Lakeshore Fiber Arts Guild: 2026

Textile artist, Kayla Powers, talked about the themes, ideas, and inspiration of her current exhibition, Flourish, at the Saugatuck Center for the Arts. She shared photos and videos of the process of foraging for plants, crafting natural dyes, and hand sewing the various pieces in this show. Kayla highlighted the individual works including Sowing Seeds, A Galaxy of Wildflowers, and A Long Walk Through the North End. We had lots of questions and she was very gracious in answering them.

Sowing Seeds

Many of us participated in her collaborative community-created seed sewing-sowing project. Kayla was hoping for about 400 seed pods, she received over 1700, many from other countries and states. We all got to take a seed home with us.

Flourish

Kayla explained how the flowers in this exhibit are all local wildflowers this region in Michigan. From her handout: "It's a series I made to showcase some of the biodiversity here in this beautiful region of the world. I started by researching the flowers. Then I would sketch them, paying close attention to the shapes of the petals and any other unique characteristics of the flowers. Then I would dye fabric and yarn to match the colors as closely as possible. It was almost like a puzzle, to create the shapes and fit them together. The flowers are like little quilts with backing fabric, cotton batting in between and then the dyed fabric on top. They are primarily hand stitched. I see them almost as portraits."

She took a photograph and then had that printed onto fabric.
She used the company Contrado. Spoonflower also does it.

We had a lot of fun examing this piece and asking Kayla
how she made several of the blocks.

Any additions or better pictures are always appreciated. Also you can left click on a photo to enlgarge it. Wendy

Nancy presented a wonderful program that showed her progression of making functional baskets which then evolved into sculptural baskets and just for fun pieces. She showed us many styles, techniques and materials that she uses. Nancy began weaving and spinning before learning to make baskets. She stumbled upon Judy Anthrop's Antique store around 1977, at the time Judy was also selling spinning wheels and weaving looms. She was part of the original group of spinners called the Fiber Arts Group of Holland. This was later changed to Lakeshore Fiber Arts. Her first basket class was from Priscilla, but she didn't get to involved into making lots of baskets until she moved to Vermont and took a class in 1989. At one time she went to three conventions, in Vermont, Michigan and later North Carolina where they moved from Vermont.

Nancy explained the many fibers such as rattan, reed, splint, cane, willow, hickory bark, birch bark, pine needles, bamboo, and even wire and cheesecloth. She will incorporate just about anything into her creative baskets. She now works with pine needles a lot, that seems to be her favorite.