Approved Textiles

What does it mean to choose love as a value within social justice movements? How can we put this into practice? Not flower power love, but love as a tool of power. Not the only tool. But a tool. If you’re not familiar, Kai Cheng Thom is well known throughout North America for their work in social justice and restorative practices. They are deeply committed to liberation from racialized, gendered, sexualized, and economic forms of oppression and discrimination. I say this to acknowledge that Thom has done incredible work for social good while also offering a sharp critique of the internal workings of our movements. It’s not the ideology of the movement that’s the problem—it’s often the tactics and dynamics. I won’t go into all of them here, because each deserves its own post, but one overarching theme is shame. So much shame can be deployed and internalized in social justice spaces that it begins to counter or stall the very work it’s meant to advance. And while there is absolutely a time and place for shame to be used strategically, we can’t rely on the same tool over and over again and expect different results, right? There’s also a lot of research about the power of shame and love. We’ll share that soon. <3 for now, I Hope We Choose Love is live in the shop.

We’re kicking off this series with Hanabi. As Matthew and I were talking through what it meant to engage with this moment thoughtfully, these three texts kept resurfacing in conversation. Over the next three weeks, we’ll be sharing how they’re impacting how we’re showing up and how we’ve translated these ideas into mending transfers. This feels like an important moment to think more deeply about the symbols we inherit, the meanings we assign to them, and what it looks like to mend what we’ve been handed. There’s nothing more literal at Approved Textiles than mending a problem into something beautiful.

Did Matthew get it right? Thanks @stick.ball for the interview and make sure to sign up for their list through the link in bio at @thislooksgoodphilly

In my class, you’re going to understand why the last slide is not sashiko. Hitomezashi, Moyozashi, Koginzashi, Kugurizashi—they’re all sashiko styles, making them visually different, but they have the same technical foundations. Too often, sashiko classes are all about design. Our previous curriculum would lean this way sometimes. But design is only great when we have the technical skills within the craft for the tool to serve function and form. This isn’t a one-and-done art class. It’s about expanding your craft. We go hard on technique here. This is a teach-a-person-to-fish class, so when you keep coming back to your mends, you’ll know exactly how to start, adapt, repair, and complete even the most difficult mends. Our online sashiko class is happening May 12, so we’ll begin shipping out supplies to students this week who have already signed up from Florida to California. If you’d like to join us, we’ll stop shipping materials a week from tomorrow (May 7) to make sure materials get to you on time. Supplies include: 100% Japanese cotton, ready for dye DUARMA needles Water-soluble pen Aluminum ruler Wood pulp grid Handloom woven fabric for practice and patches There aren’t many “rules” to sashiko, just skills. We want you to understand sashiko, not just extract designs.

“I’ve heard about this place.” “Yeah, the slow fashion shop.” These customers just left the shop and I had to document this moment. Someone named us in a way that is consistent with our ethos and values. We weren’t acknowledged as a fabric shop. Yes, we have fabric, but that’s only one piece of the movement. Our values and the world building we’re creating together is landing. Then shit like this happens and all the head banging, long nights, uncertainty, and second guessing of being owners of a small business just, like, lifts for a fleeting second.

If I mounted this towel in a frame or parked it under a vase, I couldn’t show its back. You would never see the inner workings of how the front is able to match the back—the inner workings which make sashiko, sashiko. To frame it seemingly rips it from its cultural context of utility. It’s incredible how consistently we hear that the handloom woven fabrics we have are “too nice” or “too beautiful” to work with. We hear the same thing about hana fukins. It bears repeating: I really struggle with stocking hana fukin in the shop because so many customers—in our US context—experience these towels as decorative or functionless. For US crafters, to put so much time and effort into something seemingly translates into an inability to register the tool as utility. We put so much time into a craft that to then fully utilize it, we risk damaging it. If it’s damaged then we have to repair it, and it becomes a physical reminder of our precious time wasted. Which feels super American in a cyclical and paradoxical way: I do not deserve beautiful things because I will ruin them, but I want beautiful things as inspiration for something quicker and cheaper.

A button broke, so here’s a tutorial. I wanted to show you each step, so I opted for the 2-minute version, which I know in social-media-land is blasphemous. We’re not super into chasing the algorithm over giving you practical support, so just know that this is here when you need it next time. <3

Last call for our online offering of Visible Mending. We already have students coming from the Carolinas to Colorado. Deadline is Tuesday. Join us <3 ⸻ If you’re following Approved Textiles, chances are high that you’ve seen sashiko and visible mending videos and tutorials across many different platforms. We are not bereft of video tutorials—we know. What these tutorials lack, though, is a human responding to your questions in real time. You can start, stop, and rewind that YouTube Short as many times as you like, but the host can’t modify their actions or language to your specific inquiry. Why are we framing this class this way? Because choosing to take an in-person class over TikTok tutorials is one of the most talked-about things in our shop during class. We want to see and affirm your mending journey as your journey, not the journey the algorithm coded for you. We’ll ship you all the supplies you need. Just bring a sense of curiosity, a garment in need of repair or a second life, and questions. Bring lots and lots of questions <3 Since we have to mail out all of the supplies, we’ll be closing registration for this class on Tuesday, April 21. If you live in a state bordering Pennsylvania, we have some wiggle room, but it’s safer to get your reservation in now.

