Spinning, weaving, knitting, quilting, music, and North Country artisans will be featured at the Adirondack Museum‘s celebration of traditional and contemporary fiber arts, the Adirondack Fabric & Fiber Arts Festival, on Saturday, September 12, 2009. The event will run from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.; admission is included in the price of general museum admission.

The Festival will include demonstrations, textile appraisal, songs and stories about quilts, an artisan marketplace, a “knit-in” as well as the museum’s new exhibit, “Common Threads: 150 Years of Adirondack Quilts and Comforters.”

The celebration will also showcase a special display, “Artifacts of Almanzo Wilder’s Time,” featuring coverlets, linsey-woolseys, and hands-on activities. The presentation is made possible by the Wilder Homestead. The Homestead, located between Malone and Chateaugay, N.Y. was the boyhood home of Almanzo Wilder who was born and raised there from 1857-1875. Interpretation of the site is based on the classic book, Farmer Boy, written by Almanzo’s wife Laura Ingalls Wilder, as he described his recollections of his life at the farm to her.

Demonstrations will include the Serendipity Spinners, members of the community-based needlework group Northern Needles, the Adirondack Regional Textile Artist’s Association, as well as felt makers and fiber artists Sandy Cirillo and Robin Blakney Carlson.

Two sessions of a musical program will be offered at 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. Peggy Lynn and Dan Duggan will present “A Stitch in Time Songs Celebrating the Art and Heritage of Quilting.” The duo will be joined by museum Curator Hallie Bond.

Peggy Lynn has been featured at the Bluebird Café in Nashville, and in 1996, Peggy was named “Adirondack Woman of the Year.” Peggy’s song about Mary Brown, the wife of abolitionist John Brown, was selected as the cover piece in Songs for Peace Magazine and was also recorded by the folk duo Magpie on their Sword of the Spirit album. Peggy has co-authored a book with Sandra Weber titled Breaking Trail: Remarkable Women of the Adirondacks and released an album of new ballads about strong women called “Stand a Chance,” produced by Dan Duggan. In 2005, the
Adirondack Mountain Club honored Peggy with their Arthur E. Newkirk Education Award.

Dan Duggan is known nationally for his work on hammered dulcimer and flat-picking guitar, and is the recipient of the National Hammered Dulcimer Championship. Adding to his array of recordings, Dan has recently released a new album of original airs and waltzes called “Once in a Blue Moon.”

Dan and Peggy have released a trio album with Dan Berggren, called “Ten Miles to Saturday Night,” and as a duo have released two recordings: “Keeping Christmas,” and “A Stitch in Time: Songs Celebrating the Art and Heritage of Quilting.” Dan’s children’s album, “Pieces of Our Life,” earned a Parent’s Choice Award in 1998. His dulcimer work can also be heard on Paul Simon’s CD “You’re The One”, released in October of 2000.

Museum visitors can discover more about personal antique and collectible fabric pieces with textile appraiser and historian Rabbit Goody of Thistle Hill Weavers, Cherry Valley, N.Y. For a small donation to the Adirondack Museum ($5 is suggested) she will examine vintage textiles and evaluate them for historical importance and value in an “Antiques Roadshow” setting. Appraisals will be held from 10:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m.

Goody is a nationally recognized textile historian and expert in the identification of historic textiles. She is the founder, owner, and director of Thistle Hill Weavers, a commercial weaving mill that produces reproduction historic textiles for museums, designers, private homeowners, and the film industry. Textiles created by Thistle Hill have appeared in more than thirty major motion pictures. For more about Thistle Hill Weavers, visit http://www.rabbitgoody.com/.

The Fabric and Fiber Festival will feature a “knit-in” in the Visitor Center from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Folklorist and knitter Jill Breit will host the activity. This will be an opportunity for knitters to work on a project in the company of other knitting enthusiasts, and to exchange tips with participants about how to tackle tricky techniques. Knitters are encouraged to bring finished projects to display, as well as works in progress. While the group knits, Jill will talk about popular styles of knitting in the Adirondacks, a resurgence of interest in handspun
yarn, and the role of knitting groups in this traditional fiber art.

Jill Breit is Executive Director of Traditional Arts in Upstate New York, an organization devoted to documentation and presentation of folklife in the North Country. She is the curator of the exhibition “Repeat from Here: Knitting in the North Country” and author of an article Knitting It Together: A Case Study of a Sweater.

Regional artisans and crafters will offer handmade and specialty items for
sale in a day-long marketplace at the Adirondack Fabric and Fiber Arts Festival.

Visitors of all ages can use vintage treadle sewing machines to make souvenir balsam sachets in the Mark W. Potter Education Center from 11:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m.

Photo: Album quilt made by Huldah Harrington, near Wevertown, N.Y., 1868.