Resources from Fibershed

Fibershed, the Book
A “farm-to-closet” vision for the clothes we wear by Rebecca Burgess with Courtney White

Fibershed Newsletter
Stay in the loop with all things Fibershed.

Fibershed Articles
Learn about how our community is engaging in regional fiber systems, the fiber landscape, and ways in which you can get involved.

The Hidden Story of Plastics in Our Clothes
In this white paper, we explain how plastic solidified its place as one of the most prominent materials in fashion, we’ll talk about what that means for all of us, and we’ll share some of the best solutions for getting us out of this mess.

Fibershed Youtube
Our video collection contains recordings of inspirational events & presentations.

Weaving Voices Podcast
A podcast that stitches textile systems and traditions, economic philosophy, and climate science into a quilt of understanding.

Soil-to-Soil Podcast
Take a deep dive into key topics related to fiber systems.

Fibershed Learning Center Workshops
The Fibershed Learning Center is a multi-use space to demonstrate and provide hands-on connections to natural fiber and dye systems, and part of the Black Mountain Ranch community of agrarians and artists located in Point Reyes Station, California.

Full Events Calendar
Check out all of our upcoming workshops, markets, classes, and more.

Vimeo On-Demand Workshops
Get inspired with on-demand classes and presentations from experts in the fiber field.

K-12 Curriculum
These curricula for children support an understanding of place, through the intersection of restoration education and material culture.

Regenerating Our Textile Systems Courses
Join us for online courses to learn how we can meet urgent climate goals through regenerating relationships between production and consumption.

Wearing the Future
View a recording of the event in which we examined how synthetic biology impacts soil-to-soil systems.

Wool & Fine Fiber Symposiums
Our Symposiums feature speakers and guests from throughout the world, speaking on the latest issues impacting fiber and textile systems.

Galas/Fashion Shows
Our Fibershed Galas illuminate the pathways of participation in regional fiber and dye systems that restore our climate, working landscapes, and our relationships in the community.

Climate Beneficial Agriculture
See how we work directly with land stewards to implement land management practices that build soil carbon and increase productivity naturally.

Carbon Farming 101
Learn about our approach to Carbon Farming and how our work is contributing to a more resilient future for people and planet.

Carbon Farming Webinar
Hear how fiber producers at various scales are planning and implementing carbon farm practices on their land.

Climate Beneficial Fiber
Our Climate Beneficial™ Verification program and label supports farmers and ranchers in landscape-level stewardship that centers their work building healthy soil.

Climate Beneficial Wool
Climate Beneficial Wool is verified by Fibershed and sourced from land stewards who are enhancing carbon drawdown through agricultural practices that regenerate soil health.

Climate Beneficial Fiber Pool
The Climate Beneficial™ Fiber Pool was founded in 2020 to provide an economic and ecological response to the impacts that Covid-19 placed on our fine fiber ranching community.

Brands Using Climate Beneficial Fiber
Check out our list of participating Climate Beneficial™ Apparel & Home Brands.

Integrated Crop & Livestock Systems and Fuel Load Reduction
Learn how the work of animals and their human shepherds is enhancing biological diversity in our croplands and healthfully managing the fuel load.

Regenerating Cotton Systems
California cotton growers and researchers are currently piloting how to incorporate a suite of carbon farming practices, create measurable impact on ecosystem health and cultivate markets that return value for this work.

“Tending the Edges: The Benefits of Hedgerows on Bay Area Working Lands”, by the Marin Resource Conservation District

• English
• Spanish

A resource for land stewards to understand the benefits of implementing hedgerows.

