Retiring our TAFA Team Blog

Those of you who run around keeping up with social media know how much work it is to keep content coming, especially when you have a bunch of different sites to maintain. The original purpose of this blog was to give a common platform for our members who enjoy blogging, to tell their stories, make announcements and write about what they thought might interest you, our audience.

It never took off. They are too busy keeping up with their own posts and shops and social media demands. Four years after launching this blog, what gets posted here is basically an announcement of new shops that have joined us, duplicating what we do on our main blog. We would love to have you keep following us there or on our other social media sites. You can sign up for blog updates on the sidebar and then scroll down and you will see our links to our other places.

We also hope that you will continue to support our handmade textiles, fiber art, supplies and related products in our Etsy shops. Shop TAFA!  

Bookmark that link and check back often to see what is new as we have over 4,000 products there on a normal day.

We also invite you to visit our new sister site, Artizan Made, which is affiliated with but separate from TAFA: The Textile and Fiber Art List.

There you will find curated handmade work, both from our TAFA members and from new shops whom we will be representing. Most of them also sell on Etsy. 

Who knows? Maybe we'll be back here in time, but for now, we need to scale down on what is repetitive and focus on where our time is best served. Thanks to all of you who have followed us here and we hope to see you over there!

Mariposa Handwovens

Mariposa Handwovens

Vicki Hedrick of Mariposa Handwovens has been weaving for over 30 years and is still in love with the process of creating fabric from thread! She lives in Carlinville, Illinois (USA) and has a nicely stocked shop on Etsy. Her business name, Mariposa, means butterfly in Spanish. She often finds her inspiration in Nature, experimenting with texture and color through the use of novelty yarns and the weaving patterns she uses.

Visit and connect with her on TAFA: http://www.tafalist.com/members/mariposa-handwovens

Bear Creek Felting

Teresa Perleberg lives in North Dakota and has her own flock of sheep. She uses their wool, dyes the colors she needs and also purchases or trades with other wool dealers when she needs other fibers. She mostly needle felts wild animals but also has an interest in farm animals and has a whimsical line of cute snowmen and other smiling critters. She has her work and kits available on Etsy and on her website.

Feuer Und Wasser

Feuer Und Wasser

Yekaterina Mokeyeva of Feuer Und Wasser is originally from Russia, now living in San Francisco, USA. A master felter, she finds her inspiration in Nature, encouraging humans to live in harmony with it instead of competing against it. 

Visit her profile to learn more: 

http://www.tafalist.com/members/feuer-und-wasser

Cape Cod Shibori

Cape Cod Shibori

Rachel Switzer of Cape Cod Shibori has had many interests within the textile field, with shibori dyeing her current focus. She has a shop on Etsy where she offers fabric for other artists along with finished pillows, runners and other finished home accessories. 

Rachel recently shared her home with us in our Decorating with Textiles Series, so make sure to take a look at that, too. It’s lovely!

FabricsofNature

Nisa Kiley named her business Fabrics of Nature because that is where she finds her inspiration! Her quilts are richly textured and worked, coming alive with light and shadow, shape and context. She often finishes them off with a piece of driftwood to hang them, a perfect complement.

Nisa is from Hereford in the UK and we invite you to visit her profile and connect with her there:

TAFA Profile

Bewove

Bewove

Dawn McCarthy of Bewove is a Manchaster, England transplant who has made her home in New Jersey, USA. She teaches weaving in the Philadelphia/New Jersey area and at the Newark Museum of Art. Her weavings, made into functional accessories for both body and home, explore complex designs like damask, multi-harness weaving and combining elements of surface design and the structural elements of creating cloth.

Learn more about Dawn on TAFA:

http://www.tafalist.com/members/bewove

Caroline Brown Art Textiles

Caroline Brown Art Textiles

Soft colors, minimalism, stitching pathways through cloth... We have a new profile up on TAFA! Caroline Brown Art Textiles is a new member from the UK. She has a shop on Etsy and sells through her website as well. Poetic work!

http://www.tafalist.com/members/caroline-brown-art-textiles

Arty Moods

Arty Moods

Tia O'Connor's journals are inspired by her surroundings in Ireland and literature. Originally from Romania, she comes from a musical background and currently works as a translator and interpreter. Her Arty Moods creations pay homage to this creative past, present and future!

