About Fiber Arts Houston

Terri Michele King started needlework young enough that the women in her Cajun household handed her a hook or a needle just to keep her still. Her grandmother called her Tataille — a figure from Cajun folklore, a boogeyman-type monster children were warned about, more menacing than a simple nickname suggests. The name fit.

She kept returning to needlework as an adult, until she stopped treating it as a side practice and started taking it seriously. In 2015, she earned a Diploma in Technical Hand Embroidery from the Royal School of Needlework — one of the most rigorous credentials in the field, from a school that has trained embroiderers since 1872. She continues her fiber arts journey by enrolling in the College of Master Kilt Tailors in 2026.

Her first commission came shortly after: a bride brought her a pair of her late grandmother's handkerchiefs, and Terri embroidered them with the names of the bride's mother and aunt, so grief and love could sit in the same object on the wedding day.

In October 2025, organizing her studio, she picked up the Ernest Wright shears she'd bought with that first commission's proceeds — and found herself thinking about what would happen to everything in the room, the out-of-print books and tools and years of accumulated knowledge, if something happened to her. A half-joking comment to a friend — "I have so many books, I should just start a library" — turned into a business plan, a nonprofit filing, and a catalogued collection that has since grown past 2,500 titles.

That collection, alongside a working studio and future education and exhibition programs, is Fiber Arts Houston. Terri's own needlework — crewel, goldwork, silk shading, blackwork, lace — continues today as one of the studio's services, performed on FAH's behalf.