CHISHOLM — While the nation was celebrating its bicentennial in 1976, a group of fiber artists on the Iron Range got together and formed the Range Fiber Arts Guild.
Club founders included Carol Sperling and Ruth Koski, who both have recently passed away. They were seeking to learn and share knowledge about traditional fiber-related arts, many of which dated back before the founding of our nation, like weaving, spinning, and knitting.
The guild has been teaching, sharing, and demonstrating these arts the last 50 years, including a partnership with Minnesota Discover Center (at that time Ironworld) dating back to the opening of the history museum.
That partnership is being recognized with a pop-up exhibit on the main floor of the museum, as well as a permanent display of two 100-plus year-old weaving looms, being kept alive by guild members who host regular demonstrations and classes on weaving and spinning each summer.
On April 16, guild members, former members, and guests held a 50th anniversary open house and dinner at MDC, which gave members a chance to visit the new exhibit, and show off what the guild has been up to the past 50 years.
Members sat and visited, many with knitting projects on their lap, others carefully sewing finishing touches on projects. Many had brought in finished projects, as well as tools and fiber samples, books, and intricate charts used to create patterns. Guild scrapbooks detailed activities dating back 50 years, with newspaper clippings, photographs, and club newsletters.
I joined the guild shortly after moving up to Tower in the mid-1980s. I showed up at a meeting with my current knitting obsession, which was a far cry from what would be considered traditional knitting. I’d knit my first sweater when I was about 18 years old, one color of hand-dyed wool, with a simple boxy design. My second sweater had about ten colors and was a mash-up of colorwork and texture, based on knitting designs coming out of a wool collective in Uruguay. My idea of knitting was the more colors the better. I would sketch out a design, color it in, add some yarn swatches, and then start knitting.
I brought some of my knitting to the first guild meeting I attended and shyly put them out. I was in my 20s, and my knitting was mostly self-taught with some help from my mother. I had recently started using patterns from the British designer Kaffe Fassett. Before I had a chance to say no, I was offering a colorwork knitting class with a half a dozen women planning to attend. The class was set for an evening in January or February, I can’t quite remember. What I do remember is that day the temperatures didn’t creep above zero and by evening were well below -20F. I wasn’t sure how many would take the drive up to Tower, but everyone showed up, along with a few extras. Our cabin was rustic, with a wood stove and propane gas lights. I didn’t even have enough chairs for everyone to sit on, and some graciously sat on the floor as I taught colorwork, techniques for handling multiple strands of yarn, and design rules.
I hadn’t thought about that class in a long time, but at the guild’s 50th gathering, several members remembered driving up and learning to knit their multi-colored woolen hat. Others remembered another class I taught on a Kaffe Fassett sweater design, and one of these still proudly owned by a guild member who had recently been modeled at a guild fashion show.
The guild has continued its tradition of sharing and teaching. Guild member Barb Leuelling helps run a weaving studio set up at Old School Lives in Cotton, which features 12 looms which are used by community members January through May. In the summer, she, along with other guild members, keep the Minnesota Discovery Center looms active.
The Katri Saari loom was carved from a spruce tree root and is affectionately called the tree loom. The root’s natural curves were just the right height to form the base of the loom.
The loom was owned by a group of five families, who each contributed two dollars to the loom’s construction, 114 years ago. The loom would be housed at one of the families’ homes for a couple of months, and then would be moved to the next. Katri Saari inherited a share of the loom, and then became its sole owner as the other original families either moved or passed away.
Katri Saari, who lived in Idington, was a master weaver, producing both functional items and works of art. Her knowledge of Finnish folklore and traditions was impressive, and she worked to keep alive traditional Finnish patterns and designs. She taught several of the current guild members in her later years. She died at the age of 91 in 1984. Her loom then became part of the permanent collection at the museum: but it is a living part of the museum and is still used to weave fabrics and rugs. And now new generations are getting introduced to the art and craft of weaving.
“I consider myself a winner because I get to weave on this loom,” said Barb Luelling when interviewed by MDC. “I’ve passed along that tradition to other people as much as I can.”
Some of the weavings on display in the loom room at MDC were created by guild members. Luelling has a rag rug in the exhibit which she made from her large assortment of the many colors of U.S. Forest Service uniform pants she had worn over the years, once she retired.
While the large wooden looms were usually used to weave clothing scraps into functional rugs, they can also be used for more intricate weaving designs for finer fabrics.
Guild member Kristy Balder, of Goodland, is a weaver who has taken the art from the ground up, literally. Balder started growing flax from seed, and then learned how to process the plants into fibers that could be spun into linen yarn, which she then dyed using natural plants like indigo, and then wove into a fabric which she sewed into a one-of-a-kind tunic, which she proudly wore to the guild’s gathering. Lakeland PBS did a program on Balder’s project, and the exhibit has a link to the video. MDC also has produced a video showing guild member’s weaving on the historic looms.
Others showed up in ethnic clothing, homemade of course, because most of the guild members are also accomplished sewers. Women shared their creations, both old and new, and talked about methods, patterns, and techniques.
Jayne Meyer was patiently sewing a ribbon into the lining of a multi-colored wool cardigan’s button band.
“This sweater was supposed to be two colors, but I had a half a dozen more colors of that wool,” she said, so she adjusted the pattern, pointing to the fair isle style design that featured contrasting two-colored rows. She did run into a problem when the sweater was almost done, realizing she was a few ounces short of the wool she would need to finish the sleeves so they would perfectly match the body of the sweater, but luckily she was able to order more wool in the right colors.
Ellen Pierce, of Embarrass, who raises her own wool, which she then spins and dyes, had yarn on display. Allana Maijala, one of the younger guild members (been a member only 20 years) had crochet, beadwork, and jewelry to show. She said she had been learning new skills from guild classes.
And while many in the guild might be considered experts in their own field, they all are lifetime learners, trying out new types of fiber arts and techniques.

The guild
The Range Fiber Arts Guild is open to all, and all ages, and meets monthly September through May on the first Thursday at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Virginia at 6:30 p.m. The group currently has almost 50 members. Meetings include a program, with members or outside speakers talking and demonstrating a specific skills or craft, and a time for show and tell, where members bring their most recent projects, finished or in-progress. The group also currently has three study groups that meet monthly: weaving, knitting/crocheting, and spinning. The guild also hosts a multi-day retreat each year in January. The group has an active Facebook page to keep track of events and projects.
“We all really like to share our knowledge,” said Loiselle.