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Instructor Biographies
Sarah Buchanan
Class: Introduction to Fiber Reactive Dyes
Sarah has always been interested in creating things and was introduced to knitting and cross stitch at a young age, thanks to her Grandma. After graduating with a degree in Wildlife Ecology, Sarah found fiber arts as an excellent way to combine her passion for conservation and creativity by incorporating milkweed floss into my punis and batts. She has made Buchanan Fiber Co. her primary focus and passion, with the hopes of providing beautifully colored products using sustainable sourced fibers to spinners, knitters, and weavers everywhere!
Kim Buchheit
Class: Vessels and Votives: Wet Felting Workshop
Kim is a fiber artist with over 25 years experience in the fields of art and design. Her design business, Buchheit Creative Services, focuses on developing creative solutions for her clients including exhibit and surface design for her clients around the country. As a former fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts and juror for regional and local arts organizations, Kim has a longstanding commitment to the arts in Arizona. She is also a certified instructor in graphic design and has taught courses at the college level. As a working fiber artist, Kim teaches workshops annually for the Grand Canyon Association Field Institute and is represented by West of the Moon gallery in Flagstaff, AZ.
Penelope Coles
Class: Shibori and Indigo
Penelope is a lifelong learner of all things fiber, an experienced indigo dyer, knitter, seamstress, upholsterer, woodworker and glass artist. She is a busy professional by day as well as owner of Oak Street Studios, a small upholstery and woodworking shop in central Phoenix. Penelope found her love for indigo in a textile art class at Phoenix College and has been passionate about it ever since.
Velvet Dishon
Classes: Hands on Chart Design and Knit a Bias Lace Shawl with Beads
Velvet has been a designer for over 10 years. She has taught all levels of knitting at Jo-Ann Fabrics for 6 years and at the Yarn Outlet Store for 4 years. Velvet's patterns are currently available on Revelry, Craftsy, YarnZone and Whimsical Yarn.
Shelley Fletcher/Diane Rogers
Class: Tenneriffe Weaving on a Gourd Shard
For the most part, our bios overlap since we have worked as partners in our gourd art and supply business for the past 25 years. Our name R 2 Designs represents our father’s cattle brand, R 2, and our relationship as 2 sisters. We became interested in gourds in the early 1990’s when there were very few gourd artists in Arizona. Consequently, we went to Southern California where gourd art was further along and took classes from gourd and fiber artists. Our mother was a seamstress, painter and quilter and our grandmother worked with fibers and yarns in knitting, crocheting and other artistic mediums. We have grown up around using fibers.
Gravitating toward weaving on gourds was a natural progression for us. We used not only waxed linen and yarns but also reed, fabrics, pine needles, palm stalks, grasses, various types of ropes and experimented with just about anything you could attach to a gourd and weave. Over the years we taught many other Arizona gourd artists our techniques and eventually wrote our own book about our style of Teneriffe Weaving. Because many of the tools and supplies we use are unavailable in conventional craft stores, we also began selling the specialty supplies to our students and other gourd artists. We still participate in the Annual Wuertz Gourd Festival in Casa Grande where we sell supplies as well as our art.
In the last few years, Shelley has joined the Arts Prescott Cooperative Gallery where her art is for sale and Diane has been experimenting with combining her love of gourds and fabrics by creating pieces of gourds attached to artistic quilts and a variety of fabric creations.
Julia Garina
Classes: Wet Felted Mittens and Nuno Felted Vest
Julia is a textile artist, felt maker and art teacher in Charter school. She enjoys assisting others discover and develop their own unique creative voice while continuing to express her own. Julia works in contemporary and unexpected ways to express her energy into the world by practicing many different felting techniques i.e. needle, wet, nuno, and using organic materials. By using these methods of fiber craft that historically were considered women's work in new and non-traditional ways, she makes then artworks. She works to inspire her students to express their artistic creativity and loves to share her skills with her students. Julia was born in Central Asia and has lived in Arizona for 4 years. She is a member of the Arizona Felters Guild. Julia has offered workshops for the guild and this summer presented a demo of wearable felt art and two gave workshops at Flagstaff Fiber and Wool Festival.
