Considered Cloth: My Personal Relationship With Textiles

At the age of 10, my mother and I moved to Union, South Carolina. It was the early 1980's and the image below brings a distant memory back to life. Buffalo Mill was one of the primary employers of my friends' parents. I vividly remember driving past this mill regularly, not knowing what transpired behind the brick walls, the history of King Cotton in South Carolina, the racial injustices that were a part of the industrialized production of cloth, or labor in the South. I was just a kid from the North, a Yankee, something I was reminded of daily as I navigated this new social space, unable to understand the words spoken to me and the cultural customs and expectations of a child in the South. Thus began my personal relationship with textiles.

Buffalo Cotton Textile Mill, Mill Building, SC Route 215, Buffalo, Union County, SC

I lived on a row of houses that were originally built for the mill workers. The particular house I lived in originally did not have indoor plumbing or a kitchen. These rooms were added on later. The house was meant to fit two families, the precursor to a duplex, but closer to indentured servant quarters. I was too young to pay too much attention to all of this at the time, and gleefully wandered the street, looking for other kids to play some sort of game, or sneak over to the other side of the street to shop at the candy store.

A present-day mill house near Laurens Mill, Laurens, South Carolina.

Many people who find themselves weaving cloth today may do so from an interest in historical production or from a sense of nostalgia. Maybe they have an important family member who inspired their journey into textile processes such as knitting, crocheting, sewing, quilting, etc. While I, too, had a very influential grandmother who sewed clothes for me, I never felt compelled to explore textiles as a creative practice. When I arrived at art school, my goal was to escape any association with textile making, as I had since come to understand the hard labor of industrialized production. I listened to my high school friends talk about their summer job experiences in the mill. Long hours, unstable and unreliable income as workers were either working around the clock or not at all, did not sound like a future I wanted to embrace. However, during my second semester at the School of the Art Institute, I somehow found my way to a magical room where I was able to surround myself in a sea of floor looms, immerse myself in a language of process and material that has captivated me ever since. After undergraduate studies, I worked as a production weaver for a selection of designers, where I further explored compu-dobby design weaving and became a proficient producer of complex cloth. During graduate studies at Arizona State University, I foresaw my career as an educator working as a graduate teaching assistant. I followed this path of teaching, serving as a visiting professor several years later at my graduate alma mater, where I had the privilege of teaching students in all forms of fiber art in addition to my first passion of weaving. While my career has taken me across the country and provided me with many experiences in the art world, I quietly held a precious dream of launching my own teaching studio where I share the world of weaving and all things fiber with the world. Considered Cloth aims to do just that, enticing people to fall into the rabbit hole of textile making and explore the multitude of processes, including dyeing, spinning, sewing, weaving, etc.

Follow along...

I invite you to subscribe to Considered Cloth's email newsletter, join me at various pop-up events and markets, and make an appointment to visit the studio where I have a ton of wonderful yarns, materials, and equipment to select from.