Make. Dye. Mend.

I teach fiber arts.

I teach sustainability.

My studio is deeply rooted in sustainability. My fiber arts practice reflects my early environmentalist training and lifelong passion. I’ve found that I can’t teach fiber arts without incorporating my love of the land, handcrafts, my textile heritage, and this yearning to more deeply connect with myself, each other, and this beautiful planet. It’s from this desire to connect that my hands make art with fiber and my mind makes meaning of words. I try to share this connection in all my classes.

MENDING.

I teach mending through hand-stitching with patches, needle, and thread. I focus on visible mending or highlighting repair as a way to redesign by embellishing, illuminating, or adding value. I’m mostly self-taught as a fiber artist but draw on my maternal lineage for my mother’s needle crafts and great-grandmother’s quilts. My mending focuses on basic techniques combined with the elements of design to prioritize utility but honor beauty and handwork.

NATURAL DYES.

I work with whole-plant dyes—meaning I prefer to work with plants I grow in my garden, forage from my local environment, or save as food scraps from my kitchen. My dyeing is rooted in a local, seasonal, land-based approach but I also purchase select historic dyes like indigo and madder root. Mostly, I teach dyeing from a locavore perspective—aiming to create natural color based on the living plants in my region, garden, kitchen, and local farms to create unique, place-based color.

SLOW FASHION.

I lead slow fashion workshops that aren’t craft-based. These classes guide participants through assessing, building, and maintaining a sustainable wardrobe that works for their individual needs based on lifestyle, budget, geography, climate, culture, aesthetic, and more. This class shares stories, asks questions, offers journal prompts, and gives a summary of my education and experience in sustainability.