Tasha Miller Griffith
Classes: Fiber+Twist= Yarn, Finishing for Fiber Artists, Creative Mending: Knit and Creative Mending: Woven
Tasha believes that making things by hand, and sharing the skills to do so, empowers people and helps them live more joyfully and thoughtfully. Her mama gave her a needle and thread when she was very small, and she dove into fiber arts right away. Tasha has been teaching workshops in all kinds of textile skills since 2008. In 2019 Tasha will be teaching at the John C. Campbell Folk School, the Intermountain Weaver's Conference, and events around her native Arizona. She has also written about textiles for Taproot and Seamwork magazines. Tasha shares a lot of free tutorials and her current teaching schedule can be seen at https://tashamillergriffith.com.
Sallie Gurth
Class: Wild and Wooly Art Yarns
A former glass artist, Sallie now concentrates on processing and dyeing a variety of wool and other natural fibers to create artistic batts and other 'wild and wooly' preparations for spinning Art Yarns. She spins, weaves, crochets and knits. Sallie recreates animals she has seen in the wild through her needle and wet felting. She has been focusing on this art form since 2014, even though she has over 50 years experience in creating.
Louise Hall
Classes: Fair Isle Knitting, Nuno Felted Scarf and Wet Felted Purse
Louise has been interested in textiles since she was a child. She learned to knit in school in Scotland when she was 5 years old. Louise studied Fine Art in England prior to coming to the US, and made her living drawing, painting and printmaking in Tubac, AZ until the mid 1990's. After a move to Northern Arizona, she revived her love for knitting and in 2010 was introduced to felt making whilst visiting her Mom in Northern England. She became totally infatuated with what can be done with wool fiber, soap and water! Louise has been teaching felt making and Fair Isle knitting in Northern Arizona for the past few years and just loves to help people push themselves creatively.
Amanda Neal
Classes: Log Cabin Weaving on a Floor/Table Loom, Weaving with a Twist: Leno Lace on Rigid Heddle Loom and Exploring Clasped Warp and Weft on Rigid Heddle Loom
Amanda has been weaving for 8 years and loves all types of weaving. She spends her days teaching and managing Tempe Yarn and Fiber. She gets to be around yarn everyday and get paid for it - Lucky! Working at a yarn store enables one to do so much with weaving and realize what fun it is to create colorful, useful handmade fabrics! She loves teaching weaving classes and getting her students to experience the joy of weaving. She finds great joy in helping weavers learn to love the process of weaving and help them in creating their own personal fabrics that are as unique as they are.
Terry Neal
Classes: Broaden Your Knitting Horizons, Brioche - No Pastry Here! and Yarn Talks, Can you Hear Yours?
Since childhood, fiber has been a part of Terry's identity. She has always been curious about fiber and the rolls it plays in our everyday lives. Whether in clothing, household items or art, exploring fiber has been her life long journey. From fiber to thread or yarn, to fabric or art pieces, there are many techniques to learn. Terry has dabbled in some and mastered others. Her experiences include spinning, knitting, crocheting, dyeing, weaving, needle felting and sewing. Some of Terry's accomplishments include being published in Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot Magazine, having her patterns published in other magazines, and selling her art work in galleries. Past teaching opportunities of fiber-related activities have included yarn and fiber festivals, and local craft stores. All of these various steps in her journey led her to the creation of Tempe Yarn & Fiber, where she has been able to teach, design and share all of her fiber passions for the past 12 years.
Most of Terry's days are now spent dyeing, designing knitting patterns (sold on Ravelry), and teaching. Her current fascination is deciphering why the stitches work together in knitting and how all that math really helps in creating designs. As her mind explodes with ideas and 'what ifs", Terry's main goal still remains: to inspire and support others in their fiber journeys.
Elizabeth Odiorne
Classes: Printing on Fabric and Embroidery Collage
Elizabeth received both her BFA and MFA degrees from the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University in Fibers, with a focus on Printed Textiles. Currently residing in Arizona, she was recently invited to display her work in Terminal 4 of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in the exhibition Drawn to Pattern. Elizabeth has been featured in various art publications, including Surface Design Journal "Designing Minds" issue and Expose Art Magazine "Next Generation of Artists" issue. The artwork that Elizabeth creates consists of large screen printed textiles, flooded with pattern and a variety of color, creating repeated pattern from natural forms and abstracting them with hand drawn quality. Elizabeth focuses on balance and demonstrates a combination of structure with organic shapes to create an overall vibrant visual experience.