Understanding Soil Carbon (concepts and measurement approaches)

• Dynamic Stability of Soil Carbon: Reassessing the “Permanence” of Soil Carbon Sequestration
• Quantifying carbon for agricultural soil management: from the current status toward a global soil information system
• How to measure, report and verify soil carbon change to realize the potential of soil carbon sequestration for atmospheric greenhouse gas removal
• Soil organic carbon is not just for soil scientists: measurement recommendations for diverse practitioners

Scale of Agricultural Climate Solutions Potential (global and national)

• The role of soil carbon in natural climate solutions
• Natural climate solutions for the United States
• Soil C Sequestration as a Biological Negative Emission Strategy
• The carbon sequestration potential of terrestrial ecosystems

Agroforestry

• Hedgerows on Crop Field Edges Increase Soil Carbon to a Depth of 1 meter
• Branching out: Agroforestry as a climate change mitigation and adaptation tool for agriculture
• Agroforestry strategies to sequester carbon in temperate North America

Grazing

• Grassland management impacts on soil carbon stocks: a new synthesis
• Adaptive multi-paddock grazing enhances soil carbon and nitrogen stocks and stabilization through mineral association in southeastern U.S. grazing lands
• The role of ruminants in reducing agriculture’s carbon footprint in North America

Compost

• Carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas mitigation potential of composting and soil amendments on California’s rangelands
• Long-term climate change mitigation potential with organic matter management on grasslands
• Compost amendment to enhance carbon sequestration in rangelands

Cropping Systems

• Synergy between compost and cover crops in a Mediterranean row crop system leads to increased subsoil carbon storage
• Global Sequestration Potential of Increased Organic Carbon in Cropland Soils
• Optimizing Carbon Sequestration in Croplands: A Synthesis
• Global meta-analysis of the relationship between soil organic matter and crop yields

Regional Fiber Manufacturing Initiative 
The Regional Fiber Manufacturing Initiative (RFMI) is developing a manufacturing system to regionalize the production of textiles and foster climate solutions and community prosperity.

Fibershed Feasibility Study for a California Wood Mill
The California Wool Mill Feasibility Study was conducted to assess the production of cloth in a vertically integrated supply chain using 100% California-grown wool fiber.

National Mill Inventory
Reaching out to mill owners and operators at all scales, Fibershed sought to understand what services are offered, what supply chains are possible, and what components need fortification to support a thriving domestic and decentralized textile industry.

Benefiting Climate & Communities
Cooperative structures like the Carolina Textile District provide an inspirational example of the type of regional networks that could grow and flourish throughout the country.

Fiber Visions
What would it look like to work with the cycles of place while developing textiles? Fibershed’s Fiber Visions project models opportunities to produce materials grounded in seasonal cycles, ecological restoration, and fair jobs.

3 Maps Show How We Can Unlock Local Clothing Industries 
Fibershed’s RFMI Ecosystem Mapping is setting the stage for designing and implementing key expansions in textile manufacturing in the Western United States

How Fiber Becomes Fabric
Check out our processing systems map to see how fiber becomes fabric.

Fibershed’s Fast Track to Slow Fashion
Learn about the simple steps you can take to make your wardrobe less harmful to the environment and communities.

Fibershed’s Clothing Guide
This guide offers information that will help you quickly reduce the impact of the clothing you already own, and it provides information that will help you create a healthier and friendly ‘fiber and dye diet’ as you refine your next set of clothing choices.

Upstream Solutions for Microplastic Pollution
Upstream solutions focused on reducing reliance on synthetic fibers can benefit human and ecological health.

Sounding the Alarm on Biotech Textiles
Civil society experts cut through the hype, suggesting that any commercial-scale expansion of biotech textiles could undermine farmers worldwide, create a dangerous new source of biotech waste, put additional pressure on ecosystems, and divert support away from truly sustainable natural fiber economies.

A Toolkit for Fibersheds & Brands: Creating a Conversation for a New Era of Design, by Amy DuFault and Sarah Kelley
As the number of Fibershed Affiliates grows across the U.S. and across the world, relationships have emerged between designers, brands, and fibersheds who want to work together. This is the toolkit they need for successful collaboration.

