The national Make It With Wool competition (MIWW) promotes wool’s beauty and versatility and recognizes excellence and creativity in garment sewing and knitting. Garments must be made from fashion fabrics and yarns that are at least 60 percent wool-including specialty fibers, such as mohair, alpaca, camel, and llama. Contestants compete in skill categories and age groups: 13- to 16-year-olds compete as juniors; those 17 to 24 compete as seniors; and 25 and over compete as adults. State winners advance to the national judging round, which is in January. The Adult and Fashion/Apparel Design winners are preselected and receive all-expenses-paid trips to the national competition to model their creations. Here, Threads highlights seven individuals who won awards in the January 2016 national judging round.

National Junior Handiwork Winner

Megan Wiese
Tucson, Arizona

Megan dreams of becoming a Broadway costume designer. Her hand-dyed wool dress was inspired by a view of the New York skyline silhouetted against a dawn sky. She designed the fit-and-flare dress pattern using Wild Ginger Software and created a gradient of orange, red, and deep blue using acid dyes and hand dye-painting techniques with guidance from local businesses Weeks Dye Works and Grandma’s Spinning Wheel. Around the dress hem, Megan needle-felted a New York skyline in black wool roving. She accessorized her dress with a capelet, based on the Midnight Rendezvous Capelet pattern by Bernat (available at AllFreeKnitting.com), hand-knitted from Eco+ Peruvian Highland wool yarn by Cascade Yarns.
-Stephani L. Miller

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