What is LAFTA?
Founded in 1995, Louisville Area Fiber and Textile Artists (LAFTA) is an organization of visual artists whose work encompasses a variety of surface design and construction techniques, focusing on fibers, textiles and beads.
Our mission is to provide support to our members and to increase community awareness of fiber and textile art. Click HERE to see how our mission unfolded over this past year.
LAFTA CALENDAR
April 2026
Tue, April 7, 6:30 pm - LAFTA service project for Habitat for Humanity at STITCH, 969 Cherokee Rd.
Thur, April 16 - St Marks Church, LAFTA monthly meeting. Topic - TBA. Doors open 6 pm, meeting starts 6:30 pm
Sun, April 19, 12:30 pm - Lori Sargent Artist’s Talk, Marx Gallery, All People’s UU, 4936 Brownsboro Rd.
Thurs & Fri, April 23-24. St. Mark’s Epicopal Church. Molly Elkind Paperweaving Workshop (pre-registration required)
Tues, April 28 12:30pm - Weaving Special interest group meeting at Panera Bread, 1801 Rudy Lane.
May 2026
Sun, May 17, from 12:30 PM - 4:30 PM. Upcycled Expression: Garment as Canvas, Mojo Quilts and More, 510 Bells Mill Rd., Shepherdsville KY 40165. (pre-registration required)
Thu, May 21, 6:30 pm St Marks Church, LAFTA monthly meeting. Topic - TBA. Doors open 6 pm, meeting starts 6:30 pm, Guests welcome
June 2026
Sat, June 6 - 10:00am - 3:00pm, Found and Fabulous Workshops at St. Mark's Episcopal Church. (4 mini-workshops, 2 from 10:00 AM to noon; 2 from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM. Pre-registration required)
Thu, June 18, 6:30 pm St Marks Church, LAFTA monthly meeting. Topic - TBA. Doors open 6 pm, meeting starts 6:30 pm, Guests welcome
Upcoming Member Workshops!
Upcycled Expression: Garment as Canvas. Sunday, May 17, from 12:30 PM - 4:30 PM.
Award-winning Angelique Shah will host up to ten LAFTA members at her studio/shop - Mojo Quilts and More, 510 Bells Mill Rd., Shepherdsville KY 40165.
Reimagine clothing as a creative canvas in this 4-hour, artist-focused workshop. Designed for experienced fiber artists, this class explores intuitive approaches to garment deconstruction, reconstruction and surface design. Participants will work with a single garment, learning how to take it apart with intention, reconfigure shape and proportion, and incorporate artistic elements such as patchwork, applique, and layered textiles. Emphasis will be on composition, texture, and developing a personal visual language through cloth.
This is not a pattern-based class, but a guided exploration of transforming existing garments into expressive, one-of-a-kind pieces. There is a $15 materials fee per student, that includes access to a curated selection of fabrics, trims, and specialty threads to support your design process. Supply list for participants will be provided at registration - it includes 1-2 garments (think: button-down shirts, denim, dresses, jackets - items with structure work best); basic sewing kit (fabric scissors, seam ripper, pins or clips, neutral and decorative threads). Optional: a sewing machine in good working order with power cord and foot pedal.
Maximum 10 participants - sign up now by email to Debbie Hoblitzell at d.c.hoblitzell@gmail.com . We'll look into carpooling, if there is interest.
Found and Fabulous Workshops Saturday, June 6 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church.
It's a day camp for grown-ups: 4 mini-workshops, 2 from 10:00 AM to noon; 2 from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM.
Sign up for one morning and one afternoon session, or just one, by emailing Debbie Hoblitzell at d.c.hoblitzell@gmail.com – maximum of 10 per session - or just bring your own project and hang out with LAFTA friends, with a bring-your-own brown bag lunch from 12:00 to 1:00.
All sessions are free to LAFTA members; some may charge a small materials fee ($5 or less, to be paid at the workshop). Supply lists provided below or at registration.
Morning workshops (10:00 AM to noon):
Debbie Shannon: No Scrap Too Small - make miniature books with "used, found and leftover" paper items - including Debbie Shannon's marbled paper scraps. Bring scissors and a pencil; Exacto knife and cutting board if you have them.
Janet Raderer: Fabric to Art Cards - learn a number of techniques to make note or greeting cards incorporating fabrics. Everyone will go home with one completed note card and lots of ideas for more.
Afternoon workshops (1:00 PM to 3:00 PM):
Antje Bishop: Adding Found Objects to Your Fiber Art - use sheesha embroidery, bead-surrounds and more, to embellish your fiber art.
Kathy Loomis: Basics of Collage Composition -use newspapers, magazines, brochures, junk mail and more to explore different approaches to collage and basics of composition. Support papers, glue sticks and some magazines and brochures will be provided; $3 supply fee to be paid at the workshop. Participants bring paper scissors and tweezers, also magazines, interesting brochures and flyers, any text-weight paper you have lying around that calls out to you for color or pattern.
SAVE THE DATE!:
PAPER WEAVING EXPANDED
with MOLLY ELKIND
April 23rd & 24th, 2026
*Registration is now full*
If you would like to be added to the waitlist please contact Amy Sloboda.
To register, complete the Registration form HERE: Molly Elkind Workshop – Fill out form
As a member benefit, early registration will be for current LAFTA members only until February 19th, 2026.
