2024 Rust Belt Fibershed Symposium Feature

Saturday Morning Speakers

Plus One-Year, One Outfit Fashion show & Clothing swap!

Join us on Saturday morning, January 27th, 8:30-1:00 to hear from over ten speakers who all play a part in a regional soil-to-soil textile system: learn from farmers, community textile project leaders, dyers, mill operators, cut-and-sew facilities, clothing designers, clothing menders, and clothing up-cyclers.

While we could have chosen to spend the morning digging in deep with a couple of speakers over a narrow subject related to regional textiles, this is our first symposium! We want a great introduction to the entire soil-to-soil system, so we opted to invite all of the following speakers to share their experience, passions, and dreams with you in shorter time blocks. It will be a little like going out to dinner and ordering all small plates or appetizers instead of one huge entree— and we’re so excited and honored to have such wonderful engagement from our talented and passionate speakers.

Morning speaker series will be followed by a One-Year, One-Outfit Fashion Show, a Clothing Swap, Learning Demos, and Vendors!

For full weekend agenda and details, please see the main symposium page.

Get Tickets here

Speaker Lineup

*Charis Walker* /
Tarheelbilly Farm
Southern Ohio

**About Charis:** Charis, a North Carolina native, is the Tarheel in Tarheelbilly Farm,
Charis is the chief animal manager and shepherd. A self-taught spinner, she also knits and weaves, and shears the flock. Their award-winning fleeces are sold to fiber aficionados far and wide. The wool is then processed into lovely roving and yarn appreciated by fiber artists across the country.
Charis will be discussing the role small heritage breed flocks play within the larger fiber community, delving into why heritage breeds matter, how their preservation plays a role in creating sustainable communities, and how conscientious fiber friends can support the growth of heritage fiber.
**About Tarheelbilly Farm:** We are a small farm located in Southern Ohio, among the rolling hills of the Appalachian range. We strive to be good stewards of the land, raising animals humanely and in keeping with organic and sustainable practices.
*Tarheelbilly Farm will also be vending at the symposium after the morning speaker series.*
**Instagram**: @tarheelbillyfarmer
**Website**: tarheelbillyfarm.com

*Sherry Mitchell and son Luke Mitchell*/ **Mitchell Wool Co**
**Dryden, MI**

The reason we decided to become a Yarn Company is to support the effort of bringing back American Fiber production. As a former interior designer, Sherry knew all too well how many fabric mills had closed as a result of NAFTA and the increased importation of cheap labor and synthetic fabrics flooding the American market. The impact on rural North Carolina alone is devastating. Families' livelihoods GONE.
When she read Vanishing Fleece, by Clara Parkes it launched a drive to do something to support the wool industry. **This is how we wound up with 170+ sheep grazing the rolling hills of our farm.** But we alone can only responsibly support 200 sheep max on our land. At festivals, farmers of small flocks were imploring upon us to buy their fleeces, because wholesale collectives don't pay nearly the cost of shearing let alone coming close to offsetting the cost to raise sheep in a farm setting ethically. We, as farmers ourselves, know this cost all too well! Thus, American Fiber by Mitchell Wool was born! Look for our first farm partnership to launch this fall with a stunning low micron Shetland yarn!
Our first effort was to rescue an entire closed mills worth of fiber from being shipped overseas. We don’t know the particular farm this came from, it was sent in to the old mill to be processed and after they closed everything was auctioned. We bought all of the wool to keep it here in the USA. Our newest endeavor is to become an equitable resource for small farms to sell their clips to a Fellow farm who fully understands the value of raising it. We pay higher rates than the wholesale cooperatives so it’s an option for small farms to unload their fiber. (so long as they raise their animals with the care and standards that we hold as foundations of our practice. Animal welfare and environmental stewardship that reflects our goals)
We’re in this for the long haul. Our ethos is:
FOR FLOCKS SAKE
FOR PLANETS SAKE
FOR COMMUNITYS SAKE
FOR FAMILYS SAKE
For the right reasons long term. We are Mitchell Wool.
*Mitchell Wool Co. will also be vending at the symposium after the morning speaker series.*
Instagram: @mitchellwoolco
Website: mitchellwool.com

***Photo Credit: Lemon Lane Photography***

Jess Boeke / Rust Belt Linen Project/ Executive Director
Rust Belt Fibershed

**About Jess:** Jess Boeke is an educator and fiber artist who has been working with natural dyes since 2008. She lives in Peninsula, Ohio, where she works with her twin sister, Sarah Pottle, to promote soil-to-soil regional fiber systems through the Rust Belt Fibershed, and specifically the use of Natural Dyes through their project, Drift Lab Earth.
As the Executive Director of the Rust Belt Fibershed, one of the project Jess heads up is the Rust Belt Linen Project, which has evolved over the pat 5 years since its inception in 2019. Jess will be speaking to the community-building aspects of growing flax here in the Rust Belt Region.

