Workshop Leaders 

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Cathleen Robertson
ARAN Farms and Pacific Fiber

Cathleen Robertson is the owner and farmer of ARAN Farms in Rainier, WA. The farm emphasizes livestock breeds that are either listed as critical or threatened on the Livestock Conservancy Conservation Priority List or are a heritage breed in their country of origin or the United States. The farm also strives for sustainability using heritage building methods, heirloom seeds for edible and usable plants, and allowances for native wildlife to have room to live and travel. Cathleen currently raises Gotland sheep, Kerry Hill sheep and Bluefaced Leicester sheep, Holland chickens and Silver Martin rabbits and Belgian Hares.

Lina Lipski
Olympic Yarn and Fiber

Lynn “Lina” Lipski is the CEO, founder and operator of Olympic Yarn and Fiber, an artisan custom yarn manufacturing mill located in Cosmopolis, WA. With a PhD in chemistry, 10 years of experience in academic research and teaching, and 10 years of experience as a mill owner/operator, Lina infuses her love of scientific discovery and a passion for locally produced products into all of the yarns and textiles that she produces. When not working in the mill, Lina can be found hiking or snowshoeing around WA State or visiting friends in Italy.  

Paige St-Pierre
Seattle-based textile artist

Paige St-Pierre is a Seattle-based textile artist, zero waste advocate, and educator. She creates wearable art from post-consumer textiles to normalize textile repair and reuse. Paige reconstructs and repurposes textiles via machine embroidery, hand embroidery, beading, and plant dyeing. She is a certified Zero Waste Associate with Zero Waste USA. She holds an Associate of Arts in Apparel Design from Seattle Central College, a Master’s in Teaching and a Bachelor of Arts in French Language and Literature, both from the University of Washington. Paige teaches mending, slow stitching and upcycling workshops to all ages in the greater Seattle area. Find out more at her website paigest-pierre.com and Instagram @paigestpierreapparel.

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Jean Van Effen
Tahoma Vista Fiber Mill

Jean Van Effen is the farmer and owner/operator of Tahoma Vista Fiber Mill in Yelm, WA. She got interested in alpacas after serving in the Army in Panama and traveling into South America. She has been raising alpacas since 1993. In 2016, after retiring from the Army, Jean and her husband David started Tahoma Vista Fiber Mill in response to the high demand for artisan fiber processing. The mill employs 10 people and processes fiber for local and regional clients, producing artisan yarns, felted rugs, coasters, trivets, insoles, felt sheets and dryer balls. She continues to expand her interest in fiber arts, from knitting to spinning and weaving.

Janelle Abbott
Designer

Janelle Abbott grew up in her parents’ Seattle warehouse, where they designed and manufactured womens wear. While studying fashion design at Parsons School of Design in NYC, Janelle was introduced to the zero waste design methodology, which has become the cornerstone of her practice. Today under her brand JRAT, Janelle painstakingly creates one-of-a-kind clothing, furniture, sculpture, and more, all from discarded materials salvaged from the trash heap of capitalism. She offers a garment reconstruction service to private clients through Wardrobe Therapy. Explore more of her world online www.janellerabbott.com and Instagram @janellerabbott .

Kate Stragis
 Executive Director of Ragfinery

Kate Stragis is the Executive Director of Ragfinery, located in downtown Bellingham, WA. Ragfinery is a non-profit retail store dedicated to educating the public about textile waste, creative reuse and mending. Ragfinery also provides on-site job skills training in partnerships with local social service agencies and schools in Whatcom County. Every purchase of fabric, supplies and garments from their store helps in their efforts to divert textile waste from the landfill, support local jobs and promote a sustainable local economy with a conscience. 

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Heather Trim 
Executive Director, Zero Waste 

Heather Trim has more than 25 years of experience in environmental work ranging from zero waste to toxic chemicals and habitat issues. At Zero Waste Washington, her focus has been on reducing upstream sources of waste and addressing downstream impacts, getting toxic chemicals out of products, eliminating plastic pollution, and building on the organization’s signature producer responsibility policy initiatives. Previously, at Futurewise, she worked to prevent runoff from entering our waterways and improve shoreline management practices and policies. Heather was at People for Puget Sound for over ten years where she focused on protections for the marine environment. Earlier, she was staff scientist for the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council and worked for the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board on water quality standards, regulatory permits, pollution assessments, greening the LA rivers and habitat renewal.

Naomi Spinak
 Fiber Artist

Naomi Spinak is a fiber artist who lives on Bainbridge Island. She has chaired the Bainbridge Island Trashion Show for five of its six years. Her artwork includes textile arts from costume design for theatre to avid knitting. Notable projects include entirely upcycled costume design for Peter and the Starcatcher, a lifesize sea turtle puppet for the Texas State Aquarium, and microfossil knitted animal patterns. She has won awards for her quilt, Sweet Land of Liberty, and her repurposed fashion in the Trashion Show. Her works have been on display at the Bainbridge BARN, in Surface Design Magazine, the Kirkland Center for the Arts, and she will have some menswear available in the Bainbridge Arts and Crafts Sustainable Clothing Show in April. Naomi holds an MFA in Costume Design and a BA in Art History and Technical Theatre.

