Janney Simpson
Janney Simpson began weaving in the early 1980’s. She previously taught weaving at Wesleyan Potters in Middletown, CT and is currently teaching at The Barn in Gaylord, MI and relishes the “ah-ha” moment when new weavers throw a shuttle for the first time. Janney is a past President, Apprentice, and Weaver of Distinction of the Handweavers’ Guild of CT. Also a member of Complex Weavers and Japanese Textile Study Group, she enjoys sharing her interest in Sakiori weaving using vintage silk kimono. She has presented many workshops and lectures on Finishing and Embellishing Handwovens, Knitted Beaded Bags, Sakiori, Deflected Double Weave, and Weaving with Fibers of Micronesia. Privileged to be a student for four years in Laurie Autio’s class, Explorations in Advanced Weaving, Janney strives to create one-of-a-kind pieces using a variety of fibers and weave structures on many types of looms. www.handwovenmagazine.com/idea-gallery-layers-of-design
Rebecca Smith
Rebecca Smith is an award-winning tapestry weaver. She wrote the book (literally!) on weaving with yarn and beads together, which is her own original technique. Rebecca has exhibited widely and won multiple awards. Her unique style of tapestry weaving was featured in the Fall 2019 issue of Fiber Art Now magazine. www.rebeccasmithtapestry.com
Amy Tyler
Amy has degrees in modern dance, kinesiology, and physiology. Her art and science backgrounds give her a keen understanding of learning movement skills, composition, pattern recognition, and systematic exploration. The result is her focus on spinning and knitting technique, texture, three-dimensional structure, and knit designs that exploit handspinning techniques. She teaches spinning and knitting at venues across the
country and is well known for her animated and engaging teaching style. Amy has published articles in Spin Off, Interweave Knits, and PLY Magazine. You can find out more about her work on her website, www.stonesockfibers.com
Renate Maile-Moskowitz
Renate Maile-Moskowitz’s artistic background is multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary, versatile, and crosses many boundaries. German born, raised and self-trained in just about every textile tradition, the nearly forgotten techniques of felt making and silk/ sericulture production became an early research and teaching pursuit. A Fulbright Scholarship in Dance brought her to the US where new venues surfaced to apply and fuse her experiences and interests in unique Fiber, Textile and Costume fields. Creating costumes for the Shakespeare Theater, the Washington National Opera under general director Placido Domingo’s artistic leadership, teaching Fiber Arts workshops nationally and internationally, creating performance art pieces, consulting with museums and colleges, collaborating with Discovery Channel, the Textile Museum and Smithsonian’s Educational Outreach Programs are just a few noteworthy applications. She concurrently creates her own work for galleries and shows, teaches and publishes her findings and creations in magazines and books.
Renate’s teaching methods and personal creations have led the way on novel, eclectic and profoundly specialized techniques along with adaptations to ancient, traditional, or personalized felting, and natural fiber customs. Her aid in translating visions, traditional concepts, themes, communal or curriculum topics into hands-on encounters, while (indirectly) inoculating the world with a passion and understanding of Felt(ing) and natural FIBERS in general, as unique medium and form of Art, culminated 2018 in the commission of her large scale pedagogical Felt anthology “UrFelt”, on permanent display at the Textile Museum in Washington DC. Her long standing devotion to broaden Felt , Silk and other natural Fiber’s public awareness, besides it’s recognition as a textile art form, have gained her global recognition and various awards. She has been sought out as one of the few “multifaceted and seasoned” fiber and textile artists/teachers /collaborators/consultants/ historians and researchers globally.
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