2026 - 2027 Calendar
September 8, 2026
Debi Vanden Huevel
Lecture - "Adapting Our Sewing and Creativity as Life Evolves”
How do we adapt as artists as we age and our bodies or lives change? How do changes in environment, tools, methods or attitude allow us to continue to create? Debi Vanden Huevel will discuss ways in which changes in environment, tools, methods, or attitude allow us to continue to create as we age and help us discover techniques that will keep us growing as artists.
Debi is a teacher by education. She enjoys sharing her love of all things sewing with others through classes and workshops, exploring colors, patterns, and textures that have always been inspiring to her.
October 13, 2026
Kathy Forzley
Lecture - "Inspired by Nature: A Feltmaker’s Journey”
Kathy Forzley is a contemporary fiber artist whose work includes wet felting, hand and machine embroidery, landscape art quilts, and other fiber art techniques. Kathy’s passion for artistic design combines rich textures, vibrant colors and found objects inspired by her love of nature and botanical themes. Her work includes wearable art, home accessories, 3-D sculptural work and wall art. Kathy finds working with fiber, especially wet felting, provides a meditative tactile experience and countless possibilities for creative expression. Adding embellishments provides the opportunity to further enhance her work by adding texture and dimension to the felt with stitching.
Kathy’s presentation will explore her journey as a feltmaker, sharing sources for her inspiration, discussing the process of wet felting, and highlighting some of the feltmakers that have influenced her work.
This lecture and workshop have been re-scheduled from 2025.
Members who registered for the workshop last year will have the first option to register this year.
Open registration for any remaining seats will be announced as soon as possible.
November 10, 2026
Heather Macali
Lecture - "Structured Comfort”
WSU Associate Professor Heather Macali will take us through her journey of cloth construction that is focused on slowing down each stage of the textile production. By engaging directly and fully with every step – from spinning to dyeing to weaving - she maintains a deeper relationship with the material processes that shape the final form. Heather will discuss systemic variations and meticulous interlacements carried out in a defined sequence that result in a textile that evokes a sense of ease while maintaining dimensional structure.
December 8, 2026
Seminar Day
(Members Only)
Ann Jacob
“The Great Undo: Subtractive Color on Textiles”
Join us for a day of fun for members only. Explore the transformative power of "subtractive" design in this surface design workshop. While most textile arts focus on adding color, Ann will demonstrate how to strategically remove color to create unique designs on fabric. Using Thiourea Dioxide (Thiox) you will learn to "discharge" dyes from dark fabric, revealing the hidden patterns created by clamping and manipulating fabric.
Bring your lunch and come prepared to play with a new technique.
January 12, 2027 via Zoom
MJ Kinman
Lecture - "Crack the Color Code”
Our brain manipulates the appearance of color based on the neighboring color. That’s why Josef Albers famously said, “Color deceives continuously.” However, once we are aware of the four ways color tries to trick us (or, more correctly, how our brain tries to trick us), we can anticipate how color will change and use that to create powerful effects in our work.
February 9, 2027 via Zoom
Theresa Benson
Lecture - "When Technology Meets Tradition”
Theresa Benson, The AI Quilter, bridges textile art and digital tools through personal storytelling and real examples in this insightful, live Zoom lecture and trunk show. Using plain language and real projects, she explores how modern tools like artificial intelligence operate and how they can be used to support creative exploration while keeping the artist firmly in control.
March 9, 2027
Cris Platto
Lecture - "The Evolution of the Skein”
Local artist Cris Platto will talk about the history of assigned pooling in knitting and her experience with the hand-dyeing process.
April 13, 2027
Ann Jacob
Lecture - "Ecologically Naive”
Ann Jacob is a textile artist focusing on custom fabric processing and block print techniques. Ann’s work has been featured in two solo exhibitions and serves as a visual bridge between her travels and her commitment to social activism. She creates purpose-led art that addresses urgent modern issues from environmental conservation to human and animal rights advocacy.
May 11, 2027
Darcy Lewis
Lecture - "Using Lace in Non-Formal Garments”
Do you sigh longingly at the beautiful lace fabrics in the shop, wishing and hoping you might someday have a formal occasion to wear them? You may even have some in your stash, but you lack the confidence in your skills to think about sewing them. Darcy Lewis will share a variety of different techniques and offer tips for successfully integrating lace into your everyday garments so you can use those gorgeous textiles NOW!
