Tutor Diane Savona came all the way from New Jersey to teach at the fibre arts conference, as well as three workshops in Australia.
For her first visit Downunder, Ms Savona spent five weeks in New Zealand and Australia and greatly enjoyed her time here.
"New Zealanders are very creative and inventive people. They can make something from nothing and it's wonderful," she said.
Her conference workshop was on "domestic archaeology".
"I use skills such as embroidery and crochet to discuss history, specifically women's history.
"I unearth items that were once commonly used in the domestic sphere - things like pincushions, darning eggs and crochet hooks - but are now almost extinct.
"I exhume forgotten embroidery and mending, and present them as petrified specimens."
Ms Savona said that two generations ago darning eggs were a commonplace item in households but now had virtually disappeared as no one uses them any more.
"And those domestic skills that remained, or have undergone a revival, such as knitting and crochet, are not necessarily the same skills they used to be."
Ms Savona's students were asked to bring historic items to the workshop to make their own piece of domestic archaeology.
The elaborately finished items told tales of personal history by embedding maps in a corset, old family photos in a tablecloth, and old-fashioned baby gowns in a wall hanging.
Felicity Willis from Hawera had a poignant story behind her item of domestic archaeology.
Entitled In Memory of Shirley, it was a tribute to an elderly friend who was a talented lace-maker.
"Shirley passed away in her 80s, about two years ago, and she left me all her lace. So I brought it along to the workshop to make a piece to honour her," Mrs Willis said.
The green wall-hanging contains delicate strips of lace, as well as other ephemera relating to Shirley's life. The centrepiece is the last, unfinished piece of lace she was making before she died.
Mrs Willis said In Memory of Shirley was not finished, and she intended to take it home and embed some of her friend's lace-making tools around the outside of the piece. She thought the workshop was amazing.
"It was really interesting the way people have told stories through old forgotten things," she said.
Robyn Lewis from Coromandel was at the fibre arts conference for the first time.
A keen felter, Ms Lewis took Mary Heltmansperger's class on jewellery making and was seduced by the medium.
"I've done a little bit of jewellery before but this was the first time I've really got into it," Ms Lewis said.
She was working with mostly copper, brass and silver, as well as re-used materials such as metal washers.
"We have been working with cold connections, which means that we are not soldering the metals together, we're using things like brads and rivets," Ms Lewis said.
Silk, wool, onion skins, leaves, walnuts, and ferns are the materials of choice for fulltime felt-maker and felting teacher, Pam de Groot from New South Wales. Students in Ms de Groot's workshop got to make their own felted dress out of silk and wool.
"We used freedom construction, where we let the dress tell us what it was going to be.
"We used a minimal pattern, and made lots of little decisions along the way," she said.
The garments shrunk up to 70 per cent during the felting process, and they were then hand-dyed using natural ingredients.
"The felt is very light, but it's also very durable and it wears well," she said.
It was Ms de Groot's first time in Wanganui and she also enjoyed it here.
"I got to spend some time looking around Wanganui before the conference and it's a great place," she said.
For more information about Fibre Arts New Zealand, including details of the 2015 conference, visit http://www.fibreartsnz.com.