Fibershed (Book)
Fibershed is a resource for fiber farmers, ranchers, contract grazers, weavers, knitters, slow-fashion entrepreneurs, soil activists, and conscious consumers who want to join or create their own fibershed and topple outdated and toxic systems of exploitation.

Weaving Voices (Podcast)
Weaving Voices is a Whetstone Radio Collective x Fibershed podcast that stitches textile systems and traditions, economic philosophy, and climate science into a quilt of understanding. Designed to transform our thinking and actions both as citizens and material culture makers and users.

Soil-to-Soil (Podcast)
Soil-to-Soil serves to connect the dots in the lifecycle of clothing and material culture, offering a look at how, and why, Fibershed communities are working to cultivate fiber and dye systems that build soil and protect the health of our biosphere.

Black Material Geographies (Podcast)
Black Material Geographies is a collection of conversations and stories using Blackness and textile material culture to explore how we can create more sustainable systems and processes amid global climate crises and lifestyles deeply entrenched in global capitalism.

From Sting to Spin: A History of Nettle Fibre (Book)
In this book, Gillian Edom uses evidence from archaeology, folklore, anecdotes, and historic fact to show how nettle fiber was used around the world.

Raw Material (Book)
In Raw Material, Stephany Wilkes tells the story of American wool through her own journey to becoming a certified sheep shearer.

Nettle Dress (Film)
In this documentary dedicated to his late wife, textile artist Allan Brown spends seven years making a dress by hand just from the fibre of locally foraged stinging nettles.

The Regional Fiber Manufacturing Initiative
RFMI is developing a manufacturing system to regionalize the production of textiles and foster climate solutions and community prosperity.

Fibershed Producer Program
A membership-based network of farmers, ranchers, designers, sewers, weavers, knitters, felters, spinners, mill owners and natural dyers living and working within 51 counties in the North and Central regions of California.

Carbon Cycle Institute
CCI advances the carbon cycle as the fundamental organizing process underlying land management and on-farm conservation in efforts to mitigate and adapt to the global climate crisis.

Or Foundation
A 501(C)(3) public charity in the USA and a registered charity in Ghana working at the intersection of environmental justice, education and fashion development.

Garment Worker Center
A worker rights organization leading an anti-sweatshop movement to improve conditions for tens of thousands of Los Angeles garment workers.

Hopland Research & Extension Center
A multi-disciplinary research and education facility in California’s north coast region.

Affiliate Zine Volume 1
The August 2022 volume of our Affiliate Zine features news from fibersheds worldwide.

Affiliate Zine Volume II 
The second volume of our Affiliate Zine features news from fibersheds worldwide. Published in June 2023.

Affiliate Directory
See where all the fibersheds are located throughout the world.

Stop Waste Colonialism – The Or Foundation
Check out this resource from the Or Foundation on how to leverage extended producer responsibility to catalyze a justice-led circular textile economy.

Make The Label Count
An international coalition of organizations representing a wide range of natural fiber producers and environmental groups, but we all have one thing in common. We are all working to ensure that sustainability claims for textiles in the EU are fair and credible.

California Product Stewardship Council
A powerful network of local governments, non-government organizations, businesses, and individuals supporting policies and projects where producers share in the responsibility for managing problem products at their end of life.

California Climate & Agriculture Network
A coalition of sustainable and organic farming organizations that advocate for state and federal policies to ensure the resilience of California farms and ranches in the face of climate change.

Fibershed Regional Source Book (digital)

Designing for Regional Resilience: A Fibershed Zine
Designers play a unique role in our fashion and textile systems, with the potential to build greater resilience, longevity and health in the regions where they live and work. This visually rich booklet gives an overview of considerations and approaches for designers to center resilient and healthy ecosystems and communities in their work.

A Toolkit for Fibersheds & Brands: Creating a Conversation for a New Era of Design, by Amy DuFault and Sarah Kelley
As the number of Fibershed Affiliates grows across the U.S. and across the world, relationships have emerged between designers, brands, and fibersheds who want to work together. This is the toolkit they need for successful collaboration.

