PEI Fibre Festival

The 2024 PEI Fibre Festival will run from October 3–5 at the Delta Hotel in Charlottetown. Designed to support the Island’s wool industry and the craftspeople who work with wool and fibers through knitting, crocheting, felting, rug hooking, and more, the Festival will feature workshops, a marketplace, a theatre presentation, social events, and more.

The Marketplace has grown this year and will feature 36 vendors offering wools from various animals, many hand-dyed with natural products, tools of the trade, and more.

Over fifty workshops by local and international instructors will be offered. Notably, Tanis Gray, author of 16 published knitting books and over 650 knitting designs, will be featured. She has extensive experience in the creative field, having worked with Martha Stewart, HBO, Focus Features, Hungryman Productions, and served as the Yarn Editor at Vogue Knitting/Sixth & Spring and co-editor of Knit.1. She has also collaborated on projects with Warner Brothers, Lucasfilm, Tim Burton, and Disney.

Actor, writer and knitter Kirk Dunn will perform his multidisciplinary one-man show, The Knitting Pilgrim, featuring the Stitched Glass tapestries. The show combines personal storytelling, image projection and three large knitted panels, designed in the style of stained-glass windows, exploring the commonalities and conflicts of the Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Alberta teachers, online content creators, and sisters Barb Barone and Cynthia Hyslop, former yarn shop owners, are bringing their online campus, Yarniversity by River City Yarns, to the Festival. With over 20 years of experience in teaching knitting and crochet, they will share their techniques, tips, and expertise.

Local instructors include felting artist Lisa Freeman, spinner Simone Van Iderstine, knitter and weaver Margaret MacEachern, embroidery artist Rebecca MacDonald, paper piecing expert Melissa McCarthy, rug hookers Charlene and Debbie Miller, felting sculptor Christina Patterson, and master tailor Isidora Spielmann.

Rounding out the program are two social events. Andrea and Madeleine Doig from Fruity Knitting will be coming from Germany for a Breakfast Meet & Greet and to tour PEI and showcase what the Island and the Festival have to offer their nearly 80,000 YouTube subscribers. The evening will feature a performance by international touring artist and fiddler Richard Wood.

The Festival is open to the public. 

peifibrefestival.com