Learn more about her on TAFA!

Quick2Listen Fiber Art by Jeannie Sredl

Quick2Listen Fiber Art

Jeannie Sredl of Chicago, Illinois (USA) creates art quilts that explore color and texture, often through Nature themes. Her pieces often play with boundaries, going out of the "box", hanging in free forms rather than the traditional square shape. 

Connect with Quick2ListenFiberArt on TAFA:http://www.tafalist.com/members/quick2listenfiberart

Quilts by Valerie

Quilts by Valerie

Valerie Goodwin is one of our pioneer members, joining TAFA a couple of months after we launched back in 2010. She has become especially known for her stunning architectural quilts, exploring the idea of maps both conceptual and realistic ways. 

Visit her profile on TAFA: http://www.tafalist.com/members/quilts-by-valerie

TAFA's on Tumblr! Come follow!

We're now on tumblr.!

Come follow us!

Leave a comment with your site so that we can all see you, too!  We're tumblin' together....

TAFA Market: Using Merchpin to create a virtual shopping experience!

TAFA Market

Recently I wrote a post about Selling on Etsy that got quite a bit of feedback and attention. One of the comments left by Beverly Rustica suggested that we look into Merchpin, a service that allows you to pull in product feeds from different places and display them on any site. We were sold on the idea and moved ahead to create our own marketplace!

Merchpin behaves much like an Etsy mini, but you have more control over how it displays, so you can build themes (like treasuries) and organize your products in different ways. It works seamlessly with Etsy shops, creating an easy import into a huge main catalog that can then be sorted by tags. The great thing is that we can include other TAFA members who are not on Etsy, thus being much more inclusive about who we can invite to participate. The service is not cheap, costing us $99/month to run and is quite labor intensive to set up, especially since I wanted to have lots of pages and feature different collections. Right now we have about 11 members participating and I am hoping that many more will join us.

There are a couple of downsides in using this and we are trying to figure out work arounds for them. When you click on an image, it takes you to that person's shop, leaving our site. So, it makes it hard to keep people on site to explore other pages. Another big problem is that the currency doesn't convert over to the service, so it doesn't reflect our international base. It took a lot of pressure from Etsy shops for a long time to finally get Etsy to display other currencies besides the American dollar, so it is disappointing to be back to square one on that again.

The great thing about this service is that any group of friends could band together for joint marketing efforts and display the code on their blogs or sites. We have our Team blog here, so I have added a redirect page to the Market as most of our participants will have Etsy shops. But, one wouldn't need to have a dedicated site.

We invite you to visit our TAFA Market and please share it with your friends! Comments are enabled on the Market pages, so please feel free to use them over there or over here. Sign up for our blog updates over there, too, as we will announce new shops and collections on that blog.  Lots of eye candy!

Siamese Dream Design

Siamese Dream Design

Siamese Dream Design joined TAFA in April of 2011. A mother and daughter business, Barb and Amy's family moved to Thailand from the American Midwest 11 years ago and have built up a stunning accessories business using Hilltribe vintage fabrics. They have a strong focus on shoes and sandals, but also offer bags, pillows and other gorgeous accessories and garments. Make sure to visit their blog where their trips into the Thai mountains document their relationships and adventures!

Visit their profile: http://www.tafalist.com/members/siamese-dream-design

klaradar

klaradar

Klaradar (Rakla) is our only member in Bulgaria. Klara paints on silk and has a fun, full shop on Etsy. She also nunofelts. She does a great job with her photography so be sure to check out her vibrant style!  "Dar" mean's "gift" so her shop name translates as Klara's Gift.

Visit klaradar on TAFA: http://www.tafalist.com/members/klaradar

Jacki Sleator - Textile Artist and Feltmaker

Jacki Sleator

Jacki Sleator - Textile Artist and Feltmaker is our newest member from Ireland and makes gorgeous felted garments and accessories. She has a small shop on Etsy, accepts commissions, and teaches workshops. 

Check out her lovely profile: http://www.tafalist.com/members/jacki-sleator

Kelly Darke - Fine Art

Kelly Darke - Fine Art

Kelly Darke – Fine Art  brings a fascinating combination of fine art and art therapy to our mix. She is a Michigan (USA) artist, has a shop on Etsy, and uses stitching to add texture to her textiles.

