The Long Thread Podcast
The artists and artisans of the fiber world come to you in The Long Thread Podcast. Each episode features interviews with your favorite spinners, weavers, needleworkers, and fiber artists from across the globe. Get the inspiration, practical advice, and personal stories of experts as we follow the long thread.
- Update frequency
- every 13 days
- Average duration
- 50 minutes
- Episodes
- 126
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
Laurann Gilbertson, Chief Curator, Vesterheim
The Vesterheim has 80 spinning wheels. Laurann Gilbertson says that they didn't really mean to have so many, but it seems that every woman who emigrated from Norway in the late nineteenth and early t…
Deborah Robson, Wool Promoter
Deborah Robson is known to, even revered by, a generation of handspinners as the author of The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook with Carol Ekarius. She has a distinguished track record as an editor—Shuttl…
Anita Luvera Mayer, Weaver of Creative Coverings
When she married her husband, "polyester kid" Anita Luvera Mayer received an extraordinary wedding gift from her mother-in-law: a loom and weaving lessons. A weaving store owner, Marcelle Mayer gave …
Kenya Miles, Natural Dye Farmer & Artist
Kenya Miles balances farming, teaching, community-building, and her own artwork. Besides cultivating madder, indigo, and other botanical colors, she grows awareness of natural dyes, serving as an art…
Nilda Callanaupa Alvarez, Andean Weaver
Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez first organized an informal project in the 1970s with weaver friends in Chinchero, an Andean village near Cusco, Peru. As the traditional skills and distinctive styles of ind…
Amy D. McKnight, Creative Weaver, Simple Looms
Amy D. McKnight weaves not only doubleweave but point twill on a rigid-heddle loom, prefers a hybrid method of direct and indirect warping for long but efficient warps, and uses weaving software (usu…
Mathew Gnagy, Costumer, Designer, Needleworker
Mathew Gnagy has started to bring 16th-century to the streets. Wearing a hand-stitched, exquisitely tailored suit, whether inspired or patterned directly from historical sources, brings him not only …
Susan Druding, Teacher, Shop Owner, Activist
Susan Druding was a graduate student at the University of California-Berkeley when she first learned to spin and weave. In the Bay Area of the 1960s, fiber interest and social tensions both ran high.…
Penelope Hemingway, Needlework Historian
In addition to Viking and Anglo-Saxon reenactment, which drew Penelope Hemingway to learn handspinning and other textile crafts, she enjoys uncovering what household items, clothing, and other items …
Heavenly Bresser, Spinning Wheel Magnet
People used to ask Heavenly Bresser why she had 11 spinning wheels. Not any more. (For one thing, she now has 29—and counting—wheels.) Each one has earned its place based on historical significance,…
Deb Menz, Color Girl
Teacher and artist Deb Menz made herself comfortable in a subject that many fiber artists shy away from. Students arrive in her classes with dispiriting stories of choosing colors that are ugly or bl…
Rebecca Mezoff, Tapestry Weaver
Rebecca Mezoff became a tapestry weaver as an adult after a career in occupational therapy, finding that it suited her artistically and let her use other skills she loved, such as teaching, dyeing, a…
Linda Cortright, Wild Fibers
In 2004, Linda Cortright began publishing Wild Fibers, a magazine that tells the stories of natural fibers from seemingly ordinary (mohair) to jaw-droppingly astonishing (seal wool). Linda’s magazine…
Franklin Habit: Author, Illustrator, Teacher
Franklin Habit is often mobbed at fiber events, by fans of his own work or of his scandalous Romney, Dolores Van Hoofen. For this episode, we were lucky to find him in a quieter spot: his home studio…
Maggie Casey & Judy Steinkoenig, Yarn Store Owners
Maggie Casey and Judy Steinkoenig are well known as teachers and writers. Almost every day for 28 years, you would have found one or both of them behind the counter or helping customers at their stor…
John Mullarkey, Tablet Weaver
When you picture weaving, does the image of a big floor loom come to mind, or a heddle that holds the threads in place? How about a stack of perforated cardboard squares? Author, instructor, weaver, …
Louie García, Pueblo Weaver
Visiting museums and archaeological sites in the American Southwest, Louie García finds inspiration to revive the fiber techniques of the past. But where others might see ruins, Louie sees connection…
Episode 9: Norman Kennedy Spins Tales of Waulking
It's easy to fall under the spell of Norman Kennedy as he shares stories of the old ways of spinning and weaving, which he learned from some of the last practitioners of their crafts. Growing up in S…
Episode 8: Keith Recker: True (and Natural) Colors
As an author, color expert, and publisher, Keith Recker's path returns over and over to handmade textiles. From the colors of turmeric and indigo to the resurgence of ethnic color in a former Soviet …
Episode 7: Charllotte Kwon and Maiwa: Natural Dyes, International Ties
Recovering from a health crisis, Charllotte Kwon needed to find a new career as well as an outlet for her love of color. She fell in love with the designs, hues, and pace of India, and she founded Ma…