Climate Beneficial Fiber Pool
The Climate Beneficial™ Fiber Pool was founded in 2020 to provide an economic and ecological response to the impacts that Covid-19 placed on our fine fiber ranching community.

California Cotton & Climate Coalition
C4 is evolving the health of California’s croplands through cotton.

Unpacking ‘Sustainable’ Fashion by Veronica Kassatly 

The Hidden Story of Plastics in Our Clothes by Fibershed

More Resources Here
For our 2022/23 ‘Borrowed from the Soil’ Design Challenge, we aggregated various resources containing information for designers covering sourcing textiles & dyes, designing for healthy ecosystems, and designing for healthy communities.

Recorded Classes:

Intro to Visible Mending by Hand: Fix Your Jeans – Simply and Beautifully! With Nina and Sonya Montenegro, The Far Woods
In this class, you will learn how to simply and beautifully fix a hole in the knee of your jeans by hand, with a few basic tools, in a few simple steps. You do not need to know how to sew to take this class!

Rear End Mend Online Class with Jessica Marquez + class mending kit
Using a visible mending technique inspired by quilting and sashiko, you’ll learn to repair denim and non-stretch materials with this class broken down into four lessons.

Various visible mending and darning video guides by Flora Collingwood-Norris
Learn more about visible mending and darning with these resources from Flora Collingwood-Norris.

Bedroom Blankets: All About Quilting by Derek Hales
Bay Minette, from a Girl Scout Troop of Alabama, recommends this wonderful quilting education resource

Books:

Mending Matters, by Katrina Rodabaugh
Mending Matters explores sewing on two levels: First, it includes more than 20 hands-on projects that showcase current trends in visible mending that are edgy, modern, and bold—but draw on traditional stitching. It does all this through just four very simple mending techniques:

• Exterior patches
• Interior patches
• Slow stitches
• Darning and weaving

Make Thrift Mend, by Katrina Rodabaugh
Slow fashion influencer Katrina Rodabaugh follows her bestselling book, Mending Matters, with a comprehensive guide to building (and keeping) a wardrobe that matters. Whether you want to repair your go-to jeans, refresh a favorite garment, alter or dye clothing you already have—this book has all the know-how you’ll need.

Visible Mending: A Modern Guide to Darning, Stitching and Patching the Clothes You Love, by Arounna Khounnoraj (Digital version)

In Visible Mending, Arounna explores why we should mend and how to mend various fabrics. Work through the illustrated step-by-step instructions that will demystify mending techniques and discover how these can be easily applied to old items to give them a fresh, modern look.

Mending Life: A Handbook for Repairing Clothes and Hearts, by Nina and Sonya Montenegro
Mending Life is a beautifully illustrated, practical tool kit for repairing the clothes and belongings we love.

Slow Stitch: Mindful and Contemplative Textile Art, by Claire Wellesley-Smith
A much-needed guide to adopting a less-is-more approach, valuing quality over quantity, and bringing a meaningful and thoughtful approach to textile practice.

Resilient Stitch: Wellbeing and Connection in Textile Art, by Claire Wellesley-Smith
Claire Wellesley-Smith explores how textiles can be used to connect individuals and communities as well as promote well-being.

Make + Mend, by Jessica Marquez
An exquisite, full-color guide to sashiko, a simple Japanese stitching technique that uses stunning patterns to decorate or repair clothing, accessories, and home textiles.

Modern Mending: How to Minimise Waste and Maximise Style, by Erin Lewis-Fitzgerald
Bring new life to your old clothes and fabrics with this fun, easy-to-follow guide to modern mending.

Visible Creative Mending for Knitwear, by Flora Collingwood-Norris
Whether you want to learn how to darn from scratch or to refine skills you already have, this book offers a fresh and sustainable approach to style.

Creative Mending: Beautiful Darning, Patching and Stitching Techniques, by Hikaru Noguchi
In this book, mending guru Hikaru Noguchi shows you her entire range of valuable techniques, from embroidery and patching to darning and felting, that are just challenging enough for experienced menders.

