Textile & Fiber

Guides and ideas on textile & fiber

From the Handsome blog

• Wool and looms in Biella: try weaving where Italian wool is made

  In Italy’s wool district you watch the mills from behind glass. A hand loom you can touch, and one hour is enough to understand what good cloth is made of.

• Como silk: where to try a silk dyeing and printing workshop

  Around the lake silk is still a trade, not a memory. What separates screen printing from dyeing, and what half a day in a studio actually gives you.

• Eighteenth-Century Looms Still Running: Silk in San Frediano

  An eighteenth-century hand loom makes a few metres of cloth a day. That is not a flaw to fix: it is the reason the cloth still exists. In Florence, in Borgo San Frediano, six of those looms work every day.

• What to do in Prato: the textile district you can try with your hands

  Prato has the reputation of an industrial city, and in part it is. But the textile work the mills do by machine, you can do yourself in a studio: loom, dye bath and regenerated wool in one day.

• Corporate gifts from Tuscany: three districts, one supplier

  A gift that says Tuscany touches three craft districts that do not speak the same language. The real cost is not the sum of the quotes: it is the time of whoever holds them together.

• For Makers

  Crochet and knitting workshops: simple ideas for novices

  Crochet has a superpower: it's slow, repetitive and deeply relaxing. Here's how to turn it into a workshop where everyone finishes something, despite very different paces.

• For Makers

  Loom Weaving Workshops: How to Make Them Simple and Magnetic

  The hypnotic gesture of interlacing threads is relaxing and addictive. With a simple frame loom, weaving becomes an accessible, magnetic workshop.

• For Makers

  Macramé and fiber workshops: the formats that work

  A few knots, big impact: macramé is one of the most relaxing and photogenic workshops out there. Here's how to choose projects and formats that get booked.