Join Tania Ashton Jones of TJFrog as she takes you on a journey of how Dorset Buttons were used at the height of the Dorset Button cottage industry in the 1600 - 1800s, and how you can incorporate them today with your handmade woolly projects. Lots of ideas and samples will be shared from Shetland wool to hand dyed 4ply yarn, from cardigan buttons to shawl pins. Functional buttons to statement embellishments, be inspired to make Dorset Buttons to add to your creative projects!

Wool is a wonderful, natural fibre. It’s soft and squishy and makes cosy clothing and accessories. But do you know what else it can be used for? By exploiting wool’s many beneficial properties discover how innovative companies have made, or are developing, products that can be used in sectors such as horticulture to peatland and countryside management, packaging and construction to cosmetics and healthcare. Now there are even more ways to add wool into our lives.

1998 saw the release of a new “old yarn”. Yarns International Shetland 2000 was a venture of US local yarn store owner Betty Lindsay and Jamieson & Smith, making available for the first time in the US, Shetland knitting wool that was undyed and came in multiple colours. Its release was the beginning of a new way of thinking about colour in knitting and helped change how yarn and designs are marketed. This talk tells that story and examines the role that Betty and her partners had in shaping our hand knitting industry today.

Join Nora L Howley - knitter, researcher and storyteller - for this fascinating tale! Nora is particularly interested in the stories of the relationships between patterns, yarns, people, and places.

This talk from professional textile conservator Isabella Rossi will explain how to care for the objects that you’ve spent dozens of hours knitting and crocheting. We’ll cover the ‘agents of deterioration’, the elements that turn your garments from masterpieces into rags. These include moths, holes from use, light fading, wash fastness, and unwanted felting. The talk will explain how these problems arise, how to address them, and how to prevent them in the future.

Susan has been inspired by vintage aesthetics since an early age, and has been designing vintage inspired clothing since she was a teenager. In this talk Susan tells you how her career began and about some of her most ambitious projects, such as The Vintage Sheltand Project and most recently, A Stitch in Time Volume 3 - The Colourwork Edition. Susan will also explain how she 'reads' and interprets original vintage patterns and provides her tips on where to start.

I've often heard machine knitting referred to as "cheating". In this talk I'd like to present the case for considering it as a separate craft with its own skills and traditions. We'll have a tour of historical knitting machines and look at the 20th century boom in domestic machine knitting. I'll illustrate the talk with examples by local knitters from the 1980s and dip into the maker/hacker movement of the early 2000s. I'll end with a round up of the present culture of machine knitting at home and as a studio practice and perhaps even a short fashion show.

This Indigo Plot is a Natural dye garden in the Glasgow Botanical garden curated by textile artist Elisabeth Viguie Culshaw. Set up in Covid crisis time to grow Japanese Indigo and Woad it is 3 years old and used to educate about the connection between plant and colour.

Elisabeth grows 1000 Japanese Indigo plants yearly to share with the general public.

Sustainable dyeing is a subject close to Elisabeth’s heart but she wants to raise awareness about the current risk of binging from Nature by taking out too much in a consumerist way. She wants to tell us about noticing the seasons and working accordingly.

Learn about the story of wool in Britain, breeds of sheep and their wool qualities and uses from Rachel of Balmerino as she reflects on the impact sheep have on our landscape, a farmers perspective on wool and the future of wool in Britain.

Join Janette Budge - one of the most popular speakers and tutors of Shetland Wool Week, as she shares her deep knowledge of the history and heritage of Fair Isle yokes.