I’ve spent the last two decades immersed in the slow world of designing textiles and natural fiber clothing, working with my hands, and learning directly from the plants. When my almost adult children were young, I was planting a garden on a patch of earth, curious to see what color lived inside the plants. That was the beginning of a new way of life for me.

Everything I make begins in nature. My home studio sits beside an ever-evolving dye garden in beautiful Boulder, where I grow many of the plants I use such as coreopsis, Japanese indigo, madder roots, marigold and whatever other traditional dye plants I have growing wild here. I harvest mindfully and work closely with the plants, learning how each one behaves as a dye, how they shift on different textiles, soil, and over the course of time.

I am self-taught and some of these relationships have taken years for me to deeply understand.

The process is slow, and meaningful for me. I make my indigo vats and plant dye extractions, layer color through eco-printing and over-dyeing, and lean into the unpredictable nature of plant dye because that’s where the true organic beauty is unlocked. Each piece of clothing I create holds the marks of nature, my hands and the land it came through. No two will ever be the same, and that is what I Iove about this process.

I design clothing only using natural fibers- fabrics that breathe, decompose, and feel alive against the skin. I choose each one with care, thinking not just about how it takes color, but how it moves, how it wears over time, how it supports the story I want to tell. This work is rooted in respect: for the plants, for the earth, and for the lineage of textile and dye knowledge that has come before me.

I’m also a wife and mother to three boys, and I carry that identity into everything I do. My family comes first. The rhythm of our home, the cycles of growth and change, the deep listening that parenting requires—all of it mirrors the way I approach my work.

What I create is more than clothing.

It’s a way of remembering our place in the natural world and honoring the beauty that comes when we slow down and listen.

about ora