Talented artisans will make this year’s Adirondack Fabric and Fiber Arts Festival at the Adirondack Museum the premier needlework event of the season. The festival will be held on Saturday, September 25, 2010. Activities are planned from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. All are included in the price of general museum admission.
The festival will include demonstrations of rug hooking, quilting, felting, spinning, and weaving, a regional quilt show, textile appraisals, an artisan marketplace, a “knit-in” for a good warm cause, hands-on activities, and the museum’s beautiful exhibit, “Common Threads: 150 Years of Adirondack Quilts and Comforters.”
Demonstrations will be held from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. at locations throughout the museum campus. Returning participants include the Serendipity Spinners, members of the community-based needlework group Northern Needles, the Adirondack Regional Textile Artist’s Association, as well as felter Sandi Cirillo and mixed-media quilter Louisa Austin Woodworth.
Liz Alpert Fay will make her first appearance at the festival, demonstrating the art of rug hooking. Fay studied at Philadelphia College of Art, and then participated in the Program in Artisanry at Boston University, where she received a BAA in Textile Design in 1981.
Fay created art quilts for seventeen years, exhibiting nationally and in Japan. Her work was exhibited in shows such as “Quilt National” and at the American Craft Museum in New York City. In 1998 she became intrigued with the technique of traditional rug hooking. Since then she has created colorful hand hooked rugs of her own design. The rugs have been purchased for private collections, and many have been selected for juried shows and invitational museum exhibitions. In 2002, Fay’s rugs were featured in the October issue of Country Living magazine- in 2005 she was filmed in her studio and her rugs featured on HGTV (the Home and Garden Channel).
Thistle Hill Weavers, Cherry Valley, N.Y. will offer a weaving demonstration from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. The company is a commercial weaving mill that produces reproduction historic textiles for museums, designers, private homeowners, and the film industry. Textiles created by Thistle Hill have appeared in more than thirty major motion pictures. The business was founded by Rabbit Goody, who is also the owner and current director. For more about Thistle Hill Weavers, visit www.rabbitgoody.com.
Museum visitors can learn more about personal antique and collectible fabrics with Ms. Goody who is a textile appraiser and historian. For a small donation to the Adirondack Museum, she will examine vintage textiles and evaluate them for historical importance and value. Appraisals will be held in Visitor Center from 9:30 a.m. until 12:00 noon.
The second annual “Great Adirondack Quilt Show” will feature a display of nearly three-dozen quilts inspired by or used in the Adirondack Mountains.
A presentation, “Knitting in the North Country: History and Folklore,” will be offered by Hallie Bond and Jill Breit at 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. in the museum’s Auditorium. Bond, a museum curator and novice knitter, will share her ongoing research about the place of spinning and knitting in local history including traditional techniques and the wearing of knitted garments. Breit, Executive Director of Traditional Arts in Upstate New York and a superb knitter, will discuss the vital and vibrant knitting scene in
the North Country today.
A special knit-in, “Warm Up America!” will create afghans that will be donated to Hamilton County Community action, an organization that helps people help themselves and others. The knit-in will be held in the Visitor Center from 11:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. Participants will knit or crochet 7″- by 9″- rectangles that will be joined together to make cozy afghans.
A dozen regional artisans will sell handmade fabrics and fiber specialty items in a day-long marketplace as part of the Adirondack Fabric and Fiber Arts Festival.
The Adirondack Museum tells stories of the people – past and present —- who have lived, worked, and played in the unique place that is the Adirondack Park. History is in our nature. The museum is supported in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency. For information about all that the museum has to offer, call (518) 352-7311, or visit www.adirondackmuseum.org.
Rabbit Goody, a leading expert in the study and manufacture of 18th and 19th century textiles, will be featured at a panel discussion at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz on Sunday, February 20th at 3pm.
