Cove Friends of the Library hold fiber arts fair

By BRITTANY FHOLER 

Cove Leader-Press 

The Friends of the Library partnered with the Copperas Cove Public Library to hold the first ever Fiber Arts Fair Wednesday afternoon in the library meeting room. 

The event, held from 4 p.m. until 8 p.m., featured local quilters, craft businesses like Frames and Things and Nedlewerkes, as well as Lasting Memories by Crystal Bardwell and local organizations like the Five Hills Art Guild and the local chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Quilters like Jean Larrivee and Jill Stelow and the Pidcoke Quilting Bee from Pidcoke United Methodist Church set up quilts they had made and some they were working on for people to look at and feel and learn about. Stelow’s quilts featured a style called English Paper Piecing, which consists of stabilizing fabric around a paper shape before sewing the pieces together to create very detailed and intricate designs. This style is most effective for designs that don’t have long straight sides but do have numerous set-in corners, such as the hexagon or octagon shapes. Stelow revealed that her quilts were hand-sewn but due to the method, the stitching looked like a machine did it. 

“I find it relaxing,” Stelow said. “And everything is very quick today. The quicker is supposed to be the better, and everybody goes ‘Oh that’s a lot of work.’ Well, no, it’s not a lot of work if it’s only 45 minutes a day. Things that are made by hand, it’s very satisfying. I think you can see, the hobbies of people that make things by hand, there’s a huge resurgence of this stuff because people are lacking something, they want something. They want things that mean something to them, not just something that pay for.”

Stelow and Larrivee are both in the Book Club that meets at the library, which is how they found out about the Fiber Arts Fair. Stelow said she had met several new people at the fair and made new contacts and networked with her fellow crafters. 

Library Director Kevin Marsh said this Fiber Arts Fair revealed that sometimes, it is someone’s neighbor who weaves rugs in their barn or dyes things in vats of indigo in their backyard.

“It’s not all that visible, so I wanted to have this kind of craft fair so that people can meet each other and talk to people who have similar interests and hobbies and maybe find a club to join or a quilting group or find a good source for buying materials or getting stuff framed,” Marsh said. 

Marsh and Friends of the Library President John Gallen discussed ways for the Friends of the Library to do more for community engagement and came up with the idea of doing four big activity events a year, with the Fiber Arts Fair being one. 

“Just to get people exposed to you know, this is what Cove has to offer,” Gallen said. 

Gallen said there were plans to bring the Fiber Arts Fair back again, but with a focus on metal and leather items.