Illinois Fiber Festival

The Illinois Fiber Festival is a single-location event in Champaign, Illinois, launched in 2024. Vendors, classes, and demonstrations cover the expected fiber disciplines, but what makes this one worth watching is the lean toward historical and lesser-practiced skills. Flax processing workshops walk you through breaking, scutching, and hackling, and walking wheel displays let you try equipment most people have only seen in museums. Linen presentations round out the plant-fiber programming. It's a young festival with a clear point of view, and the emphasis on techniques beyond knitting and crochet gives it room to carve out its own identity.