One in a growing number of SDA’s “Men in Quilts”, Joe Cunningham has been working in the medium since 1979. Follow along as he takes you through his process on a breakthrough quilt he made in 2006. Creative sparks along his way home in San Francisco’s Presidio ignited his imagination, leading him to freely fuse the ideas and materials that took him to a new level of working “in flow”….

SDA AoE program was started in 2002 to acknowledge outstanding creativity or innovation in a work using surface design/fiber-related media. Check out 5 recent winners here, each of whom received a full year of SDA membership. Detail of “Uprooted”, an award-winning work by Adrienne Sloan, is shown at left….

Be brave and wade into hand- and screen-printing, resist, digital imaging and transfer processes using disperse dyes on synthetic fibers with Aussie Marie-Therese Wisniowski. Get pushed to your edge and grow both technically and conceptually in this 5 day post-conference workshop at Confluence in Minneapolis. Just a few spaces left….

Sample the latest delicacies from the world-wide-web-roaming Mickie. This trip she links us to San Jose for some really big quilts by A Bee; too close for comfort to Golden Orb spiders that spin gold; to the UK for access to great shows and videos; to Aussie fibre Down Under; then finally to a sweet site for needlearts. Cloth intarsia, anyone?…

Experience a workshop by Ilze Aviks at your own pace by using her workbooks to explore hand-stitching as mark-making. Emphasizing process over outcome, each is a full course of exercises that encourages self-discovery and the development of a personal visual language. …

SDA Member Bhakti Ziek’s greatest accomplishment of 2010 was a re-energized focus that led to a new series of weavings and an exhibition. Hear her speak on “Digital Jacquard Design Using Photoshop®” at the upcoming SDA Confluence conference in June in Minneapolis, MN….

If you want to make a living making art, it takes business savvy as well as creativity. Invest in your future, support your vision and boost your skills by registering for this Confluence pre-conference workshop led by internationally recognized master dyer Mary Edna Fraser. PLEASE NOTE: This workshop has been cancelled due to low enrollment, but you can still read art of business insights by MEF here!…

Vicki Jensen & the Ambassadors sounds like a rock band but these SDA rock stars have radically transformed the formerly lonely struggle of building community around the textile arts. Find out how they have energized SDA on the local level by creating blogs, holding effective quarterly meetings & brainstorming future projects through inspired teamwork. …

Check out the awards, commissions and collaborations SDA Members Patricia Greaves (UK), Dawn Edwards (Michigan) and Kathie Kerler (Oregon) created and won in 2010. Dawn Edward’s “Triton’s Horn” (Felt & Mixed Media) is shown at left….

Meet SDA Member Melanie Siegel of Ontario, Canada, who recently sent in news of this public works commission she completed in 2010. She wrote a winning proposal to teach felting to 8th and 9th graders in the public schools and her students did the rest. “UNITY” now hangs in the Richmond Green Library. …