Spend a creative day outdoors with Kathy Leader in this intimate one-day retreat combining nature, mindfulness, and fiber art. Participants will gather fallen leaves, learn simple embroidery stitches, and transform each leaf into a unique piece of art to take home framed.
Learn simple embroidery stitches to make a small-scale scene to frame in a wooden brooch! This beginner-friendly workshop will introduce you to techniques you can use in your own creations, and you’ll take home an embroidery hoop and thread to sew your next project. All tools and materials are provided.
For our meeting in September, bring your dye day results to share! Our president, Tim Cardy, will also share a report of his experience at this year's HGA Convergence in New Orleans. Tim will also lead a mini project to decorate personalized name tags that we can each bring with us to future guild meetings.
Sew a stylish and useful catchall! Choose fabrics from our vibrant collection and come away with two handy pieces to store your phone, keys, wallet, and other essentials. This is the perfect project for people just beginning to sew.
The 25th Annual Santa Barbara Studio Artists Open Studios Tour returns Labor Day weekend, September 5–7, 2026, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. This self-guided tour invites visitors into the studios of local artists throughout the Santa Barbara area.
Join artist Basil Kincaid for a hands-on family workshop at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art inspired by A Day at Victoria Glades (2021), a quilted work. families will create their own collages. This workshop is designed for children and their caregivers to create art together. Ages 7-12.
We gather in Tucker’s Grove for our annual celebration and joint experimentation into botanical dyes. This year, we will have pots of indigo, cochineal, mushroom, logwood, and weld.
In July, there were three of us that were fortunate enough to make the trip from Santa Barbara to Barbara Shapiro’s San Francisco studio to experience her two-day basketry workshop immersed in her “inner sanctum” of fiber art. This workshop was a chance to learn and explore the hexagonal weaving technique from someone who has studied basketry in Japan and learned from master weavers.
Valerie McLean invites us Saturday, July 18th to Felt Again! Let’s make a bag! In this full-day workshop, you’ll learn fiber layout, resist techniques, cord making, and how to add inside or outside pockets.
In July, we welcome Ellin Klor, a board member of the Textile Arts Council of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and producer of the Bay Area Fiber Artists Archive Video series.
This fall, sewing classes at SBCC return to the Wake Center, where the sewing room has been renovated with all new equipment. The curriculum has changed, too. More classes have been added, daytime and evenings, with simpler registration.
We are excited to welcome Melissa Leventon, founding partner of Curatrix Group and a specialist in European and American costume and textiles.
With 13 instructors who will inspire you to pitch yourself, arms wide open, further into the fantastic world of fiber. Join them at CNCH 2026, May 14 – 17, at Asilomar Conference Grounds.
Treat yourself, your family and friends to a day of Fiber Fun. Our quality vendors will be returning to fill your fiber stash wishes. We will have sheep shearing demonstrations, fiber related classes and short make and take activities.
We’re pleased to welcome Julia Ford, local fiber artist and educator. Known for her innovative and expressive woven work, Julia explores weaving as a dynamic art form. She will share her work along with her methodology and approach to teaching weaving.
In her lecture Film, Fabric, and the Feminist Imagination at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art artist Sabrina Gschwandtner examines the intersections of film, textiles, and feminist histories in her moving-image practice.
Guild member Deborah Jarchow will teach a seminar on joining handwoven panels and a two-day double-heddle workshop for expanding rigid-heddle skills.
The Handweavers Guild of America (HGA) invites fiber artists to submit work for Small Expressions 2026, a nationally juried exhibition celebrating innovative fiber work at an intimate scale. Deadline: April 6, 2026.
Guild member Becca Licha is included in the Obscure Noteriety exhibition at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art from April 4 to April 25, 2026.
We’re thrilled to welcome San Francisco textile artist Barbara Shapiro for our April 4th Guild meeting, sharing a remarkable body of work spanning five decades.
