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Earlier in the week I interviewed founder and non-stop advocator of TAFA (the Textile And Fiber Art list), Rachel Biel. Rachel has an exciting new direction for TAFA, one that she explains fully in the following interview: New visions, new directions are always exciting. You have a new vision for TAFA. What is that new vision?  I launched TAFA in 2010 when social media was just starting to become a powerful tool in how we communicate on the web. The goal was to create an organization that focused on the business side of running a textile/fiber art business along with creating a destination that truly reflected the best of what is happening in our field around the world. The membership has grown into a true testament of the innovation and broad reach of our industry, from the historical handmade traditions to experimental approaches involving new technologies. As our focus in on the business side of what we do, most of our members seek to make a living at what they do. This led to c...

No Serial Number - A new magazine to me, and probably a new magazine to others. No Serial Number is on its seventh issue with a theme that is probably going to appeal to a lot of those who visit this site. Dyes, fabrics, fibres are a central focus of this magazine, their central core in fact. It is interesting to have an arts magazine that embraces tradition and innovation within textiles, a number have tried before and never quite got the balance right, but No Serial Number seem to have got it right, even to the point of printing on recycled paper, something that is sure to appeal to many of you out there. This new winter issue of No Serial Number focuses on eco printing, something that is gaining in popularity, gaining momentum within textile art and textile craft, and gaining space within the textile industry. The subtleties of the visual effects of natural dyeing and printing are also beginning to be appreciated. High, dense colour has its place, but so too does textured low-keyed ...

The artist Kirsty Wallace has always had an interest in the passage of time, in the ageing of materials, in the journey of visible wear and the interaction with that wear, often through the process of mending. She can remember back to her childhood when these ideas made their initial impact on her, where she instinctively came to value items and objects, the 'things' of life that had been discarded by others.  A part of that interest, at least for Kirsty, was generational. The history of her family, like so many across the planet, was steeped in a strong emphasis on make-do-and-mend, of scarcity, of the lack of luxury, certainly of the luxury to discard. There are rolling and seemingly endless generations of individuals who picked and unpicked fabrics, who added stitches, took stitches away, brought in endless new additions to the fabric, continuing its life as far as they possibly could. Many added their own styles, their own character to this process, but they also added thei...