Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
SPINNING SPINNER: Whitehall resident Chiara Schober honed her spinning skills at last year's festival.
DIPPING DYERS: Fiber Fest workshoppers learn to dip their fibers at the 2016 Copper K Fiber Festival.
Mark your calendars for the sixth annual Copper K Fiber Festival Saturday, July 16 (9 AM-5 PM) and Sunday, July 17 (9 AM-4 PM).
Event creator Kami Noyes of Ranching Fiber Traditions invites everyone to attend this event, where Fiber Arts are Getting Back to Their Roots! The event is free of charge with fiber arts workshops, vendors, and more included in this fun-filled weekend at the historic Copper K Barn just outside of Whitehall.
With over thirty vendors, the Fiber Festival offers not only learning experiences but a variety of homegrown gifts as well.
A new Beginning Spinning workshop has also been added to the Sunday schedule. Christy Yancy, with Montana Mobile Massage, will be joining as a vendor this year; enjoy a massage before or after a workshop to ease any muscle pains!
"This is a great place to do your Christmas shopping and support homegrown businesses," Noyes said.
Noyes, who grew up lambing in the Copper K Barn, always knew she wanted to hold a festival there someday, especially after she took up the hobby of spinning wool fibers from her sheep cuttings. Six years ago, after her sister Lacee Kountz restored the barn, that dream became reality. The event brings in hundreds of attendees each year from all over the country.
"I think a lot of people don't even know what "fiber arts" in this case means," Noyes said. "We aren't talking about what you eat for breakfast."
Fiber arts is a style of fine art which uses textiles such as fabric, yarn, and natural and synthetic fibers. It focuses on the materials and on the manual labor involved as part of its significance. Most fiber art works are works of art that communicate some sort of message, emotion, or meaning, and go beyond just the literal meaning of the materials. Traditionally fiber is taken from plants or animals, for example, cotton from cotton seed pods, linen from flax stems, wool from sheep hair, or silk from the spun cocoons of silkworms.
Mark your calendars for July 16-17.
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