Bill Oliphant
Classes: Biliums (Net Bag) and Beginning Naalbinding
Bill has been interested in yarn and fiber techniques from the time as a boy his mother taught him to knit. He enjoyed using the wooden knitting loom his father made from a pine board with two rows of finishing nails so much that he would stay in during recess to make another scarf for a family member or friend. He is a self-described “primitive technologist” - meaning that he always wants to know how humans used to do “it” before. The “it” can include anything from making fire to stone knives, and the “before” part goes as far back as anyone knows. When he combines his interest in primitive things and textiles you can be sure he is always on the lookout for some ancient technique for do something with a piece of handmade string. Bill has been a regular instructor at both the Rabbit Stick and Wintercount primitive skills gatherings for over a decade. This will be his first year teaching at AFAR.
Deb Salazar
Class: 3D Needle Felted Monkey
Debra is the needle felting instructor for Studio Three Yarn and Fiber Shop at 1440 West Gurley Street in Prescott. Her art background includes painting, original art dolls, clay and wood sculpture.
Merry Warner
Class: Bleach Design T-shirt
Merry has been doing fiber art since she was a little girl. Her love of fiber has grown to include mediums such as clay and beads. Merry ran the Surface Design study group for the Tucson weaving guild for 5 years. It was in this group that she first saw bleach resist and fell in love with it. Merry is continuing to expand her growth as an artist now that she is semi-retired.
Nancy Wilson
Class: Spinning a Cabled Yarn
Nancy began spinning shortly after she and her husband Chris acquired their first llamas in 1988, followed by an alpaca in 1993. In 1988 she had an 'aha' moment: "These llamas have fiber on them, I need to learn to spin it." With an educational background in textiles and clothing, Nancy's llamas and alpacas have been a way for her to use that knowledge as well as being a method to pursue her knitting hobby. Nancy's Third Rule of Life is "Never get caught without a knitting project." She is currently pursuing her Master Spinner certification through Olds College and has completed Level 5. Nancy is working on her in-depth/thesis study at this time.
Class: Introduction to Fiber Reactive Dyes
Sarah has always been interested in creating things and was introduced to knitting and cross stitch at a young age, thanks to her Grandma. After graduating with a degree in Wildlife Ecology, Sarah found fiber arts as an excellent way to combine her passion for conservation and creativity by incorporating milkweed floss into my punis and batts. She has made Buchanan Fiber Co. her primary focus and passion, with the hopes of providing beautifully colored products using sustainable sourced fibers to spinners, knitters, and weavers everywhere!
Kim Buchheit
Class: Vessels and Votives: Wet Felting Workshop
Kim is a fiber artist with over 25 years experience in the fields of art and design. Her design business, Buchheit Creative Services, focuses on developing creative solutions for her clients including exhibit and surface design for her clients around the country. As a former fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts and juror for regional and local arts organizations, Kim has a longstanding commitment to the arts in Arizona. She is also a certified instructor in graphic design and has taught courses at the college level. As a working fiber artist, Kim teaches workshops annually for the Grand Canyon Association Field Institute and is represented by West of the Moon gallery in Flagstaff, AZ.
Penelope Coles
Class: Shibori and Indigo
Penelope is a lifelong learner of all things fiber, an experienced indigo dyer, knitter, seamstress, upholsterer, woodworker and glass artist. She is a busy professional by day as well as owner of Oak Street Studios, a small upholstery and woodworking shop in central Phoenix. Penelope found her love for indigo in a textile art class at Phoenix College and has been passionate about it ever since.
Velvet Dishon
Classes: Hands on Chart Design and Knit a Bias Lace Shawl with Beads
Velvet has been a designer for over 10 years. She has taught all levels of knitting at Jo-Ann Fabrics for 6 years and at the Yarn Outlet Store for 4 years. Velvet's patterns are currently available on Revelry, Craftsy, YarnZone and Whimsical Yarn.
