This year’s LA County Fair was themed “Art Unleashed.” Several fiber and textiles activities showcased intersections between fashion and agriculture during May 2025. A hand-woven community-based textile was created based on the leadership of apparel student Angela Becerril. The textile was exhibited at the annual Home Arts exhibit and showcased a variety of students’ hand-spinning…
Category: education
Engaging in Fiber Arts: U.S. Wool Spinning & Weaving
By Isabella Andrade, Apparel Merchandising and Management Undergraduate Student and Research Assistant Working with Wool Fibers For the past year of my undergraduate college experience, I had the opportunity to work with different types of wool materials from U.S. sheep farms as part of Cal Poly Pomona’s USDA Education research project. My first task as…
Exploring Wildlife Habitat and Family-Friendly Activities at Sarvodaya Farms
This past week, I visited the CA Native Garden Grand Opening at Sarvodaya Farms in Pomona CA. It was interesting to see it is certified as a wildlife habitat for “its commitment to sustainability” providing vital elements to the habitat, including “food, water, cover and places to raise young.” Activities In this context, there was…
Fibershed Symposium: Evaluating Factors of Fashion towards Sustainability
By Malia Chang, Apparel Merchandising and Management Undergraduate Student and Research Assistant Fibershed hosted a symposium to discuss the topic “Relationships of Change.” It explored different avenues of the apparel industry that include the topics of people, policy, and materials that have various impacts and contribute to transforming the “soil-to-skin processes.” Critical matters of focus…
US Wool Outreach with Yarn Spinning & Textile Weaving
By Sharon Jane Wong, Apparel Merchandising and Management Undergraduate Student and Research Assistant At this year’s LA County Fair – Cal Poly Pomona faculty and students gathered to demonstrate as part of the annual fair’s Schools’ Agriculture and Nutrition Program exhibit through Cal Poly Pomona Agriscapes. I had the opportunity to work as an Undergraduate…
Sharing Wool Research @ the International Textile & Apparel Association Conference
By Malia Chang, Apparel Merchandising & Management Undergraduate student Towards the end of October, I had the opportunity as a Student Research Assistant to attend the International Textile and Apparel Association 2022 Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado. I was able to attend several sessions that were offered at the conference. Throughout the conference, many gathered…
Community Outreach with US Wool, Textiles & Demonstrations
During the last week of the LA County Fair in May, I shared US wool research project activities along with my Apparel Research Assistant and recent Cal Poly Pomona alumni, Katia Quiroz. Katia was in my AMM 4630: Apparel Research project course in Fall 2021. Student projects focused on exploring US sheep and wool farms…
Continuing Seams of STEAM
COVID-19 has caused many abrupt changes over the past few months and it has definitely changed my approaches to teaching about Apparel and developing educational content. One aspect that I was worried about was the Seams of STEAM summer youth empowerment program where I usually develop and lead workshops with 3 Latina youth from San…
Women in Sheep & Wool Digital Archives
Women play a significant role in today’s wool scene. Many of the farmers I interviewed and surveyed during my PhD research were women. This led me to wonder what role women played historically on farms. For my PhD research, I looked at “The Wool Grower” digital archives during 1830 to 1855. There were little to…
Making it With Wool
Surrounded by a vibrant New Orleans energy, Make it With Wool (MIWW) fashion finalists presented their vast creativity during this year’s national fashion show. From well-tailored garments to hand-knit sweaters and dresses, the fashion show provided a glimpse into the inspiration wool can ignite. New York’s own Haley Smith won first place during the New…
Fashion Research Inspired by the current Border Crisis
With current calls for warm clothing donations to the asylum seekers reaching the San Diego-Mexico border, I became interested in learning about the availability of affordable clothing retailers throughout Southern California. The fast fashion model of accelerated clothing production and consumption has made clothing more accessible and lower priced. In this short research, I sought…
NY Make it With Wool Competition
With strong roots in the Northeast, the Make it with Wool Competition continues to inspire innovative design with wool. This year, Haley Smith, a primary collaborator in the New York Regional Yarn Sourcebook and a junior in Fiber Science & Apparel Design at Cornell, won first place! What a great way to celebrate fiber arts,…
#SmallThanks to Fiber Farms & Textile Small Businesses
It’s National Small Business Week! As last week’s Fashion Revolution encouraged us to consider the variety of makers who make our clothing, small business week is an initiative to support local economic development. Many small business owners shared their stories while I was a graduate student at Cornell. They introduced me to a variety of…
Creativity & Growing with Google
After receiving a Grow with Google Challenge Scholarship to learn about Basic Android programming in January, I have learned so much! I learned how to use Android Studio, Java coding, and to incorporate elements of design. Below are examples of some of my projects. I’m excited that I was able to create projects to match my…
Building a New York Fiber Farm Map & Database
I began to look for New York fiber farms online in 2013. In 5 years, my database has grown to over 470 sheep, alpaca, and goat farms, and I am sure there are many more. I looked at several mapping platforms to visually communicate my fiber farm research including ArcGIS, QGIS BatchGeo, CartoDB, Google Earth,…
HELEN TREJO 