Textiles & Tea with Annie MacHale
The Handweavers Guild of America, Inc.’s (HGA) exciting new program launched in 2021, Textiles & Tea, takes place every Tuesday at 4 PM (ET). We’ve invited some of the most respected fiber artists in the field today to join us for an hour-long conversation where we discuss their artwork and their creative journey. Make a cup of your favorite tea and join us as we talk about fiber, creativity, inspiration, process and so much more.
Annie MacHale, at the age of seventeen, first discovered the inkle loom, sparking a lifelong love affair. She built her first loom in 1976 with the help of her dad and a library book. Since then, she’s woven miles of bands including over 1,100 guitar straps. She loves to play with color and pattern and finds the inkle loom a very satisfying way to do this. She credits inkle weaving with bringing her many blessings in her life including a very excellent husband and an invitation to the White House. Annie is known to many through her blog, ASpinnerWeaver.com. The popularity of her patterns shared there has led to the 2019 publication of a book, In Celebration of Plain Weave: Color and Design Inspiration for Inkle Weavers. This was followed by another book in 2021, Three-Color Pickup for Inkle Weavers: A Modern Look at an Ancient Baltic-Style Technique in which she shares a rare, older Lithuanian technique which has fallen out of use. You can find her around the world wide web and on social media as ASpinnerWeaver, a name she comes by naturally, being born to Louie and Nancy Spinner. She has tried spinning yarn, but never really took to it.
This episode originally aired on November 15, 2022.
1 Comment
Annie mentioned this interview on her blog back in October, and I have been waiting patiently to listen to it. I have both of Annie's books, and have just finished weaving 32 bookmarks out of her "three-color pickup" book. I so enjoy doing this type of weaving where I'm manipulating the threads to form the patterns.