Thrums Textiles

Thrums Textiles

Susan Harvey of Thrums Textiles is a Vancouver Island Canadian who weaves luxurious scarves, shawls, and home accessories. Her blog documents her process and she has loads of information there that other weavers will surely enjoy, so be sure to check it out and follow it.

Two New Treasuries! Scrumptious and Schooled

We've had two new beautiful treasuries in the last couple of days! It's so fun to see what our members come up with and there is so much to pick from so they can be so different from each other...  Visit them both and explore our TAFA Team member's shops!

Top: Scrumptious by All Things Pretty

Bottom: Schooled! by Fuzzy Logic Felt

It's easy to find us on Etsy! Just type TAFA into the search bar and you will find our members. You can add key words to narrow the search: TAFA hat, TAFA pillow, TAFA yarn, etc. Come shop with us! You will find almost 4,000 textile/fiber art items. Make us your destination on Etsy!

TAFA on Etsy

Shabby Apple Dress Giveaway and TAFA Treasure Hunt

I received an invitation from Shabby Apple asking whether we would be interested in offering one of their dresses as a giveaway here. I've never been big on giveaways, but after studying their site, I thought it might be fun! What sold me is that their dresses look well made and they support Accion, a non-profit working to eliminate poverty through micro-credit loans and giving access to other financial and business tools around the world.

Would you like to win one of Shabby Apple's dresses?

Here is how it's going to work: 

We want you to explore both our TAFA Team members' products on Etsy AND our main site.  You are going on a treasure hunt!

1. Go to Etsy and type TAFA into the search bar. That will give you our TAFA search results. Our members who have shops on Etsy use TAFA Team as one of their tags, making it easy to find their products. There is one item showing up that is not one of ours: wall tile. Just ignore it. Tip: Narrow the search by adding keywords that interest you: TAFA bag, TAFA hat, TAFA silk, TAFA quilt, etc.

2. Find you treasure! Pick something that you really like. There are almost 4,000 items there, so you

should be able to find something that you love.

3. Now go to TAFA: www.tafalist.com.  Find the Member Profile that matches that item. Who made it? Where did it come from?  You can try using the Member List, but many people use different names on their Etsy shops.  The easiest way is to do a search using the search bar. The shop owner name should do the trick.

4. Come back here and post your treasure in a comment.

Like this:

Treasure: (etsy link to the item)
TAFA Profile: (TAFA link to the profile)

That's all you have to do for our treasure hunt!

Some guidelines:

• Crabby Apple is only offering dresses in their Vintage Clothing Styles.
• These are the dresses that you can pick from: Snapdragon, Heart of Me, Dressage, 
  Grand National, Hackney, Captain, Admiral, Cut the Cake, At last, At first site, My vow to you, Maid of honor, Together forever, Ever after, Save the date, Moon River, Ski Bop, Some like it Hot, Tiber, Andes Skirt, Jetty Skirt, Ballerina, Nantucket, Boogie Woogie, Marigold Skirt, Lime Ricki Skirt, Park Picnic Skirt,
  Hully Gully Skirt, Newcomb Skirt  (Note that there are several skirts)
• Winner's address must be in the United States. (If you live somewhere else, perhaps you can use a friend's address and have them ship it to you.)
• TAFA members are allowed to participate.
• Giveaway ends at midnight (Central US), August 8th.
• The winner will be announced on August 9th, using a random number generator.
• Make sure that we have a way of contacting you when you leave a comment. (Do NOT include your email or phone number publicly.)
• If we cannot contact the winner within 24 hours, we will run the random number generator again and choose a new winner.

We'd love to hear more in your comments about how your treasure hunt went! Did you learn anything new about TAFA? Was it easy to find your treasure? How about your trip to our website? If you liked what you saw, please share TAFA and Shabby Apple with your friends!

From Shabby Apple's Blog

We have a winner!

Lakeisha JohnsonAugust 3, 2013 at 3:54 AM

Lakeisha found this as her TAFA Treasure:

"I like the personalized journal made by Christine Marie Ford in Canada."

Treasure: https://www.etsy.com/listing/91571464/add-a-personal-message-to-your-handmade

Tafa profile: http://www.tafalist.com/members/christine-marie-ford