Registration will be opened to the public on February 20th, 2026.
Once all spaces are filled, attempted registrants will be place on a waiting list.
Class size limit is 24.
Paper weaving is a quick and fun way to play with color, image, and pattern—without a loom! Even if you’ve never seen a weaving draft and don’t know warp from weft, you’ll be weaving by the end of the workshop. A paper-woven surface is also great for adding collage and mixed media to, so come explore the possibilities!
Paper weaving is even more fun when you work with papers you’ve designed yourself. So we’ll begin by using watercolors to do surface design on papers that we’ll later slice up for weaving. For inspiration we will view the diverse work of several artists working in this medium today. You may also bring your own previously-decorated or found papers. Through lecture and demonstration, you will learn how to choose papers for weaving, how to decorate them, how to cut strips, choose a weave structure, read a weaving draft, and how to do the actual weaving. You can also experiment with added other media to your weaving such as dried plants, threads or yarns, or other weaveable elements. We will emphasize choosing papers and weave structures that create maximum visual interest and interaction between image and
weave. Finally, we will look at how to finish and mount your completed weaving. I will share several handouts and resources.
- Location: St. Mark's Episcopal Church 2822 Frankfort Avenue, Louisville, KY
- Suitable for: everyone. Previous weaving experience helpful but not required.
- Length: 12-hour in-person hands-on workshop, Two six-hour in-person sessions over two days
- Cost: Current LAFTA members: $120.00 / Non-members $160.00
- Supplies: Attendees will be responsible for bringing most of their own materials and supplies. A full description will be sent prior to the beginning of the workshop. There may be a small materials fee ($10- $15) payable to Molly in cash at the workshop.
- Cancellations: Cancellations will be accepted for a full refund up until March 23rd , 2026 (one month prior to the workshop.) After that date, refunds will be made only if your spot is filled from the waiting list. Refunds will be made by check and may take several weeks to process.
LAFTA is able to reduce costs to members for this workshop through generous donations made to the Lida Gordon Memorial fund. Several LAFTA members were taught and mentored by Lida, including Molly. To find out more about Lida, her life and her connection to LAFTA please visit https://www.kfw.org/board/
Supplies:
- Papers: Watercolor paper: A weight of 90-140 lb. For the purposes of this workshop, watercolor paper size of 9” x 12” or 11” x 15” is ideal but you can bring any size you want to try.
- Other papers: Printed photographs or decorated papers (painted or found papers such as magazine pages, scrapbook papers, handmade or fine art papers). Papers heavier than 20-lb printer paper are easier to weave with, if possible. Molly will also be bringing a limited amount of papers as part of the supply fee, so please bring some papers you want to try.
- Watercolor paints: inexpensive tube watercolors in red, yellow, blue, white and black. Pan sets can work for very small pieces but you will be unable to achieve a wash on larger paper.
- Plastic cups (for water), 3-4 jar lids (for mixing paints)
- A few brushes: a wide (1-2”) flat brush and a couple small round and/or flat ones. We will strive for large areas of color and pattern rather than highly detailed images.
- Molly will also bring some brushes to borrow.
- Blue painter's tape, drafting tape or white artist’s tape. Try to avoid scotch tape or masking tape.
- Scissors for cutting paper. Scratch paper, ruler and pencil. A few paper towels.
- Work surface: 2 pieces of cardboard, foam core or matboard at least 2” larger on all sides than the papers you are weaving with.
White glue and small brush for glue. - Optional but recommended: Means to cut paper into smaller 1/4” strips: EITHER a rotary paper trimmer and cutting mat OR an x-acto or utility knife and cutting surface. If you have one, you can bring a paper shredder, a paper cutter, or a pasta machine to cut solid-colored papers. Molly will bring a few small paper cutters as well.
- Optional: Neocolor II Watercolor crayons). Molly will also have sets of watercolor crayons available to purchase ($25 and up).
- Optional: Mixed media items: dried grasses or small flowers, yarns, paper or natural raffia, large tapestry needle, unusual found materials. Molly will also have some of these.
- Supply fee: $10 for extra provided supplies and equipment: papers and cut strips, raffia, extra brushes, artist’s tape, skewers.
About the Instructor ~
After focusing on tapestry weaving for fourteen years, Molly Elkind’s recent work explores weaving with paper and mixed media that include painted and found images. Since 2018, Molly has been inspired by New Mexico’s high desert landscape, which is rugged, fragile, beautiful... and vulnerable to wildfire and drought. Woven structure offers a language with endless expressive possibilities, and Molly continues to be fascinated by experiments in combining image with pattern in a kind of woven collage.
Molly earned an M.A. in Studio Art from the Allen R. Hite Art Institute at the University of Louisville in 2002. Exhibition highlights include two solo exhibits in Atlanta and numerous juried and invitational shows nationwide since 1996. Molly has been published in a number of fiber art-related publications, and her work is in several private collections. Besides making art, Molly is passionate about teaching it, with a particular focus on design principles, processes, and methods of critique. She is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico and teaches both online and in person for fiber guilds and conferences. When not in her studio Molly can be found out hiking the trails near her home.
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LAFTA offers special interest groups for members who are interested in specific types of fiber art. |
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