About Us

---

Melanie D Sanford, principal with Conserving Threads, is a boutique firm in Dallas, Texas specializing in the comprehensive consultation, conservation and installation services of historic textiles and related objects for private clients, historic societies and museums. Conserving Threads is also an online store providing plant-based fibers and yarns to hand-spinners, knitters and fiber enthusiasts. Ms. Sanford has over thirty years studying textiles and fashions. She is a promotor of second-hand fashion, fashion flipping, and likes to look and re-image.

As an artisan Marti has worked in a variety of media. Her discovery of felting and fiber arts brings together a melding of passions from sculpting, playing with color and the tactile art of creating. She has always been curious and finds the path of learning and experimenting to be a continual source of creative inspiration. Marti’s approach to teaching is to explore and discover while having fun. The reward is seeing the excitement in students as they challenge themselves and succeed.

Karen Davis has been a fiber enthusiast since 2000 and fiber artist since 2004.  She specializes in spinning, weaving, wet-felting and needle-felting with fiber from her own animals including alpacas, angora rabbits and llamas.  In addition, in homage to her Danish heritage, she creates one-of-a-kind Viking weave necklaces and bracelets with wire-wrapped semi-precious stones. Her love of animals and nature led her to a career teaching high school biology, specifically AP Biology.  She is happy to discuss animals and/or biology with you!!

Abigail Carter learned how to knit & sew from her mother and spent class days annoying teachers by knowing the answer even when she was “goofing off” knitting with two pencils. She later taught herself to crochet, and enjoyed making amigurumi critters. For the last four years, she’s been honing her spinning skills, taught by a lovely friend, and is so chuffed with the hobby that she can’t wait to share her knowledge! When she’s not at the wheel or spindle, you might find her hoarding a growing stash of fibers in need of processing, weaving on vintage looms, fiddling about with woodworking, or teasing her gremlin cat, Roxie.

If it has to do with yarn, fabric, or beads, Care is happy. If it's sparkly, textured, or has eyeballs (hello Amigurumi!), you'll hear her giggle! She started quilting at a young age and had her own children's boutique clothing line for several years. She loves to sew, crochet, weave, bead weave (off and on loom), rug hook, dye yarn, and embroider. She works full-time as an IT program manager, so helping other makers stay organized and maximizing craft time is a passion. When she's not crafting herself, she's designing items targeted to crochet artists. You can find her adorable patterns and finished items at SharpinDesigns.com, Ravelry.com and Etsy.com.

Mary's fiber arts history did not begin until her mid 20’s. She was the only girl in a one-girl office. Fortunately, the neighboring office included a girl who was her age and from Denmark. She taught Mary how to knit and crochet. Bored with knitting, Mary decided to learn to weave. She followed that up with spinning. In her early 40’s, with husband now retired, she came back to Dallas and joined the Dallas Handweavers & Spinners Guild. Mary has since added fiber producers, shetlands, angora goats and suri alpacas. Mary Berry has made her mark nationally attending festivals, hosting her own retreat and running a successful fiber arts business.

Monica is the founder of Gothfarm Yarn and has made her mark in the fiber art industry with her passion for the natural colors of heritage breed sheep. She has turned her passion into a business of grading, sorting and creating unique yarns.

Mission Statement: Gothfarm Yarn is dedicated to creating yarn and roving from undyed, naturally colored fibers. We don’t use dyes or synthetic fibers. Instead, we rely on fiber from rare and heritage sheep breeds, along with other fiber fauna. Our fiber comes from small farms and we work with small wool mills to process it into products.

We hope that Gothfarm Yarn can help build awareness of the rich diversity of fiber producing plants and animals. And we hope that the spectrum of colors and textures found in our yarn and roving inspires creativity of all kinds.

Bold colors, textures, beautiful prints and throwing things together that shouldn’t go together have always been loves of Susan. She has an MFA in Scenic Design for Theatre, Television and Film, and spent many years as a scenic artist. Susan loves that world.  As a scenic artist, she worked large and bold because the set is under lights ten to thirty feet away from it’s first audience member.  Small strokes don’t have much of a place in that world! When Susan turned to textiles, she carried a lot of those same techniques into her work even though it was on a smaller scale. She loves the batiks for the same reasons.  They are bold and the color is intense and the patterns are irregular because of the nature of how they are created.  She loves throwing them all together in a way that feels like it might not work, and then  makes it work.  The free motion quilting adds the finishing touches with lots of lines and colors and shapes that pull everything together and gives your eye so much to explore.

Darlene stumbled upon the joy of weaving when she found a loom and natural yarn at an estate sale. Teaching herself to weave, it quickly turned into a passion. Creating unique wall hangings, she loves working with natural fibers including cotton cord which she also uses in macrame leaves. Her weavings are all one of a kind, created organically, with texture created from the various techniques and the variety of fiber thicknesses used. Darlene wants to share with you her love of weaving and fiber, to help you create your own piece of art and to discover for yourself the love of fiber art.

Ellen Baize took up sewing, knitting and crochet as a teen but never dreamed of spinning and weaving wool from a sheep until her parents brought the first know flock of Shetlands to Texas in 1991. She took spinning, weaving and dyeing lessons from a master fiber artist, Anna Scott, and developed a passion for the world of fiber arts. Now as a shepherdess of Shetlands she loves breeding for lambs to sell, shearing her sheep and skirting fleeces to send to mills or to scour and spin. She keeps her hands busy with fiber arts projects using yarns hand dyed with natural dyes or yarns of many beautiful natural colors from her sheep. Knitting is a favorite pastime and Navaho style tapestry weaving an art form she is enthusiastic about sharing. Ellen loves to teach all ages the skills she has learned hoping that these wonderful arts will be preserved for future generations.