Inspiration
A Warm Welcome to BIPOC in Fiber
It’s exciting to watch a project move from good idea, to action, to full flower. That’s what it’s been like to follow the development of a brand-new website, BIPOC in Fiber, over the past many months. BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, and the website is for and about BIPOC who work to bring crafters beauty in all its fibery forms.
BIPOC in Fiber started as a lot of projects do: with a question. A couple of years ago, on her Instagram, British knitwear designer Jeanette Sloan asked “how many Black knitwear designers can you name?” She was inundated with responses, receiving over 150 names.
BIPOC in Fiber founder Jeanette Sloan, modeling her stunning design, the Dionne Shawl.
Jeanette started compiling a list of BIPOC designers on her blog. Soon, she realized that her list was a valuable resource for the designers and the whole fiber arts industry, that it needed to be made accessible to all and to grow. In short, it needed its own website. From that one question, a mission formed. Jeanette assembled a team and garnered support to take her idea from conception to reality.
On May 1, after months of web design and development, BIPOC in Fiber launched. It is magnificent, and it is a growing, living, dynamic site.
The heart of the website is the BIPOC in Fiber directory, which currently features over 100 professionals, in a wide array of categories: designers, writers, photographers, dyers, weavers, crocheters, and many more. New entries are being added to the directory all the time. It’s an invaluable resource for everyone who works in and practices the fiber arts.
And one more thing: It’s fun. Take a wander through the pages of the BIPOC in Fiber directory, and meet people who are making beauty in this world. Have a blast and be inspired getting to know them and their work.
Holy Moly! What a feast for the eyes. This is so great.
Thanks
Ladies,
Thank you for featuring Jeanette and her new site on your blog. I wasn’t aware of this project and must have missed the launch on IG (I follow her there). I’ve been a fan of Jeanette’s since she was a knitwear designer at Rowan. As a fiber lover of color who has been dabbling in all things yarn for several decades, I’m happy to see this site. It’s about time. Again, thank you for sharing and kudos to the name change!
Thank you for sharing this website! This is going to be an adventure in fiber! Love learning about new designers, etc.!
I am really enjoying this new directory. Amazing creativity!
Amazing Designs! I can’t wait to delve in to this website – wonderful idea, Jeanette.
thank you for bringing this amazing website to our attention
A beautiful new world to explore. Thank you
Thank you!
Fabulous!!!!!!! I am so grateful for this work.
I discovered this site yesterday and spent the morning looking at thevwonderful people.
Holy Cow, it’s like CHRISTMAS.
Thank you so much! I love how you are broadening our horizons. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Thanks for highlighting this! What a great resource! Visibility matters.
Thank you so much for sharing this! One of my commitments is to use my knitting dollars to support BIPOC individuals and BIPOC-led companies wherever possible, and this is a terrific resource to help further that goal.
I subscribed! Thank you!
It’s wonderful to have a resource such as this, opening doors for more talent. Thank you!
Thank you! I have been aware of Jeanette but not the site. I appreciate your putting this out here for all of us fiber folk!
What a great resource! I see at least two others who should be added: Brooke @ FullySpun.com and Adria @ OnyxFiberArts.com.
Thank you –
Very much appreciate your highlighting these designers and dyers. Thank you.
I have found a bunch of ways to support BIPOC makers, but I can’t get myself to support this site because Jeanette Sloan had an uncritical IG post about the Orange Order “marching season” in summer 2019 when she was visiting her husband’s family there. They’re a hate group in my native Northern Ireland. Anti-Catholic. They march through Catholic areas celebrating a victory their guy had in 1690, and it inevitably gets violent. People go away on vacation to get the hell away from it every year. She has an uncritical post about a bigoted, oppressive organization. Their members made up quite a large number of Northern Ireland’s violent, bigoted national police force, and they’ve contributed so much to the Troubles there. I feel like it’s something you can’t just post cheerily about like that— is she OK with it? Or the police brutality it has contributed to? I don’t know. It really bothered me. My parents knew people who were killed by its members during the Troubles, a friend’s young son shot as his dad drove him to school, and one person killed by the British Army in Bloody Sunday— a journalist fleeing the Army gunfire, shot in the back.