Five Questions with Stephanie Flynn

Welcome to another installment of “Five Questions with,” our series where we ask different Easy Weaving with Little Looms authors and designers five questions to get to know them a bit better. This time we’re talking to a rigid-heddle weaver who has been a part of Little Looms since the very first issue: Stephanie Flynn! Along with being an incredible designer and weaver, Stephanie is also an adept handspinner and, even better, she’s teaching at the 2025 Spin Off Autumn Retreat, which you can learn more about here.

C: Tell us about why you started weaving and how it relates to your experiences as a handspinner? Did the spinning come first and eventually lead to learning to weave, or did you learn to spin after you learned to weave?

S: I learned how to weave as a child on a potholder loom. I made my first pair of shoes with potholders! Later, I went on to get an Accessories Design degree at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Spinning was always on the horizon, though. I first discovered spinning when I was around 8 years old. I was watching a spinner demonstrate at a heritage festival, and I instinctively knew it was something I had to do. There was no reasoning at that time why I had to spin, but years later it became evident after I realized that the woman spinning never let me touch her wheel. I made it a mission to teach and demonstrate spinning with the goal of letting anyone who wanted to touch or even treadle on my wheel. After moving to Boulder in 1997, I took my first spinning class with Maggie Casey and was hooked.

The Lobster Pot Scarf by Stephanie Flynn combined a stainless-steel/silk yarn with a linen yarn to create a lighter-than-air lacy scarf. Photo by Joe Coca.

C: One of the first projects of yours I remember seeing was the Lobster Pot Scarf from the Summer 2016 issue. You originally wove it for Spin Off using Habu stainless-steel/silk yarn and handspun flax/wool, then later rewove it using commercially available yarns for Easy Weaving with Little Looms. What made you want to try weaving with stainless-steel yarn, and how did you approach designing with it?

I love Habu yarns, and I love the stainless-steel yarn. It is a little heavier than sewing thread and the time it takes to knit with yarn that fine was out of my time budget, and all the patterns I’d seen using the stainless-steel/silk yarn were for knitters. The thought of weaving with it was a little scary—it has almost negative elasticity! Around that same time, I was at New York Sheep and Wool in Rhinebeck and bought some flax/wool roving from Spunky Eclectic—a braid very different from anything I had spun before. It seemed like the perfect pair for the stainless steel/silk, and being able to peg warp directly off my bobbin made things even easier. The design idea was twofold: I would balance the negative elasticity of the stainless steel/silk with the flax/wool in stripes and not have to spin an entire braid for a project. It was my first time getting on the cover of a magazine, and it ended up being made into a kit. A perfect match!

To create the “bubbles” in her Fortuna Major Scarf, Stephanie used different sizes of Brooks bouquet. Photo by Joe Coca

C: Looking at your past work, I think one of your strengths is the way you find ways to highlight the best characteristics of the yarns with your chosen weaving techniques and structures. I especially love the Fortuna Major Scarf from the 2017 issue with its innovative use of Brooks bouquet and how it showcases the gorgeous color changes of the cotton blend. What is your design process like when it comes to yarn and technique/structure? Do you think your experience as a handspinner informs your yarn choices?

S: I always say, “Knowing how to spin just makes you a better yarn buyer.” When you know how to spin, it changes the way you look at yarn, handspun and commercial. Yarn is so visceral. Sometimes when a yarn company sends yarn they want woven into a sample or a project, it doesn’t come out of the box singing. I’ll place it on my dining room table for couple of days to give myself a chance to see it in different light. All yarn has a secret beauty, and you just need to uncover how to make it shine. Many times, that involves discovering the color repeats and highlighting them in the weaving. This can be done in the warp or weft or with the structure you use. Just remember the “S” word: sample.

C: What inspires you as a weaver?

S: I always think of myself as a spinner first, but what inspires me both as a spinner and a weaver is color. That is the springboard for everything I do. What is the color I want to highlight? How do I do that through structure, saturation, and technique? I love to sample; you learn so much.

C: What’s on your loom(s) right now?

S: My multi-shaft Baby Wolf has a version of the Warmth of Fall Shawl, which I designed for Schacht with Judy Steinkoenig, out of Brown Sheep Sport Weight in a broken twill. I just pulled a mixed-warp commercial/handspun scarf off my Cricket rigid-heddle loom. I have shoelaces on my inkle loom and another scarf on another one of my rigid-heddle looms. I try to keep weaving and spinning to stay sane. Thanks for letting me share!