Highland Magic Fibre Arts

Highland Magic Fibre Arts Fibre artist | Scottish Highlands wool | yarn, textiles & stories

There’s a motion in the Scottish Parliament calling for a Wool Strategy for Scotland, and it’s worth your attention if y...
09/06/2026

There’s a motion in the Scottish Parliament calling for a Wool Strategy for Scotland, and it’s worth your attention if you care where your yarn comes from.

I work the whole chain: fleece off named Highland farms, washed and spun through small Scottish mills, then dyed and finished here. From the inside, three things are obvious. We have almost no small-scale processing infrastructure, so good fleece gets wasted. The people doing the spinning, dyeing and milling are mostly sole traders working for far less than minimum wage. And farmers are still selling fleece for less than it costs to shear it.

A strategy that fixes the infrastructure, supports the people in the chain, and recognises the growers would change what’s possible here.

If you want to back it: write to the Scottish Ministers at [email protected], and to your own MSPs asking them to support the motion. Links in the comments.

After months of planning, measuring, and careful construction, my new scaffold loom is finally warped and ready to weave...
06/06/2026

After months of planning, measuring, and careful construction, my new scaffold loom is finally warped and ready to weave.

Allow me to introduce Morag the Wyrm. 🐉

She stretches floor to ceiling, consumes impressive quantities of yarn, and occupies an entire wall of my studio. Her first task will be a large-scale woven and embroidered artwork, created directly on this custom-built loom.

This project wouldn’t have been possible without the help of a professional installer who ensured everything was secure and safe, and the generous advice of an experienced loom builder who helped guide the design.

Building a loom of this scale has been a fascinating blend of traditional textile knowledge, engineering, and problem-solving (can’t afford thousands on an **actual** loom? Time to get really creative!). Every decision, from the structure itself to the warp setup, has been about creating a tool capable of bringing ambitious ideas into cloth.

Now the warp is on, and now the weaving begins- Morag is hungry 😋

StudioLife ArtistStudio ContemporaryTextiles Weaver Warping EmbroideryArt HighlandMagicFibreArts ScottishArtist TextileArtist WorkInProgress

Women and fibre have been tangled together for centuries.Not just as a craft, but as work, courtship, community, reputat...
04/06/2026

Women and fibre have been tangled together for centuries.

Not just as a craft, but as work, courtship, community, reputation, inheritance, and survival.

While researching textile history, I stumbled across some wonderfully strange facts, including the claim that “only wh**es spin barefoot.” As a spinner who is frequently barefoot at the wheel, I felt obliged to investigate. 😆

Swipe through for a few surprising stories from the history of wool and the (mostly) women who worked with it.

Which fact surprised you most?

fibrearts textilearts highlandmagicfibrearts wool weaving knitting heritagecraft

Women and wool have been tangled together for centuries.Not just as a craft, but as work, courtship, community, reputati...
04/06/2026

Women and wool have been tangled together for centuries.

Not just as a craft, but as work, courtship, community, reputation, inheritance, and survival.

While researching textile history, I stumbled across some wonderfully strange facts, including the claim that “only wh**es spin barefoot.” As a spinner who is frequently barefoot at the wheel, I felt obliged to investigate. 😆

Swipe through for a few surprising stories from the history of wool and the (mostly) women who worked with it.

Which fact surprised you most?

fibrearts textilearts highlandmagicfibrearts wool weaving knitting heritagecraft

Tomorrow starts this year’s 100 Days Project Scotland!Last year I spent my 100 days working on one big piece, developing...
31/05/2026

Tomorrow starts this year’s 100 Days Project Scotland!

Last year I spent my 100 days working on one big piece, developing a technique- my Traquair-inspired woven panel. This year I’m taking a slightly different approach.

🧵

I’ll be spending the next 100 days exploring my woven artwork in all its forms: big loom pieces, tiny experiments, handspun yarn, natural dyes, embroidery, texture, and probably a lot of “what happens if I try this?” moments.

After a year full of wool, spinning, dyeing, and designing, I’m excited to get back to following all these threads even more religiously than usual 😆 I’ll be making a weekly roundup post and keeping progress in my stories. Drop your hashtag in the comments if you’re joining in this year!

One of the biggest surprises in natural dyeing is that colour doesn’t come from where you expect.The bright pink flowers...
29/05/2026

One of the biggest surprises in natural dyeing is that colour doesn’t come from where you expect.

The bright pink flowers of Himalayan balsam don’t make pink dye, but the leaves give a beautiful gold. Alder cones create rich browns. Dock seed heads give warm earthy shades, and their leaves a vivid spring green. And some of the most famous purple dyes in history came from lichens and snails, not flowers.

A note on lichen: please only collect windblown or already detached material. Many lichens grow extraordinarily slowly, and some populations may take decades to recover from harvesting.

The landscape around us is full of colour, but good foraging starts with stewardship.

Which of these have you tried?

HighlandMagicFibreArts ScottishTextiles WoolDyeing BotanicalColour ForagedColour

29/05/2026

One of the most common questions I hear is whether a blue flower makes blue dye.

Usually, the answer is no.

Natural dyes have a habit of defying expectations. Green leaves can become blue, roots can yield reds, and brightly coloured flowers often produce little colour at all. I’ve been reflecting on the surprises hidden in natural dyeing and how it changes the way I look at the landscape around me. 🌿🧪

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Crieff
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