Alison Rendall, 2023 Patron
Alison is an established Shetland hand knit designer who uses traditional techniques. Shetland born and bred, Alison grew up in the early 1970s surrounded by knitters in pre-oil industry Shetland. She was deeply influenced by the designs and colours of her Nan’s knitting. She learned to knit when very young, and progressed to Fair Isle knitting at school when she was just 8 or 9. She is a proud supporter of Shetland’s heritage, with inspiration for many of her designs rooted in Shetland’s landscape, nature and language.
Donna Smith, Shetland Wool Week curator
Donna Smith is a textile designer and maker living in Shetland. Following her degree in Marine Biology, she decided to set up her own business, which was sparked by an interest in making felt from fleeces from her family’s flock of sheep. Donna uses a variety of textiles and techniques and is currently focusing on her interest in knitting patterns and teaching knitting.
Elizabeth Johnston
Elizabeth is a spinner and knitter who gained much of her craft as a child, observing and learning from family and friends in Shetland. Her love of fibre became a profession. Her business, Shetland Handspun, now offers handspun yarns, handspun and handknitted garments, and tuition in spinning and knitting. Elizabeth has demonstrated, lectured, and taught workshops in spinning, lace knitting, and Fair Isle knitting in Shetland and throughout the U.K., Europe, and the U.S.
Hazel Tindall
Hazel has been knitting for over 60 years and since 2008 has held the illustrious title of ‘World’s Fastest Knitter’ having developed a fast and efficient technique. She is also a talented designer and has written many knitting patterns. Hazel’s love of knitting Fair Isle is evident throughout her work and the endless variety of colours and patterns is a constant source of inspiration. She has led classes at every Shetland Wool Week, and in mainland UK, Scandinavia, USA and Canada.
Jeanette Sloan
Jeanette Sloan is a hand-knit designer, writer, tutor and maker who describes herself as an ‘accessories obsessive’. Jeanette has worked as a textile designer for over 30 years. She creates designs renowned for a colourful aesthetic that’s become essential to her process and design identity. In addition to designing, she’s written for several publications, including Laine and Vogue Knitting. She has authored or contributed to eight books on hand knitting, including Warm Hands (co-edited with Kate Davies), Modern Daily Knitting Field Guide No 15: Open and most recently, Knitstrips, the world’s first comic strip knitting book.
Following online discussions about the lack of diversity in the fibre community, Jeanette founded ‘BIPOC in Fiber, ‘ a website celebrating Black, Indigenous and People of Colour working with fibre. The interactive directory of BIPOC fibre artists from across the globe covers a broad range of craft disciplines.
Most recently, Jeanette was awarded a British Empire Medal in King Charles III Birthday Honours List in recognition of her contribution to Knitwear Design and her work to improve diversity in the fibre arts.
Barbara Cheyne
Barbara started knitting around the age of 6, learning from her mother. Her main interest is the use of colour in Fair Isle patterns, which resulted in being asked by the British Wool Marketing Board to demonstrate Fair Isle knitting in Japan which she did for 3 visits. More recently her knitting is influenced by Scandinavian patterns in yokes which involves knitting in the round using a steek, hence her classes demonstrating this.
Julia Billings
Julia Billings is a craftsperson and horticulturist based in Bridgeton, Glasgow, where she runs a natural dye and textile studio, producing plant-dyed yarn and threads for craftspeople and facilitating workshops on dyeing, knitting, mending and other textile skills. Julia taught herself to knit in an attempt to keep warm while working outdoors in horticulture and soon found most of her spare time being spent knitting! Travel and time with inspired teachers fueled a love of traditional techniques and working with colour and it is the reworking and combining of these old skills and techniques with simple, clean design and materials that most inspire her.
Jules firmly believes that the transfer of skills and knowledge is essential to the ongoing development and elevation of craft and has taught knitters of all levels.
Felicity (Felix) Ford
Felicity (Felix) Ford is best known for her creative approaches to stranded colourwork design, and for combining knitting with sound in inventive, playful ways. She has published four knitting books under the KNITSONIK project umbrella name, each of which empower knitters to be more playful, bold and adventurous in our making.
Felix has taught at Shetland Wool Week as a visiting tutor most years from 2013, when she first visited – and fell in love with – Shetland. This year she’s returning with a handful of brand new classes, including one that uses Fair Isle Patterns and Music Boxes! Watch Felix’s serenade to Shetland Wool from ten years ago here: Shetland Wool Week Song – YouTube
Carol Christiansen
Carol Christiansen has been Curator and Community Museums Officer at Shetland Museum and Archives since 2006. She received her doctorate in Archaeology with a specialism in textiles from the University of Manchester in 2003. Her research on Shetlandic, Scottish, and Nordic archaeological and historical textiles has been published widely.
