Welcome to the TextileX resource guide—a growing effort created to map out and connect the vibrant textile community and resources in the Portland metro area and beyond. The foundation of this guide was built from the diversity of organizations that participate in the Portland TextileX Month festival every October.
Development of and funding for this guide have been provided by Textile Hive with additional funding from a RACC catalyst grant in 2019.
We encourage you to contribute additional resources through this form and consider becoming a member of TextileX to help further develop this resource guide as well as Portland TextileX Month.
Businesses
BlackSheepMade
Alyssarhaye Graciano is a trilingual, POC fiber artist. Once in the tech industry as a linguistic specialist, she left her day job to pursue a creative career. While she mainly knits, crochet, macramé and weaving are also part of her everyday life.
She started BlackSheepMade as a way to fund an internship abroad while in college, but since 2014 it has evolved into large public installations, long-term pop-ups and traveling workshops. You can find her latest mural in her hometown of San Jose, California at The Berryessa Flea. She wove a 15 x 8–foot (4.5x 2.5–m) mural with her dad, Francisco, as an homage to her late abuelita and hometown culture.
In 2018, she ran a two-month long pop-up in downtown Portland via a city-funded program. She was able to test out her idea of a “deli for knits”: choose a style of beanie or scarf, pick your colors and she’ll knit it up in a week. In 2019, Travel Portland and My People’s Market brought Alyssarhaye to Japan to discuss life as an entrepreneur and teach a macrame workshop. In January of 2020, Alyssarhaye published her first DIY knitting book, Chunky Knits: Cozy Hats, Scarves and More Made Simple with Extra-Large Yarn.
Today, she continues her art career as a designer for various fiber brands and local businesses and she teaches fiber workshops in both English and Spanish. Alyssarhaye now lives in San Jose, California where when she’s not knitting, can be found sewing, cycling, or on a hike.
Studios
ElizaBeth Rohloff
I’m ElizaBeth, a clothing and hat designer based in Portland, Oregon. I teach to bring my love of fashion design to others. I create beautiful handmade pieces because it is my gift to share with others. In my work, Sustainability is foremost. I use high quality natural fibers such as wool, bamboo, linen, silk, and cotton. Since the 1980’s my work has germinated and been 100% locally produced in the green culture of Portland,Oregon. Not only have I predated the sustainable movement but this approach also means my hats and bags display an array of texture, color and sustainable fabrics when possible. My line resonates with contemporary style and a hint of vintage sass. Clothing and accessories are designed with an urban attitude that is street smart and unisex, using natural fibers such as wool, linen, silk, cotton and hemp. With over 30 years of clothing design and construction, I have a wealth of knowledge making clothing.
Organizations
Fibrevolution
Fibrevolution is revitalizing linen production in the Pacific Northwest. Co-founders Angela Wartes-Kahl and Shannon Welsh
Businesses
Love Fest Fibers
Based in San Francisco, we offer small-batch, sustainably sourced yarn + fiber goods. We design our collections to spark creativity in makers (that’s you!) while creating meaningful opportunities to support and elevate fiber-producing communities. Our incredibly skilled partner artisans practice their craft in small, family-run workshops in Nepal, Tibet and America's West Coast.
Businesses Organizations
SuSeli LLC
Suseli creates designs for 100% Himalayan Sheep Wool rugs and Wool / Natural Fiber rugs. Since 2023, we are a family business that focuses on building dependable relationships in order to translate imagination into design, and ultimately design into reality – a tangible and tactile work of artisanry that compliments your space and your needs. We hope that through the work together, your vision will be achieved in detail and in a timely manner. Choose from our always growing selection of designs, or work with us to make your own. We offer Tibetan Knot Fairtrade Hand-Loomed Rugs in any size up to 42 feet by 42 feet. SuSeLi brand carpets and rugs are certified by Label STEP Fairtrade Certifiers. While our cornerstone product is wool pile rugs, we also design reliably sourced linen, nettle, hemp and other natural fibers – With hand-raised, hand-sheared, hand-sorted, hand-dyed, and hand-knotted loom work, no two pieces are identical and most appreciate in value, softness and sheen with time. We work with dyes and several natural fibers like nettle, hemp, silk-wool blends for our custom client projects- the reason we choose wool as our cornerstone product is that wool is the most versatile (and might we add, easy to clean).
Studios
Wildland Roots
Mythic Mummery & Place-based Art.
Moni J. Sears (they/she) has lived in Portland, Oregon / on Multnomah Chinook land since 1999, but was born in Aotearoa New Zealand, within the traditional lands of the Ngāi Tahu Māori.
Following a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and several years involvement with film and theatre arts, Moni started a mask-making company (Goblin Art, 1995-2015) which sold original work at markets and galleries in Oregon, Washington and Louisiana, and created custom pieces for film, television and other media in the US and Canada. Moni became interested in earth-based arts and nature education in 2011, and in 2020 decided to combine both mask-making and nature skills into Wildland Roots.