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
Altar
Altar is a clothing company and retail store with a brick-and-mortar location in Portland, OR. We initially opened a business in 2010 (under another name in the same retail location) with a focus on supporting independent artists from our immediate region, and by 2015 when we became Altar, we had grown that vision into the beautifully curated and ever-changing space it is today. We celebrate independent manufacturers and artists from across North America, with a focus on the stories that are woven into their work. We use the phrase, “objects with meaning” because we believe in sharing the unique stories behind these pieces.
Our clothing brand, Altar Houseline, is proudly made in America using deadstock materials and serves size gradations from size small to 6XL.
Cassie Ridgway opened her shop in 2010 with less than $3000 in the bank and a night job. Owning and operating this small business has been defined by labor of love and perseverance. Cassie's passion for sustainably produced and ethically manufactured apparel was a driving force, and has kept her laser focused on making this company better by the year. Her aesthetic sensibilities are always sort of changing (ok, sometimes all over the place), but she has always consistently been inspired by desert color-stories, moody floral motifs, art deco filigrees, and modern art.
Studios
Aradhita Parasrampuria
Aradhita Parasrampuria is a materials designer originally from India, based in New York. Parasrampuria combines synthetic biology with fashion to create sustainable, scalable textiles to replace toxic petroleum-based materials. She works primarily with raw materials such as Microalgae, Escherichia coli, and Cellulose. Parasrampuria received recognition on Indian Forbes 30 under 30 2023 list in the climate change category. She has also been awarded the Swarovski Foundation's "Creatives For Our Future" grant and the Aronson Fellowship from Tishman Environment and Design Center. Her work has been showcased in prominent events and publications such as United Nations, COP27, Vogue, L'officiel Brazil, CFDA, Dezeen, No-Kill Magazine, New York Design Week, and Portland Textile Month.
Organizations
BASIC NEEDS food shelter clothing
foodshelterclothing.squarespace.com
BASIC NEEDS is about making things whose beauty is intertwined with their utility and sustainability. Sometimes it takes the form of a small collection of unique pieces, like hand felted sheepskins or botanically-dyed textiles, other times it may be a garden, designed and cared for over many years.
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.
Studios
Fuchsia Lin
Fuchsia Lin is a Taiwanese-American artist, fashion/costume designer and filmmaker, called a visionary by the Seattle Times for the imaginative art and performance work she has produced. Fuchsia began her career as a fashion designer, studying at Parsons School of Design in NYC. Years later, Fuchsia turned to the medium of film to showcase her fashion and costume designs in motion. Her first short film, Crystals of Transformation, went on to win her a scholarship award to study fashion filmmaking at London College of Fashion, one of two universities in the world that teaches fashion filmmaking. Fuchsia is currently finishing up her second film, Future Cosmos Flow, a fantasy drama film. This film features more than 40 custom couture pieces made from sustainable materials Fuchsia designed especially for the film, worn and set in motion by award-winning performers. Future Cosmos Flow is a genre-bending film and magical fairy tale inspired by mythology and the natural elements. An exiled royal family must learn to harness a mystical water-power to subdue a tyrannical Uncle who threatens the ecological survival of their Kingdom. It relates to our modern day need for the renewed care of our environment. Fuchsia will speak about her journey from costume designer to filmmaker. She will share how she uses the medium of film to show fashion in motion and tell a story through textiles. And she’ll show excerpts from her new film, Future Cosmos Flow, which will be screened at a special event at the Portland Art Museum in 2024.
Organizations
GLEAN
The GLEAN Program invites artists to push the boundaries of material exploration. With a stipend to support their practice and seemingly endless materials to work with, artists are challenged to expand their existing studio practice by making work from the materials gleaned from the Metro Central Transfer Station (aka, “the dump”). One of the goals of this program is to introduce established and emerging artists to the wealth of materials available to them through the GLEAN. With the ultimate goal to reduce waste and raise awareness with this program, no prior experience with discarded materials is required. All artists in the Portland area are encouraged to apply.
Organizations
Green Anchors PDX
Green Anchors is a center for community engagement through the arts, business, and ecology. Situated on a historical shipbuilding site along the Willamette River, our 7-acre property is a model for brownfield remediation through ecological restoration. We are a local business incubator, collaborative arts center, educational forum, and site for eco-innovation.
Businesses
Hidden Opulence Design House
Hidden Opulence is a Design House that’s focused in Apparel sustainability and upcycling. We enjoy serving both existing apparel brands and the general public. We feel pride especially serving those who identify as Queer, Non-Binary and/or BIPOC. It’s all about meeting you where you are at in your slow fashion and sustainable journey!
