The Fabric & Fiber Arts Festival

Last Saturday the Adirondack Museum held their annual Fabric and Fiber Arts Festival in Blue Mountain Lake. The exhibit featured several different disciplines of fabric and fiber arts such as; YARNBOMBING (awesome!!!), lace making, rug hooking, quilting and felting, to name just a few. There were women there doing everything from spinning wool to creating fine art mixed media pieces using textiles.

I stopped by the lace making demonstration and spoke with Holly Van Sciver, as she so carefully and gingerly wove threads that were almost translucent to make the most delicate lace I had ever seen. I asked her how she ended up as a lacemaker, to which she responded with such an interesting story, that it is the one very prominent thing that stands out to me about the entire festival. Ms. Van Sciver told me that when she was a junior in college, she went to London to study abroad for the year. As a way to make friends, she decided to enroll in a night class, where she had arbitrarily chosen Lace Making and it changed her entire life. She now owns and operates the largest distributor of lace making materials in the world. (For more information on Holly Van Sciver’s business, Van Sciver Bobbin & Lace @ http://www.vansciverbobbinlace.com/).

At one point my mother, an experience and award-winning quilter, took stock of the things we had seen at the festival and said, “It is amazing to see all of these women who are so talented in each discipline finally get honored as artists and celebrated for their talents”. It’s always so nice to find unexpected joy in the success of other women. I am always so proud and profoundly touched by the amazing things they can do.

If you haven’t been to the museum before, it is a real treat…and I don’t mean that in a snarky sarcastic way. The landscape alone is reason enough to make the trip. A cornucopia of flowers sits a top a stone fence as you look out over islands, lakes and mountains. The walkways are dotted with “firestone”, amazing black rocks, with blossoms of natural garnet exploding everywhere. There are a ton of exhibits including an entire building full of wooden skiffs and a house completely furnished with birch shelves, beds, tables and chairs. The best part of the museum? Residents of the Adirondack Park are admitted for free on Sundays! I love a cost effective adventure! Want more info on the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake? Check out the link: http://www.adkmuseum.org/