Instagram: @rustbeltfibershed
Youtube: Cleveland Flax Project
Photo: Moreh Leah

*Jessica Pinsky* / Executive Director/ **Praxis Fiber Workshop**
**Cleveland, OH**

Jessica grew up in Akron, Ohio and moved to Cleveland in 2011 after receiving a BFA in Studio Art from New York University in 2006 and an MFA in painting from Boston University in 2009. She began teaching at Cleveland Institute of Art in 2011 and is currently serving as faculty in the Sculpture and Expanded Media department. Together with Cleveland Institute of Art, Jessica founded Praxis Fiber Workshop in June, 2105.
Jessica’s presentation is titled “***Growing Indigo with the Community: The Natural Dye Journey of Praxis Fiber Workshop”***
**About Praxis Fiber Workshop:** Praxis Fiber Workshop builds the international network of fiber artists and makers through classes, workshops, residencies, and collaborative projects that teach the art form and demonstrate how fiber art can be used to build healthy, resilient, and inclusive communities.
Instagram: @praxisfiberworkshop
Website: Praxisfiberworkshop.org

*April Zeilinger* / **Zeilinger Wool Company**
**Frankenmuth, MI**

**About Zeilinger Wool:** We are rewarded with the great feeling of taking a natural resource that is renewable, biodegradable and making it into a product that will be used in homes across America. Zeilinger Wool Company recently achieved passing our tradition on to the fourth generation family member to continue proudly processing natural fibers for you. It brings us pure joy to serve you, not just our customers but our friends. Our family has been processing wool for over a century and our personal service has been our trademark over the years.
Instagram: @Zeilingerwool
Website: zwool.com

*Shailah Maynard* / Co-Founder & CEO/ **Sew Valley**
**Cincinnati, OH**

**About Shailah:** Shailah, Sew Valley Co-Founder and CEO, will be sharing the importance local, sustainable apparel development and manufacturing has on our direct communities, and what Sew Valley is doing to lead the charge in Southwestern Ohio.
**About Sew Valley:** Sew Valley is a sustainably focused garment factory, sample room and incubator space for apparel brands and individuals interested in the sewn trades. We provide the guidance, collaboration, connections, space, services and equipment brands/individuals need to bring their design to market.
Instagram: @sewvalley
Website: sewvalley.org

*Kerem Gençer***/ Director of Communications /** **Esperanza Threads**
**Cleveland, OH**

**About Esperanza Threads:** We are a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching the trade of sewing to immigrant and financially insecure communities. Our mission is to train and empower Cleveland community members in the sewing trade, growing avenues of economic opportunity while offering a space to learn, connect and collaborate as a sustainable enterprise in the fashion and textile industry.
Instagram: @esperanzathreads
Website: esperanzathreads.org

*Celeste Malvar- Stewart/ Designer /* MALVAR = STEWART
***Columbus, OH***

**About Celeste**: Celeste is a sustainable minded fashion and fibre artist trying to create in ethical ways, and the designer behind MALVAR = STEWART. She will be sharing about how she works with Ohio shepherdesses to obtain wool and alpaca fibre to create the textiles she uses for her couture fashion, also incorporating natural dyes that she forages and grows locally. She will also share her latest project where she is using agriculture waste material in her art for various exhibitions to discuss the vital connection we all have with agriculture.
MALVAR = STEWART is a non-seasonal line of women’s clothing and accessories, using salvaged fine vintage fabrics, wool from local farmers, and local natural dyes that do not follow the standard fashion concept of “this season’s colour palette.”
We focus on unconventional design that is thoughtful towards our environment at every stage of the pieces’ life cycles, without compromising beauty, high quality, or integrity.
We reuse leftover textile scraps and are striving towards zero waste.
We welcome you to view our site and join us in the small effort of creating beauty while respecting our planet for future generations!
Instagram: @malvarstewart
Website: airoshowroom.com
Youtube: Every Fiber
***Photo Credit: Priscilla Dwomoh***

Rebecca Harrison / Old Flame Mending

Pittsburgh, PA

Old Flame Mending is a Pittsburgh-based sewing service that helps you keep your garments + textiles in your wardrobe and out of the landfill through repair, tailoring + alterations, and custom work.

Rebecca Harrison, founder of Old Flame Mending, will discuss the history of home mending, the new current of menders, and possibilities for the future.

Instagram: oldflamemending
Website: oldflamemending.com

For full weekend agenda and details, please see the main symposium page.

12:45-1:00pm

One Year, One Outfit Fashion Show

We are so excited about culminating the morning speaker series with a fashion show/performance that showcases tangible examples of the beauty, talent, passion, skills, and connection within our fibershed! This won’t be your typical fashion show!

Thank you so much to these talented artists who are contributing (and in some cases, modeling!) their outfits, created entirely from materials lovingly sourced within 250 miles of Cleveland, Ohio. Outfits by: Brette Soucie & Katie Pfohl, Anna Kiss Mauser-Martinez, Charity Thomas & Jasmine Kornel, Courtney McCrone, Debbie Christensen, Emily Kichler, Hannah Reed, Janel Franks, Katie Jackson, Lizzi Essie & Maggie Latham, Margaret Sankey, Morgan Neiss, Priscilla Roggenkamp, Sarah Silk, and Sara Guren.

Special Music performance by Margaret Sankey.

after fashion show

Clothing Swap

After the fashion show, we’ll open the swap for morning symposium-goers!

Choose 1-5 well-loved items, clean and in quality condition (t-shirts, pants, sweatshirts, blouses, jackets, shoes, purses, etc.) to bring to the symposium.
Upon arriving at 8:30 am, turn in each item to the clothing swap station for a ticket. 1 item = 1 ticket.
During the speaker series, our volunteers will organize the clothing to be ready for you after the speaker series.
After the speaker series, cash in your tickets for any item of your choosing.
Any unclaimed items will be free to the public after 2pm (without needing tickets).
Any unclaimed items after the event will try to be placed with a new loving owner, upcycled, or donated.

Purchase Tickets Here