When Sarah Pottle talks about fashion and textiles, many people may imagine the fashion runways in New York City and glitzy fashion shows with supermodels.

But Pottle is envisioning flax, alpacas, sheep, and plant dyes that contribute to eco-friendly, sustainable handmade textiles like linen, wool, and yarn.

Fiber has become Pottle’s passion in the past few years. What began as an idea for making clothing from sustainable textiles and dyes transformed into a mission to boost the agricultural ecosystem, support small farmers who create wool and yarn from their sheep, alpacas—and even wood—and create natural, sustainable farming ecosystems throughout Ohio.

Pottle has turned her passion into a business. In 2018 the Granger Township resident teamed up with her twin sister, Jessalyn Boeke, who lives in Peninsula, to start Rust Belt Fibershed—a community that collaboratively supports locally-grown textiles within a 250-mile radius of Cleveland. The organization is one of 72 Fibersheds worldwide that are affiliated with what Pottle calls the “Mother Fibershed” in Point Reyes Station, California,

This weekend, Pottle and Boeke will host the First Annual Rust Belt Fibershed Symposium: Potential in Place-Based Textiles, which will convene the local fiber and textile community to explore the connection between people and materials necessary to transform our textile system and the potential of a place-based, soil-to-soil textile system.

During the two-day symposium, a panel of experts in the textile supply chain—including farmers, processors, dyers, designers, up-cyclers, and menders—will discuss how a place-based focus on textiles can shape and transform our surroundings to create unique and vibrant connections.

The weekend kicks off on Friday, Jan. 26 at 7 p.m. at the Cedar Lee Theatre, 2163 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights, with a viewing of the documentary “RiverBlue,” which details the devastating effects of the textile industry’s pollution of the planet’s waterways.

On Saturday, Jan. 27 from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 78th Street Studios, 1300 W. 78th St., Cleveland, the symposium kicks into gear with speakers, a fashion show, and a clothing swap.

Then Saturday afternoon, also at 78th Street Studios, will feature vendors and 15 hands-on learning and demo stations. The afternoon session is open to symposium ticket holders from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., then is open to the general public from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Pottle says she believes guests will enjoy the hands-on learning stations, where people can get some basic training and tips from experts on all types of projects.

“Let's say you've always wanted to crochet, but you haven't picked up needles and you haven't gone to get yarn and opened up a YouTube and tried to teach yourself yet,” she suggests. “You can just swing by the table, and somebody can be like, ‘This is how you get started.’ There's everything from [training in] crochet, there's how to use natural dyes, there's buckskin tanning.

Tickets range from $15 for the Friday documentary only, to $50 for the entire weekend.

Rust Belt Fibershed origins

After first starting Drift Lab Textile Company, a natural dye studio in Cleveland Heights, in 2018 Pottle and Boeke launched Rust Belt Fibershed.

“It was just a passion project for a while,” Pottle recalls “We said, ‘Let's make outfits, let's do natural dye walks.’ And we just started doing it.” And then last year we got to the point where we wanted to grow in some capacity, secure some funding, make these projects that we've been paying for out of pocket more accessible to folks, and see what happens from there. So that's sort of what we did.”

Rust Belt Fibershed began implementing its new mission to establish a network of regenerative fiber farmers, processors, and designers in the Rust Belt to work with sheep wool, alpaca, flax, and plant dyes to create a “soil-to-soil” fashion and textile system.

Pottle likens the movement to the Farm to Table trend in dining, calling Rust Belt Fibershed “farm to fashion.”

“It's like thinking about where your clothes come from locally and the way that clothes are manufactured now is a very linear system,” she explains. “Most of the clothing is one of the most pollutive industries in the world with so much waste. Over 60% of our clothes are made from plastic now—and that has its own recycling issues and problems.”

Clothing was solely made from natural fibers up until about 100 years ago, says Pottle, who is an advocate of going back to those practices, while also implementing modern-day processes.

The Mother Fibershed emerged about 10 years ago when weaver and natural dyer Rebecca Burgess began wearing clothing made from fiber grown, woven, and sewn in her bioregion of North Central California.

Collaborating with ranchers, farmers, and artisans in her community, Burgess found plenty of raw material being grown to support a regional textile economy.

The experience led Burgess to create the Fibershed model—creating a regional clothing supply chain model focused on helping to solve the climate change crisis, economic justice, and soil preservation.

When Pottle and Boeke heard about what Burgess was doing, they knew how they wanted to scale their company.

“She was talking about human health, race relations, fair trade issues, farming, local economics, art, and education, and all these things coming together,” Pottle recalls. “We were like, oh my gosh, Fibershed helps facilitate all those connections. That’s everything we love.”

Pottle says they decided they could start a similar program in Cleveland, but more on a project basis, and start by growing flax, hosting natural dye hikes, and making clothes.

“We just started doing it,” she recalls.

Rust Belt Fibershed endorses building a “circular economy,” in which the system relies on the resources abundant in the area—fertile farmland for growing things like flax and hemp for fiber, a practice of relying on best practices to allow the farmers to regenerate the soil, and a large alpaca population (Ohio ranks as the state with most alpacas in the country).

In fact, Pottle says Ohio’s large alpaca population is the main component of making the regional textile economy work.

“What we're trying to do is take this valuable resource that people have and see how we can move it into the local economy,” she says. “Not [take the wool to] big giant corporations, but to local makers at a scale that works for their business models.”

Pottle says the Fibershed model is building. “When we started in 2018, we were one of 15 Fibershed project affiliates and now we're one of 72,” she says, adding that people in southern Ohio and Appalachia have reached out to Rust Belt Fibershed for collaboration.

“There's no competition,” she says. “The more of us that are doing the work, the more the momentum builds, and the momentum is certainly building.”