Welcome to The Textile Anthropologist’s Substack: The Thread
A home for cloth, culture, and connection.
Hi! I’m Sara, the Textile Anthropologist. I’m so glad you’re here.
This space is where my lifelong passion for textiles meets my background in environmental anthropology—a place to explore the stories that live in thread, the rituals embedded in process, and the wisdom woven into every cloth.
At the heart of this project is my love of learning and teaching. I’m a textile and apparel designer turned research professional, and a lifelong seamstress. I write about the histories, economies, and living traditions of cloth—where ecology, memory, and culture meet. Through storytelling, teaching, and creative practice, I explore what textiles can reveal about who we are and how we live.
My mission is to develop a grounded textile literacy and deep appreciation of cloth by bringing the human story back into the textiles that are apart of our histories and our everyday lives. Textiles are labor intensive, resource intensive, and they live our lives with us. They hold meaning and history all at once.
Coming Soon:
Digital Field Guides to dye and fiber plants of the Pacific Northwest and beyond
Mini-Courses & Lessons on textile traditions, object analysis, and meaning
Workshops & Retreats that explore textile heritage hands-on
Full Courses & Teaching Tools for fiber lovers and educators
Whether you’re a weaver, a wanderer, a mender, or a maker—this space is for you. You’ll find resources to deepen your practice, products to enrich your learning, and inspiration to reconnect with the material world in a more grounded, intentional way.
You can also find me on Threads and Instagram for photos, videos, and interesting facts related to each week’s Substack post, and more content on textiles, ecology, and anthropology. Thanks for being here!
—The Textile Anthropologist
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