Shelley Fletcher/Diane Rogers
Class: Tenneriffe Weaving on a Gourd Shard
For the most part, our bios overlap since we have worked as partners in our gourd art and supply business for the past 25 years. Our name R 2 Designs represents our father’s cattle brand, R 2, and our relationship as 2 sisters. We became interested in gourds in the early 1990’s when there were very few gourd artists in Arizona. Consequently, we went to Southern California where gourd art was further along and took classes from gourd and fiber artists. Our mother was a seamstress, painter and quilter and our grandmother worked with fibers and yarns in knitting, crocheting and other artistic mediums. We have grown up around using fibers.
Gravitating toward weaving on gourds was a natural progression for us. We used not only waxed linen and yarns but also reed, fabrics, pine needles, palm stalks, grasses, various types of ropes and experimented with just about anything you could attach to a gourd and weave. Over the years we taught many other Arizona gourd artists our techniques and eventually wrote our own book about our style of Teneriffe Weaving. Because many of the tools and supplies we use are unavailable in conventional craft stores, we also began selling the specialty supplies to our students and other gourd artists. We still participate in the Annual Wuertz Gourd Festival in Casa Grande where we sell supplies as well as our art.
In the last few years, Shelley has joined the Arts Prescott Cooperative Gallery where her art is for sale and Diane has been experimenting with combining her love of gourds and fabrics by creating pieces of gourds attached to artistic quilts and a variety of fabric creations.
Julia Garina
Classes: Wet Felted Mittens and Nuno Felted Vest
Julia is a textile artist, felt maker and art teacher in Charter school. She enjoys assisting others discover and develop their own unique creative voice while continuing to express her own. Julia works in contemporary and unexpected ways to express her energy into the world by practicing many different felting techniques i.e. needle, wet, nuno, and using organic materials. By using these methods of fiber craft that historically were considered women's work in new and non-traditional ways, she makes then artworks. She works to inspire her students to express their artistic creativity and loves to share her skills with her students. Julia was born in Central Asia and has lived in Arizona for 4 years. She is a member of the Arizona Felters Guild. Julia has offered workshops for the guild and this summer presented a demo of wearable felt art and two gave workshops at Flagstaff Fiber and Wool Festival.
Tasha Miller Griffith
Classes: Fiber+Twist= Yarn, Finishing for Fiber Artists, Creative Mending: Knit and Creative Mending: Woven
Tasha believes that making things by hand, and sharing the skills to do so, empowers people and helps them live more joyfully and thoughtfully. Her mama gave her a needle and thread when she was very small, and she dove into fiber arts right away. Tasha has been teaching workshops in all kinds of textile skills since 2008. In 2019 Tasha will be teaching at the John C. Campbell Folk School, the Intermountain Weaver's Conference, and events around her native Arizona. She has also written about textiles for Taproot and Seamwork magazines. Tasha shares a lot of free tutorials and her current teaching schedule can be seen at https://tashamillergriffith.com.
Sallie Gurth
Class: Wild and Wooly Art Yarns
A former glass artist, Sallie now concentrates on processing and dyeing a variety of wool and other natural fibers to create artistic batts and other 'wild and wooly' preparations for spinning Art Yarns. She spins, weaves, crochets and knits. Sallie recreates animals she has seen in the wild through her needle and wet felting. She has been focusing on this art form since 2014, even though she has over 50 years experience in creating.
Louise Hall
Classes: Fair Isle Knitting, Nuno Felted Scarf and Wet Felted Purse
Louise has been interested in textiles since she was a child. She learned to knit in school in Scotland when she was 5 years old. Louise studied Fine Art in England prior to coming to the US, and made her living drawing, painting and printmaking in Tubac, AZ until the mid 1990's. After a move to Northern Arizona, she revived her love for knitting and in 2010 was introduced to felt making whilst visiting her Mom in Northern England. She became totally infatuated with what can be done with wool fiber, soap and water! Louise has been teaching felt making and Fair Isle knitting in Northern Arizona for the past few years and just loves to help people push themselves creatively.
Amanda Neal
Classes: Log Cabin Weaving on a Floor/Table Loom, Weaving with a Twist: Leno Lace on Rigid Heddle Loom and Exploring Clasped Warp and Weft on Rigid Heddle Loom
Amanda has been weaving for 8 years and loves all types of weaving. She spends her days teaching and managing Tempe Yarn and Fiber. She gets to be around yarn everyday and get paid for it - Lucky! Working at a yarn store enables one to do so much with weaving and realize what fun it is to create colorful, useful handmade fabrics! She loves teaching weaving classes and getting her students to experience the joy of weaving. She finds great joy in helping weavers learn to love the process of weaving and help them in creating their own personal fabrics that are as unique as they are.