Terri Laura
Terri is a knitwear designer, producer and teacher with a strong family history in Shetland’s craft traditions. With a special interest in personalising your knitting using colour and style. Terri’s favourite projects involve working closely with people and she loves the challenge of trying something different.
Helen Robertson
Helen Robertson is a textile and jewellery artist living and working in Shetland. She is inspired by Shetland and its rich textile heritage and employs these techniques in her work, celebrating and paying homage to the skilled knitters and designers of Shetland’s past. Creating connections is important to her; connections between current and past knitters are made possible by the wearing of her textile jewellery, connections between us and the natural world are celebrated within her crafted natural pieces. She is happiest creating new designs in wire or wool.
Linda Shearer
Our Patron in 2022, Linda has lived in Whalsay all her life. She has been knitting since an early age, taught by her late mother, Ina Irvine. Linda tutors in Fair Isle Knitting and in beginners Shetland Lace through Adult Learning Shetland as well as being a volunteer with the Shetland Peerie Makkers. She is passionate about keeping our knitting heritage alive and most of what she knits she also designs. Linda has been a member of the Shetland Guild of Spinners, Weavers, Knitters and Dyers for ten years, and spent six of those as chairperson.
Hélène Driesen
Hélène spent her early life growing up in The Netherlands where she learned to knit and sew at a young age as it was part of the curriculum in schools at the time. She has expanded her creative expression with spinning and weaving and loves nothing more than teaching and passing along to others these crafts and traditions.
Hélène first visited SWW in 2018 as a tutor with a few of her friends and fell in love with the islands. She has now been a tutor at four Shetland Wool Week events including the 2021 virtual event, and is thrilled to return once again with two new classes added.
Lorna Reid
Following a career as a textile designer in the swimwear industry Lorna took up stitching as a way to continue her practice while looking after her baby daughter. 20 years later stitching is the main focus of her work.
Lorna is known for her love of colour and her playful design. Every hand cut piece of fabric and every careful stitch make her work unique and collectible. She is an experienced tutor with over 25 years of knowledge and welcomes students of all abilities to her classes.
Having recently moved to Orkney Lorna is looking forward to exploring links with the creative practices of island communities.
You can find Lorna on Instagram as @stitchbirdie
Janette Budge
Janette Budge was born in Shetland in the 1970s and brought up on a croft on the Westside. During her childhood her mother knitted yoke jumpers to sell to supplement the family income. Janette learned to knit around the age of six and quickly picked up traditional Fair Isle knitting skills both from her mother and her school knitting teacher.
She encourages the younger generation to get involved with traditional knitting by volunteering with the Shetland PeerieMakkers, is a member of the Shetland Guild of Spinners, Knitters, Weavers, and Dyers, a Shetland Textile Museum Trustee as well as growing her designing and tutoring business. Janette has also designed and written articles for several publications over the last 7 years, and lives with her husband and 2 teenage daughters in an off-grid self-sufficient energy home that they built 15 years ago. Her favourite thing about knitting is playing with colour in her fair isle work.
Freya Hunter
Freya was born and brought up on the island of Whalsay where she was taught basic hand knitting by her grandmother before she went to school. Freya continued knitting as she grew up and self-taught herself machine knitting when she was 12 yrs old.
After she married she took up machine knitting more seriously and formed her own knitwear company in 1980. Building her own company involved designing her own knitwear collection, blending colours and selling her designs worldwide through trade fairs and other intermediaries. During this time Freya developed her skills in caring for and repairing knitwear. Although she now works in a different line of work (care work), Freya is happy to share these skills with anyone willing to learn them.
Tania Ashton Jones
Tania of TJFrog is a Dorset Button designer, maker, tutor, podcaster and hand knitter. Brought up in Dorset, Tania now lives on the Isle of Skye. Tania loves sharing her knowledge of the heritage craft of Dorset Buttons and inspiring knitters to explore designs, with different colours and weights of wool, to add them to their own handmade projects as functional and decorative buttons.
Tania has taught Dorset Button workshops in person and virtually at yarn festivals, yarn shops and for private groups throughout the UK and in the US. Tania first visited Shetland Wool Week in 2012 and fell in love with the event and Shetland. She is very excited to be returning for her 7th visit and 4th time teaching.