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.

Join us for the ultimate international fiber art experience, the Handweavers Guild of America's Convergence® conference. Immerse yourself in the inspiration and stimulation of exhibits, classes, textile tours, and shopping. Plus special evening events! Day passes are available! Check out all of the details at www.WeaveSpinDye.org/Convergence.

Join us for the ultimate international fiber art experience, the Handweavers Guild of America's Convergence® conference. Immerse yourself in the inspiration and stimulation of exhibits, classes, textile tours, and shopping. Plus special evening events! Day passes are available! Check out all of the details at www.WeaveSpinDye.org/Convergence.

The Convergence® Marketplace opens at night for an exceptional shopping experience. Take time to relax, shop, mingle, and meet friends while finding the perfect yarn, the exact tool you have been seeking, or discovering something new to add to your fiber collection.

FREE for all to attend!

Join us for the ultimate international fiber art experience, the Handweavers Guild of America's Convergence® conference. Immerse yourself in the inspiration and stimulation of exhibits, classes, textile tours, and shopping. Plus special evening events! Day passes are available! Check out all of the details at www.WeaveSpinDye.org/Convergence.

Join us for the Handweavers Guild of America, Inc.'s Keynote Lecture with Karen Hampton.

Ghosts and Ancestors: Why I Weave

Karen Hampton, MFA, Artist Weaver, and 2022 American Craft Council Fellow, is recognized as a trailblazing artist in the textile community for her work broadening the visibility of textiles made by black and brown artists worldwide. Karen has made the invisible visible for most of her career. From her early work in the 1990s to the present, she has been telling personal stories with her artwork and promoting others in the field.

Join us for the ultimate international fiber art experience, the Handweavers Guild of America's Convergence® conference. Immerse yourself in the inspiration and stimulation of exhibits, classes, textile tours, and shopping. Plus special evening events! Day passes are available! Check out all of the details at www.WeaveSpinDye.org/Convergence.