The Long Thread Podcast

Catharine Ellis loved planning weaving projects, but once the warp was on the loom and the design decisions made, much of the discovery was over: with decades of experience, she knew pretty well what…

The charkha is so important in the traditions of India that Mohandas K. Gandhi proposed placing it at the center of the national flag. The wheel can signify economic independence, mindful practice, a…

Planning to spend a few months traveling around South Asia, Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo unexpectedly found herself in search of a teacher and workshop where she could learn the process of making stitched t…

When you think of weaving tools, you probably picture shuttles, sleying hooks, a raddle, and a warping board. Just as important for many weavers is the software that displays and manipulates weaving …

No matter where in the country, stepping into the Sincere Sheep booth at a fiber festival is a breath of fresh air. With naturally dyed yarns, wool that is processed fleece by fleece, and a selection…

If you want to learn about silk—raising it, processing it, or using it—sooner or later you will find yourself on Michael Cook's site devoted to silk and sericulture, wormspit.com. Raising silkworms …

Navajo-Churro sheep have a centuries-old history and an even greater meaning to the Diné, but the commercial market set a low price for their wool. A group of shepherds have come together to find str…

What would you do if your sheep's wool lost half its value practically overnight? That's what happened to shepherds in 1990, when the end of a longstanding subsidy upended small and large wool flocks…

Sheri Berger vowed that cross stitch would be the hobby that she kept just for herself.

After turning her scrapbooking hobby into a business, then launching the online yarn store The Loopy Ewe in …

In the early 1970s, a lively community and spirit of fearless exploration sprang up in Northern California that sent ripples around the country and shaped the world as we know it today. The fiber wor…

Kate Larson's first childhood memory is of meeting a lamb on her family's farm in rural Indiana. That connection with sheep and the land forms the anchor of her life's work, even as it draws her to s…

Since Amy Norris learned to weave in the late 1980s, the digital age has swept through weaving in two ways: by linking the global community of weavers to each other, and by using computers to manipul…

What does it mean to revive a skill that's been lost for centuries?

In Inca and pre-Inca cultures, weavers in the Andes practiced a form of doubleweave that disappeared sometime after contact with…

Melvenea Hodges nurtures a small crop of cotton in her back yard in South Bend, Indiana. Besides beautiful foliage and some of her favorite fiber to spin, she tends her plants to celebrate what she c…

When you imagine goldwork embroidery, do you picture something flashy, glinting, and formal? You might be surprised to discover that goldwork or metalwork embroidery can be subtle and colorful. As Na…

Working in the studio of a Japanese dollmaker, seventeen-year-old John Marshall learned skills for every step of the process from making glass eyes to shaping the body to creating intricately designe…

You may think of silk as just slick and shiny. (There's a reason we say "as smooth as silk.") But as she chased the thread of silk across Asia and through villages of Assam, Karen Selk discovered tha…

A career professional at Levi Strauss & Company, Eileen Lee learned about dyeing, weaving, and sewing on an international scale: giant factories full of loud looms weaving 2/2 twill, pattern pieces c…

Part of the Royal School of Needlework's collection is in tatters . . . by design.

The collection includes some fine examples of stitching techniques, but what makes the archive more interesting are…

Whether it's growing and processing fiber or embroidering with handspun, hand-dyed linen thread, Cassie has always looked at traditional textiles and said, "I have to learn to do that." She's learned…