We are your one stop shop when it comes to refreshing or perfecting those cherished items in your wardrobe or from your home. Basic tailoring, mending and altering are a part of our core. Projects that have anything to do with heirloom refurbishing, repairing and re-configuring (garment or textile) touch our hearts. Unfortunately at this time, we do not provide pattern rendering or clothing concept development.
Studios
Ivy Stovall
Ivy Stovall delights in the abundance, patterns, and chaos of the natural world and of humanity. So it makes sense that three years into a Biology degree, she flipped majors and earned a BA in Interdisciplinary Humanities at the University of West Florida. Her broad education prepared her perfectly for her work in outdoor education, which she began as a 4H camp naturalist, teaching outdoor skills and elementary and middle school science curriculum in the field. Since then she has taught high and low ropes challenge courses, ESL at all grade levels, and developed a North Portland homeschool co-op and independent art, adventure, and theater camps for kids in her community. These days she lives and works at The MudHut Kulturhaus, her St. Johns urban permaculture homestead, where she shares her enthusiasm for outdoor living and hosts camps, workshops, skillshares, music and theater, women’s groups, and community celebrations and ritual. She likes to always be harvesting and keeps her hands busy making herbal medicines, homebrews and fermentations, botanical inks, dyes and pigments, wild foods, basketry, and natural building. Always a student and always a teacher, Ivy enjoys contributing to and learning from the passionate people of the Rewild Portland community. Many Rewild kids have learned fire and knife skills around The MudHut fire pit and know Ivy as the Echoes in Time kids’ camp coordinator. Ivy loves the creativity, curiosity, and wildness of young people and is dedicated to the work of building healthy intergenerational communities connected to and through the natural world. Nursery Director & Youth Program Instructor at Rewild Portland.
Studios
Keeva Moselle
www.instagram.com/realmandreigndesignstudio
Growing up Keeva Moselle made all of her Halloween costumes from age nine on, repurposing items from around the house. Keeva learned to work with her hands and a myriad of materials and techniques to create wearable art. These skills eventually translated into fashion design and garment construction. Today Keeva is a Portland native artist creating large scale interactive art installations, immersive beauty experiences, costumes, and multimedia art. All of her endeavors primarily use post-consumer waste & salvage materials. Keeva is a graduate of Oregon State University Graduate School, where she studied socio-political ethics. Keeva is an environmentalist and a Black Feminist thinker and author; her art reflects that same powerfully dynamic voice. In 2011, Keeva created an original character “The Queen of Unicorns”, as a public persona to inspire imaginative play and give young girls, especially those of color, representation in the cosplay and festival community.
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
Mujer Woo
Youkyung Kaycee Woo was born in South Korea, achieved a BFA diploma at Parsons School of Design as a fashion design student in New York. Also, Kaycee studied textile design at Central Saints Martin in London UK for almost one year. She has been working as a textile and fashion designer since she graduated in 2019. Besides, she opened her textile workshop in New York City. Currently, she is working on tufting art installations for exhibitions and several art projects in New York and South Korea. Also, she opens workshops for art and textile students who want to learn tufting techniques. MUJER WOO, Youkyung's fashion and home interior design brand, embraces time-honored techniques with her bold but feminine textile design and a modern sensibility to create unique and feminine pieces for all different ages of women. Indeed, MUJER WOO's priority is producing sustainable living products and tufting artwork. All the tufting works are hand-made and made with 100% New Zealand Tex wool. Also, the brand has sustainable and unique shapes of soap for a zero-waste living. The designer wants customers to be intelligent, confident, and love themselves through the contemporary feminine garment and sustainable products, consider the environment, and love other people.
Businesses
PLACE
PLACE is a design studio engaging landscape architecture, art, and urban design to make the world a better place. As a partner of 1% for PLANET, our impact is reflected in prestigious accolades including the 2021 ASLA Landmark Award and the inaugural Architecture MasterPrize Landscape & Urban Design Firm of the Year.