Terry Neal
Classes: Broaden Your Knitting Horizons, Brioche - No Pastry Here! and Yarn Talks, Can you Hear Yours?
Since childhood, fiber has been a part of Terry's identity. She has always been curious about fiber and the rolls it plays in our everyday lives. Whether in clothing, household items or art, exploring fiber has been her life long journey. From fiber to thread or yarn, to fabric or art pieces, there are many techniques to learn. Terry has dabbled in some and mastered others. Her experiences include spinning, knitting, crocheting, dyeing, weaving, needle felting and sewing. Some of Terry's accomplishments include being published in Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot Magazine, having her patterns published in other magazines, and selling her art work in galleries. Past teaching opportunities of fiber-related activities have included yarn and fiber festivals, and local craft stores. All of these various steps in her journey led her to the creation of Tempe Yarn & Fiber, where she has been able to teach, design and share all of her fiber passions for the past 12 years.
Most of Terry's days are now spent dyeing, designing knitting patterns (sold on Ravelry), and teaching. Her current fascination is deciphering why the stitches work together in knitting and how all that math really helps in creating designs. As her mind explodes with ideas and 'what ifs", Terry's main goal still remains: to inspire and support others in their fiber journeys.
Elizabeth Odiorne
Classes: Printing on Fabric and Embroidery Collage
Elizabeth received both her BFA and MFA degrees from the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University in Fibers, with a focus on Printed Textiles. Currently residing in Arizona, she was recently invited to display her work in Terminal 4 of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in the exhibition Drawn to Pattern. Elizabeth has been featured in various art publications, including Surface Design Journal "Designing Minds" issue and Expose Art Magazine "Next Generation of Artists" issue. The artwork that Elizabeth creates consists of large screen printed textiles, flooded with pattern and a variety of color, creating repeated pattern from natural forms and abstracting them with hand drawn quality. Elizabeth focuses on balance and demonstrates a combination of structure with organic shapes to create an overall vibrant visual experience.
Bill Oliphant
Classes: Biliums (Net Bag) and Beginning Naalbinding
Bill has been interested in yarn and fiber techniques from the time as a boy his mother taught him to knit. He enjoyed using the wooden knitting loom his father made from a pine board with two rows of finishing nails so much that he would stay in during recess to make another scarf for a family member or friend. He is a self-described “primitive technologist” - meaning that he always wants to know how humans used to do “it” before. The “it” can include anything from making fire to stone knives, and the “before” part goes as far back as anyone knows. When he combines his interest in primitive things and textiles you can be sure he is always on the lookout for some ancient technique for do something with a piece of handmade string. Bill has been a regular instructor at both the Rabbit Stick and Wintercount primitive skills gatherings for over a decade. This will be his first year teaching at AFAR.
Deb Salazar
Class: 3D Needle Felted Monkey
Debra is the needle felting instructor for Studio Three Yarn and Fiber Shop at 1440 West Gurley Street in Prescott. Her art background includes painting, original art dolls, clay and wood sculpture.
Merry Warner
Class: Bleach Design T-shirt
Merry has been doing fiber art since she was a little girl. Her love of fiber has grown to include mediums such as clay and beads. Merry ran the Surface Design study group for the Tucson weaving guild for 5 years. It was in this group that she first saw bleach resist and fell in love with it. Merry is continuing to expand her growth as an artist now that she is semi-retired.
Nancy Wilson
Class: Spinning a Cabled Yarn
Nancy began spinning shortly after she and her husband Chris acquired their first llamas in 1988, followed by an alpaca in 1993. In 1988 she had an 'aha' moment: "These llamas have fiber on them, I need to learn to spin it." With an educational background in textiles and clothing, Nancy's llamas and alpacas have been a way for her to use that knowledge as well as being a method to pursue her knitting hobby. Nancy's Third Rule of Life is "Never get caught without a knitting project." She is currently pursuing her Master Spinner certification through Olds College and has completed Level 5. Nancy is working on her in-depth/thesis study at this time.
Updated 9/25/2018