Lily Diament-Hansen 
​ Fiber Artist​

Lily Diament-Hansen was born in Poland and raised in New York City. For over five decades she has dabbled in a variety of art media. Not until she began painting with fabric did she find her artistic niche. It began when she hand-stitched the solar system on a full size quilt for her grandson and since has evolved into wall panels, which can be viewed on her website, naturestitches.com. With each successive quilt/panel, her technique has evolved. She delights in ‘painting’ nature scenes. Finding the right fabrics ignites her creative juices and impassions her spirit. She is a member of a Bainbridge Island charity knitting group, as well as a Needle Arts group. A few years ago she repurposed wool socks to make an outfit (skirt and sweater) for the Bainbridge Island Trashion Show. She enjoys all manner of textile artistry.

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Lara Hansen

Lara Hansen cares about climate change (see EcoAdapt.org and Sustainable Bainbridge), ecotoxicology, and wool. (See Shaun the Sheep--she has nothing to do with this but thinks you might enjoy it). Clearly she's who you want to go to for a workshop about making wool dryer balls--at least if her mom is there, since she's the one who has all of the skills!

Isobel Coney
Designer

Coney is a graduate of the Scottish College of Textiles and has a postgraduate diploma in textiles from Manchester Metropolitan University and a postgraduate diploma in art education from Goldsmiths College London. Formerly a fabric designer specializing in printed textiles, she gained experience working in the studio of fashion designer Zandra Rhodes and designing printed textiles for interiors. She taught art and textiles at St. Marylebone School in London, before moving to the US where she has been working as a teaching artist. Her projects have combined cultural, environmental and historical studies with art, using techniques spanning painting, quilting, felting, knitting, batik, printmaking, embossed metal, hand-made paper and ceramics. Isobel has taught classes and summer camps at Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network on felt-making, indigo dyeing and upcycling denim to make new items of clothing. 

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Susan Skalak
Designer, Founder of Esters Fabrics

Susan graduated with a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.  She worked as a design/manufacturing engineer and later taught engineering at the University of Virginia with a research focus on sustainable design and design for reuse and recycling.  After moving to Bainbridge, Susan bought and ran Esther’s Fabrics for five years.  She is a clothing designer, tapestry weaver, and textile artist who, after selling her store, has returned to making clothing that makes use of discarded goods. She  has been involved in design with environmental impact in mind since the early 1990s.  Slow and thoughtful design, use of existing materials repurposed, or use of natural materials, especially wool, are hallmarks of her work, whether the pieces are tapestries, quilts, clothing or home goods.  With the rise of the local fiber movement, her attention has now turned to incorporating local fiber and natural dyes into her work.

Holly Davies 
Toxicologist

Holly Davies has a PhD in Genetics and Developmental Biology and works as a toxicologist at the Washington State Department of Health. She works to identify safer alternatives and promote their use in many household products, including in carpets, electronics, textiles, and furniture. She is a knitting artist, both designing and knitting garments. From childhood she has been passionate about reducing waste and reuse.

Shirlee Tan
Toxicologist

Shirlee is the Senior Toxicologist for Seattle & King County Public Health Department.  She works to better understand the effects of chemicals on human health from the products and processes in our lives, and she focuses on identifying ways to reduce harmful exposures through personal actions and policy change. Much of her career has been focused on endocrine disrupting chemicals (chemicals that behave like or alter hormone action) and their impacts on human health and the environment through work with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Endocrine Society. She has been a  board member with Zero Waste Washington since 2017. Along with hiking, camping, cooking, jewelry design, and spending time with her son and husband, Shirlee loves finding new uses for old things.

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Zeb Whitehead
Owner, Zutto Vintage & Antiques

Zeb is owner of Zutto Vintage & Antiques. His business and life partner is Hiromi Yoshinaga. Their goal is to turn their small vintage and antique store into a company that can bring awareness to our local community and state about the importance of recycling, upcycling, and sustainability. Zeb grew up in Northwest Colorado and has lived in Washington state since 2006. He is a veteran, having served in the Navy for 20 years. He has three children. Hobbies include self-development, physical fitness and martial arts.

Rebecca Rockefeller
Co-founder, Buy Nothing

Rebecca Rockefeller is an almost-lifelong Bainbridge Islander; co-founder of the Buy Nothing Project, a worldwide gift economy movement; and co-author of The Buy Nothing, Get Everything Plan, a primer on pursuing a multifaceted Buy Nothing lifestyle. Rebecca's work on Buy Nothing stemmed from citizen science projects documenting local marine and watershed plastic waste conducted with her Buy Nothing co-founder and co-author, Liesl Clark, and their respective children. Her Buy Nothing life includes regular experimentation on herself, including a year spent wearing the same secondhand dress every single day, accessorized only with items she received as gifts from Buy Nothing Bainbridge. ​