Community Calendar

Join the Handweavers Guild of America, Inc. for a spectacular Fashion Show featuring wearable art designed and handmade by fiber artists from around the world. Inspired by Krewe of Threads: Let the Good Times Roll, this year’s show captures the vibrancy and diversity of New Orleans. Dance, sing, applaud, and feel the beat as each fiber artist’s work comes alive on our runway models.

Invited Artists:

Patti Barker is an award-winning felt wear designer, teacher, and author. She earned a BA degree in studio art with a concentration in fiber at Western Washington University. Barker’s fascination with fabric and fashion is bound in her DNA. Barker’s felting journey began in 2007 with a study of simulated skins as a protective covering and identifier. She is intrigued by the way the wearable art transforms its wearer.

Dianne “Gumbo Marie” Honoré is a seventh-generation New Orleanian, cultural activist, and Big Queen of the Yellow Pocahontas Hunters. Dianne creates powerful multidisciplinary works blending art, fashion, and history. Founder of the Black Storyville Baby Dolls, her Mardi Gras regalia is in Paris’s Quai Branly Museum, celebrating Louisiana Creole traditions on international stages.

Amber M. Jensen began making backpacks as functional, wearable art, which led her to explore the durability and expressive potential of cloth. Jensen’s weaving draws from a layered mix of influences—Appalachian overshot patterns, Scandinavian restraint, and deep respect for Indigenous relationships to material and place. Her works are narrative palimpsests, reflecting her days, feelings, and evolving identity as an artist.

Margaret Roach Wheeler, a Native American of Chickasaw-Choctaw descent, merged her fine arts education with her Native American heritage to weave contemporary garments based on American Indian regalia. Wheeler is the recipient of numerous honors and awards and her work has been exhibited both regionally and nationally.