Last night, the WGM nominating committee recommended Maddy Bartsch as President-Elect and the WGM board of directors approved this motion. We are thrilled to have Maddy in this role and look forward to her leadership. Congratulations, Maddy!

Learn more about Maddy and her work!

Maddy Bartsch, President Elect
Maddy is a fiber artist, educator, and sustainable fiber & fashion systems activist working to bring awareness and action to the true cost and impact of our textile consumption. Maddy has been involved with every step of the fiber process, from the textile analysis of natural fibers, to fiber processing and creating finished works through spinning, weaving, felting, dyeing, embroidery, and apparel design. After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a BFA and minor in fashion studies, Maddy focused on local fiber systems and began working her way from sheep to sweater, starting at the farm level where she learned about the agricultural side of owning sheep, to the next step in the process, working at a local fiber mill. Here Maddy learned the process of taking raw fiber from local producers all the way to finished machine-spun skeins of yarn. While Maddy worked at the fiber mill and farm, she co-founded the Three Rivers Fibershed, an affiliate branch of Fibershed which works to create soil-to-soil fiber systems. This work led to being contracted by Fibershed for multiple projects including the coordination of the Minnesota Hemp Yarn Project and the National Mill Inventory Survey, in which Maddy acted as a research assistant, contacting fiber mills across the country to help create an online tool that mapped fiber mills across the United States. Maddy teaches classes around the Twin Cities at the Textile Center and at the Weavers Guild of Minnesota where she is on the board of directors. Maddy’s artist practice is based in fibers and has expanded to include the growing of her own natural dye plants during Minnesota’s sometimes finicky growing season.

See images of her work here: https://www.instagram.com/salt_of_the_north/