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.
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.
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.
Farms
Ewethful Fiber Farm & Mill
At Ewethful Fiber Farm we create custom made fiber products for flock owners and fiber enthusiasts. In addition we also create our own line of products using locally sourced fiber. We specialize in processing fine animal fibers to our customer’s specifications. Using MiniMills Equipment we are able to process sheep, alpaca, llama, angora rabbit, dog hair, bison and goat in addition to several other fiber animals. We receive raw (unwashed) fleeces from our clients, wash them, dry them and then process the fiber into batts for felting or roving for hand spinning. We are able to custom blend fibers and have a wide selection of blending materials to choose from to create our customers perfect product. In addition we are able to dehair, to separate out course fibers from fine finer and remove vegetable matter from fine fiber fleeces.
Studios
Felicia Murray
Felicia Murray is a fiber artist from Maine, who now lives and works out of her studio at NW Marine Artworks in Portland, Oregon. Her tactile work explores motifs from nature, while creating imagined landscapes of color and texture. She received her B.F.A. in Fibers from The Savannah College of Art and Design in 2019, and has since been continuing to develop her work through collaborations, commissions, community projects, and exhibitions.
Farms
Imperial Stock Ranch
It’s not common to find a privately held ranch whose headquarters is a National Historic District. It’s even less common to find one located in Oregon that sustainably produces a wide variety of all-natural products. In fact, the Imperial Stock Ranch is the only one. Our rich history of more than 145 years is deeply rooted in visionary thinking and the implementation of practices that are anything but ordinary. We are proud to offer you something different. Something special and unique. Something extraordinary.
Studios
LeBrie Rich
LeBrie Rich has been exploring the visual possibilities and emotional resonance of felted wool since 2004. She is best known for updating the traditional crafts of felting and embroidery by creating highly detailed soft-sculptural replicas of familiar packaged food items, such as Jif peanut butter and Spam. Venues that have shown her work include the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Project Space in New York, NY; Portland Art Museum and Blackfish Gallery in Portland, OR; and Albus Gallery in Fukuoka, Japan. She has been awarded artist residencies at the Rauschenberg Residency (2013, 2015), Ucross Foundation (2018), and Kayamori House (2012) in the mountains outside of Nara, Japan.
Rich loves to teach people to access their creativity through felting. In 2021 she taught the art of felting to a total of 800 students from across the world, both through online and in-person classes. Her felt sculptures, collages, wearable fiber creations, and workshops for youth have been written about in the New York Times, Hand/Eye Magazine, Make, the Oregonian, and Portland Monthly.
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.
Studios
Opulent Fibers
Opulent Fibers is a studio operated by felt artist Kristi Kún. Kristy Kún is a studio artist working in hand made wool felt with an innovative approach to construction methods, material combinations, and craftsmanship. Kristy believes strongly in collaboration and community building through Craft and has hosted local and international instructors, each experts their practicing form of textile art, and has presented at free community events, demonstrating techniques and sharing her passion for wool.
Organizations
Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival
www.oregonflockandfiberfestival.com
The Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival has grown significantly since its inception in 1997. The Festival includes three days of workshops and a weekend filled with demonstrations, livestock shows, seminars and kids’ activities.
Businesses
PenFelt Studio
PenFelt Studio provides delightful, original projects and high-quality materials for felters who appreciate consciously-sourced materials, good design and a sense of fun.
Founded in 2004 by artist and felting instructor LeBrie Rich. Known to some as Duchess of Felt, LeBrie is best known for her highly realistic sculptures of food packaging rendered in felt.
LeBrie has taught workshops at colleges, art studios, and fiber festivals all over the world—from a small village in the mountains of Japan to New York City. In addition to custom work for private clients, LeBrie has worked with Bent Image Lab, Nike, and a sustainable diaper manufacturer who needed a presentation box made out of felt for Kate Middleton (the Duchess of Cambridge). She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
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.