Touring Shetland's textiles

This month is the first of our annual four day tours of the islands' textiles heritage and industry. 

Our May and August tours have completely filled up and there are only a few places left in October. It is fantastic to see how eager people are to come up to the islands and see the place most know by name only, and it is very gratifying to be able to run tours based on textiles! 

Our tours visit lots of the places of not only textiles but of general historical and scenic interest. We take in knitting and weaving, spinning and dyeing, and travel from north to south, and east to west. At the moment we do not go to any of the remoter islands but having just been to Fair Isle, one of my favourites, I can definitely recommend a stay in this peaceful and pretty place. The flight over needs to be experienced at least once in your life...

We could not hold our tours if it were not for the willingness of the industry to open up their premises for us. We get a special glimpse into the making of garments, hand spinners and knitters working away at their craft, and sewers and weavers and linkers and designers creating the textiles that make the name "Shetland" synonymous with fabric. Thank you everyone. We are looking forward to seeing you all in a couple of weeks.