Studios
Palmarin Merges
https://www.palmarinmerges.com/
Palmarin Merges is a Filipina American artist whose work draws from the desire to become more sustainable by re-using materials close at hand and by adapting restriction as a generative force for creation. Trained as a Printmaker, she now works primarily in mixed media, especially household waste - plastic, cardboard, etc. These common materials taken from the fabric of her daily life are processed and then transformed into pattern, collage and concrete poetry. Raised in Hawaii and California, she left Oregon in Dec. 2019 with her husband to return to Japan, this time to Tokyo. Her adventures now include exploring a variety of traditional crafts and wandering the areas in and around the Yamanote Line. Palmarin Merges holds an MFA Printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute and has exhibited in Japan, the Philippines, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon. She has previously taught Relief, Screenprint and drawing at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Marylhurst University and Pacific University.
print sculpture sustainability textile art textile reuse visual art
Schools
Portland State University Textile Arts Program
The Textile Arts program provides a critical investigation of clothing and textiles with a focus on craft, sustainability, and community engagement. Students learn techniques in weaving, surface design, and sewn construction towards fashion, costume, and contemporary art.
community fashion sewing sustainability textile art textile design textile history weaving
Organizations
ReClaim It!
ReClaim It, is a place where the creative citizens of Portland can find unique materials to reuse, repair, and reimagine.
Businesses
Reclaimed Wool
Heidi Leugers created her brand and studio, Reclaimed Wool in 1998 with one guiding principle: to turn her artistic practice into a business only if she could "reclaim" all the waste she (also) had created in the process of making adorable or functional items - whether for exhibition or for sale. Her studio has been zero waste for over two decades. The 8K - 12K hotpads, coasters, holiday ornaments and pincushions she makes, are limited to what she can produce with her own hands and can be found at museum stores, craft galleries, and specialty retailers. In 2007, her zero waste practice received critical, scholarly attention in the college teaching text, "Cycle-Logical Art", by Linda Weintraub. Heidi firmly believes that "zero-waste" is a practice, not a purchase.
Businesses
Revive Upholstery
Revive Designs and Upholstery was established in Portland, Oregon in 2011. Specializing in heirloom furniture, including vintage re-upholstery, mid-century antique commercial design, bespoke product.
interior design sustainability textile design textile reuse upholstery
Organizations
Rewild Portland
Rewild Portland is an environmental education focused non-profit organization serving Portland, Oregon and the surrounding wild and rural communities. Our mission is to create cultural and environmental resilience through the education of earth-based arts, traditions, and technologies. This mission comes to life in the form of educational workshops and programs, community-building events, and ecological restoration.
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).
Businesses
Sustainable Fashion Forum
www.thesustainablefashionforum.com
Founded on the principals of discovery and education, the Sustainable Fashion Forum is a highly-curated, community-driven sustainable fashion conference held annually in Portland, Oregon. The SFF looks to the future by fostering honest, thought-provoking and in-depth conversations about the social and environmental effects fashion has on our world and what we can do individually and collectively to improve it.
Studios
The Reprintery
The Reprintery emerged from a creative partnership between friends Michelle Freedman and Charlotte Flory. We combine the artistry of traditional printmaking with the craftsmanship of quilting and the sustainability of repurposing and sewing upcycled textiles. By blending our diverse backgrounds in design and art, we explore the intersection of creativity, innovation, and collaboration. Through the reimagining of discarded fabrics—whether through print, deconstruction, or the art of quilting—we breathe new life into materials that would otherwise go to waste. In doing so, The Reprintery challenges the boundaries between art and design, quilting and printmaking, fine art and fiber art.
Our work has been featured in Uppercase Magazine and showcased at Portland Textile Month and Well Well Projects. It’s been celebrated for its creativity, joyful energy, and optimism about what the future holds.
As we continue to explore new ways to express our vision and expand our collaborations, we also share our knowledge and passion through lectures and workshops. We are committed to inspiring and empowering others in the creative community, spreading the joy of our craft far and wide.
sewing sustainability talks textile art textile reuse workshops
Businesses
Trendependent
Vicki Ostrom (she/her), is a futurist and trend editor for trendependent.com, a lifestyle trend analysis and consulting company, and for SanMar, a leader in the promotional products industry. With nearly 25 years in design and forecasting, Vicki has honed these skills and shares how trends connect to products. She provides researched, clearly presented materials that help corporations understand what is happening today and forecast what is likely to happen tomorrow. This guidance informs decision-making to deliver a future-proof brand.
Studios
Tricia Langman
Tricia Langman has over eighteen years experience designing for prestigious fashion companies worldwide, including Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Halston, Kashiyama, Donna Karan, Nicole Miller, Anthropology, Banana Republic and Target. Projects include work featured at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of New York City, and a hand-painted designer gown for Celine Dion for her performance at the Grammy Awards ceremony of her Oscar winning song “My Heart Will Go On”. Founder and design director of the successful international Textile Print design studio Spoogi, while concurrently adjunct lecturer at the Art Institute of Portland.