When this package showed up yesterday, it stopped me. Not because of what was inside—but because of the box. A child’s globe. Cracked open and reused to ship beeswax and honey from Huff’s Honey Farm. You can still see the details on it—how it turns from a daytime map into constellations at night. It clearly belonged to a kid. Not in theory. In real life. Inside the box: a handwritten note 5 lbs of beeswax we’ll melt down for hand sewing jars of honey from different pollination cycles But that’s not the part that stuck. If you’ve ever looked at their page (Josh and Sam run the farm @huffshoneyfarm ), you’ll see it—this is a working beekeeping operation and a family. That globe belongs to someone growing up inside this ecosystem. And suddenly, “inventory” doesn’t feel like inventory. It feels like participation. This is why it mattered to us to bring Pennsylvania beeswax into the shop. Not just for quality, not just for proximity—but because this is what a circular economy actually looks like. It’s not a concept. It’s a chain of real people <3 We’re choosing to spend money in places where it moves through hands we can recognize. Not anonymous warehouses. Not mass-produced markup. Real work. Real families. Real craft. And yeah—I’m genuinely excited that somewhere in northern Pennsylvania, there’s a kid with a globe who’s going to grow up seeing the world as something they’re already connected to. That feels like the kind of economy worth building.

Hand sewing can get framed as the slower, simpler alternative. It’s not. It’s the original method. The one that existed long before machines, mass production, or disposable clothing. Books like Alabama Stitch Book, Alabama Studio Sewing + Design, and Embroidery: Threads and Stories helped bring that conversation back into focus—especially here in the U.S. They remind people that stitching can carry memory, labor, and intention. But they’re one chapter. Alabama Chanin offers a regional perspective rooted in the American South—built on circular systems where fibers are grown, milled, and sewn within the same place. That lens is incredibly rare in the US. It’s just not the only one. Handwork has been practiced across cultures for generations—kantha in India and Bangladesh, sashiko in Japan, darning across Europe, reweaving across the Americas. Not as trend, but as necessity. As care. What we’re interested in is the full picture. Not just how to stitch, but how to understand what stitching has always been doing. If you’re starting somewhere, start anywhere. Just don’t stop at one story.

I’m an artisan by trade. There—I finally said it out loud. When we first opened, I was pretty vocal that hand sewing and textile arts weren’t my background. Over the past year and a half, I had to learn it to keep up with the growth of the shop. Am I good at it? Yes. Do I love it? …that’s still being worked out. But what I do love—very clearly—is what it does. The ability to repair your own clothes. To keep something out of the landfill. To participate in a wardrobe that isn’t built on constant replacement. That’s the part that matters to me. I think a lot of people walk into the shop feeling like they have to love stitching for stitching’s sake. And that’s just not true. This is a skill. This is craft. It can be art—but that’s not the baseline requirement. Sometimes this work feels like eating your vegetables. And I mean that with respect. Not everything meaningful has to be romantic. Maybe that’s what makes me a different kind of teacher. I care more about whether you leave with technical confidence than whether your stitches are expressive or beautiful. I’ve been teaching for over fifteen years—in community spaces, high schools, colleges, conferences. The content has changed. The approach hasn’t. With our spring classes starting this week, I’ll be leading our mending and foundational hand sewing workshops. If you take a class with me, I’m going to make sure you actually know how to do this. Register online through our link in bio <3

Approved Textiles is headed to Michigan in two weeks—but this trip is really about the shops. At the center of Approved Textiles is our humanity. Because we focus on handmade, artisan-made textiles, we’re deeply invested in uplifting the people who devote their lives to the intersection of art, sustainability, and cloth. So any chance to honor and strengthen relationships with makers and shops who walk the walk, we take it. <3 Places that sell materials, yes—but also make space for repair. For learning. For keeping what already exists in circulation. Matthew’s roots in Michigan run deep—East Lansing, Kalamazoo, Interlochen, Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor—so this one feels personal. He also has very strong feelings about cherries. We reached out to a few of the shops carrying our mending transfers, and they opened their doors. Sunday, April 12 11 AM – 1 PM Woolly & Co. (Bloomfield Hills) @woollyandco Call to register: 248.480.4354 4 PM – 6 PM POST (Detroit) @post.detroit.shop Register via link in bio Tuesday, April 14 1 PM – 3 PM Elderwise Learning (Ann Arbor) Register via link in bio If you’re near any of these spaces, go. Even if it’s not for the class. Back again—doing a little East Coast swing.