Podcasts:

Reseed — Episode 13: “Rediscovering the Lost Art of Mending” with Arounna Khounnoraj
Arounna Khounnoraj joins Reseed to discuss Visible Mending: Repair, Renew, Reuse the Clothes You Love, her book that guides readers in how to mend, based on her experience as a fiber artist and force in the vibrant mending movement.

Soil to Soil — Episode 11: “Can mending create a cultural shift?” with Sonya and Nina Montenegro of The Far Woods
Listen in to hear from Sonya and Nina Montenegro about how mending our clothing invites respect for the aging process of fabric and can even become an agent of healing our relationships with people, place, and material culture.

Check Your Thread — Episode #39: “Modern Mending with Erin Lewis-Fitzgerald” (Check out their other podcasts on mending too!!)
This episode is the first of two featuring Australia-based mending expert Erin Lewis-Fitzgerald. In this one, we hear the tale of how a baby journalist with zero formal sewing training grew to become a mending legend.

Dressed: The History of Fashion — “Mend!: An Interview with Kate Sekules”
Guest Kate Sekules explores the history of mending and contemporary visible mending.

Slow Your Home — “Katrina Rodabaugh on Why Mending Matters”
Brooke McClary joined by her husband Ben chats with slow fashion expert and advocate, fiber artist, writer, and crafter Katrina Rodabaugh, who is so passionate about opening the door wide for all to access slow fashion.

Circular with Katie Treggiden:

“TOAST Renewal: a panel discussion”
Katie Treggiden leads a panel discussion with TOAST, including amazing insights from Seetal Solanki, Tom van Deijnen, Celia Pym and Bonnie Kemske.

“Tom of Holland”
Katie Treggiden talks with Tom van Deijnen – a self-taught textiles practitioner, founder of The Visible Mending Programme, and a volunteer at the Brighton Repair Café – about the importance of visible mending.

“Bridget Harvey”
Katie Treggiden chats with Bridget Harvey, an artist who uses making to ask critical questions, generate new understanding and add meaning through craft.

“Celia Pym”
Katie Treggiden talks with Celia Pym. As an artist in London working with garments that belong to individuals as well as items in museum archives, she has extensive experience with the spectrum and stories of damage, from small moth holes to larger accidents with fire.

YarnStories — Episode #216: “Sashiko Mending with Jessica Marquez”
Host Miriam Felton chats with Jessica Marquez, author of Make + Mend, about sashiko mending.

Seamwork Radio
A podcast about designing, making, and wearing your own clothing.

Discussions:

Botanical Colors Feedback Friday with Honeyfolk Clothing
Heidi Iverson, Founder of Honeyfolk Clothing and one of the original founders of Fibershed, is featured on this episode of Feedback Friday.

Botanical Colors Feedback Friday with Katrina Rodabaugh
On this episode of Feedback Friday, Katrina gives inspiring insight into her path as an artist and natural dyer, how life becomes part of the process (and how mending often represents that), ways we can rethink our clothing, and how natural dyes have been a big part of her Make, Thrift, Mend project.

Botanical Colors Feedback Friday with Claire Wellesley Smith
On this episode of Feedback Friday, Claire Wellesley Smith talks about her practice and some of her community-based projects, including an ongoing Stitch Journal now in its eighth year as well as recent work around textiles and resilience.

Mending Supplies: 

We recommend that you purchase natural fiber and naturally dyed threads and yarn. The following is a small list of menders selling mending supplies online, but we also recommend that you check your local craft, sewing, and fabric supply shops.

• Honey Folk Clothing: General mending supplies, PLUS Heidi’s guide to her favorite sewing and mending tools
• Slowfiber: General mending supplies
• Bookhou: General mending supplies
• Katrinkles: Darning & Mending Looms
• Miniature Rhino: General mending supplies