Imagine three perfect days surrounded by yarn, fabric, floss, buttons, beads, creativity—and your favorite makers. The first-ever Fiber+Fabric Craft Festival is just six months away, and it’s shaping up to be the ultimate crafting getaway. We hope you’ve booked your hotel accommodations and air travel to join fellow crafters at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois, from May 1-3, 2026. 

Classes start on April 30, so we’re recommending crafters come a day early for illuminating educational sessions with some of your favorite educators, like Kaffe Fassett, Melissa Leapman, Sue Spargo, and more. Take a sneak peek at the more than 350 potential classes submitted for Fiber+Fabric Craft Festival now. 

We’re also recommending that crafters research how to come as a group. The Fiber+Fabric Craft Festival is an excellent opportunity to join your local craft guild and organize a group trip! If you don’t have access to a craft guild, you can also touch base with your local yarn/quilt shop to gauge interest among your fellow crafters. Organizing a group trip will add an additional element of fun to your festival experience. Craft groups will have 4 days to socialize, explore local shops and restaurants, and craft and learn together at the festival. We’ve created a Bus Trip Program to make it easier for groups to charter a bus so they can ride together. We also have a list of participating organizations and guilds who will be present at Fiber+Fabric Craft Festival 2026 that you can join now!

Creating a craft group also presents the fun opportunity for coordinated efforts. One of our favorite things to see at events like the Rhinebeck Sheep & Wool Festival is crafters united around wearing the same sweater or other knit or crocheted accessory. We would love to see crafters sporting coordinated outfits or accessories for the Fiber+Fabric Craft Festival.

With that in mind, we’ve revamped the color palette for the Fiber+Fabric Craft Festival 2026 to give creatives five new colors to use in their crafting! 

Stay tuned for the announcement of the new colors within the next month and make sure to sign up for the Fiber+Fabric Craft Festival newsletter to stay updated about new releases.

In the meantime, we’d love to inspire crafters with craft ideas for coordinating their group around a shared craft idea, outfit, item, or accessory!

Quilt Block Sweatshirt

Quilt block sweatshirts have been everywhere for the last couple of years. Making a single quilt block is simple, fast, and a great way to use fabric scraps. Appliqueing the finished block will spruce up an old sweatshirt, and everyone has an old sweatshirt in their closet they can use! The 5 new Fiber+Fabric colors would look stunning in a half square triangle quilt block or a sawtooth star quilt block like the ones seen above, from @chopshopstitch.

 

Colorwork Sweater

There’s a reason why coordinating Rhinebeck Sweaters has been an enduring idea for knitters and crocheters attending Rhinebeck year after year. It’s so much fun to identify groups of people by their sweaters—and it’s an easy way to bring together crafters who are coming from different areas of the country. Knitters can use all 5 new colors for the Fiber+Fabric Craft Festival in a colorwork sweater but arrange their colors differently, so everyone keeps to the theme but looks a little different. We love Drea Renee Knits’ Ooey Gooey Sweater because, as you can see above, it looks great in multiple colors and can easily be adapted into a cardigan or short sleeve top.

Swiftie-style Friendship Bracelets

Swifties unite! For many crafters, the Venn diagram between Taylor Swift fans and crafters is a circle. Taylor Swift’s friendship bracelets have been trending ever since the iconic pop princess sang about them on her 2022 album, Midnights. We love these bracelets because they are incredibly easy to make and customize. Collect beads in the Fiber+Fabric Craft colors and strand them between the words that define your beloved craft of choice: CROCHET, KNITTER, WEAVER, QUILTER. If you’re multicraftual, you can stack bracelets displaying all of your craft loves. The possibilities with these friendship bracelets are endless, and we’d love to see craft groups on the Fiber+Fabric Craft Festival show room floor sporting their friendship bracelets together.

Use our Festival Prep Checklist above to get your group ready for the trip! We left some space for you to add in your own additional tasks as necessary.

Have your own crafty group idea? We’d love to see it! Share your plans with us on Facebook or Instagram—and don’t forget to sign up for the Fiber+Fabric newsletter  to be first to see the official 2026 color palette. Join us on Facebook and Instagram to share your ideas, and sign up for our newsletter to discover the new Fiber+Fabric Craft Festival colors when they’re released next month!