Guild Presentations

Megan MacBride is an experienced, polished presenter, available for Zoom presentations. Now booking for 2023 and 2024. Megan’s speaking fee is $100 for a 45-60 min presentation. Choose from the following topics:

  • Icelandic Textiles
  • Scottish Textile Tour
  • Guild Sales 101 (available as a 45 min presentation, a 90 min presentation or a two-parter; fees vary)
  • Getting started with MX fiber reactive dyes

Icelandic Textiles: As seen in her feature article in Handwoven M/A 2023, Megan has traveled to Iceland and interviewed locals in the textile industry. This talk covers both historical textiles as well as the state of the modern textile industry in Iceland. The Icelandic sheep is unique to this land of fire and ice, with a dual coat in a wide range of natural colors that can be used to advantage in colorwork. While knitting is ubiquitous in Iceland, weaving is part of the nation’s history, with Icelanders using the vertical warp-weighted loom until relatively late compared to the European mainland, and continues in the present day.

Icelandic sheep grazing

Scottish Textile Tour: Members of the Hudson-Mohawk Weavers’ Guild traveled to Scotland in May 2022 on a custom itinerary focused on the weaving industry. Traveling more than 1100 miles by road and more by sea, the group toured the lowlands, highlands and inner and outer Hebrides in search of weaving. Come along on the journey to visit the last remaining Scottish lace mill, an old family tweed mill, a large vertically-integrated luxury cashmere mill and individual Harris Tweed(r) weavers on the island of Harris and Lewis. This presentation features many video clips, and the accompanying blog posts include links for those wishing to visit the places mentioned.

Dyed wool is blended prior to spinning at the Carloway Mill.

Guild Sales 101: A comprehensive overview of guild sale planning and execution, including:

  • Venue selection
  • Props
  • Inventory management and cashier operations
  • Pricing
  • Finances
  • Promotion and more!

Megan is part of the Hudson-Mohawk Weavers Guild (HMWG) Show & Sale Committee which plans and executes a very successful guild sale each fall. Learn from the Guild’s experience in changing venues, adopting barcoded inventory plus a computerized “point of sale” system, and exploring social media marketing.

Getting started with MX fiber reactive dyes: A little bit of chemistry and a little bit of artistry creates a lot of fun. This lecture introduces MX fiber reactive dyes (originally sold under the Procion brand name), covering the history of these dyes, some basic chemical concepts and principles for cold water dyeing of cellulose fibers with MX dyes.

To inquire about a booking, fill out the contact form.