Slow Stitch is a Detroit-based creative incubator cultivating a Slow Fashion economy rooted in sustainability, equity, and collective creativity. We do this through an artist residency and community education centered on fashion that cares for people and the planet.
Our Story
Slow Stitch Detroit grew out of years of hands-on arts education in sewing, fiber arts, and sustainable fashion led by our founder, Sarah Jane Mark, at Neighborhood Art School, the non-profit she and her husband, Billy Mark, started in 2018. What began as community workshops, creative mentoring, and neighborhood-rooted fashion activism slowly blossomed into a dedicated space where mindful making could take deeper root.
Our home in Detroit’s Piety Hill neighborhood is made possible through the generous support of Central Detroit Christian, whose long-term commitment to cultivating beauty, stability, and opportunity in this community has shaped the very ground we work on. Slow Stitch shares space with CDC’s Adamah Farms, an urban garden that has been transforming the neighborhood for more than twenty years—an everyday reminder that growth, healing, and nourishment happen slowly, season by season.
Slow Stitch is a sister space to Neighborhood Art School, just up the street, and together they hold the same heartbeat: creativity, hospitality, and the belief that art can help restore and reimagine our neighborhoods.
Founder Sarah Jane Mark is a Detroit-based fiber artist, clothing designer, and educator with over 25 years of experience in fashion design, patternmaking, and manufacturing. After a decade as a Design Director in Los Angeles, she shifted toward ethical and conscious design—launching her own clothing line and co-founding a fair trade company with women artisans in India and Africa. In Detroit, she and Billy built Neighborhood Art School into a home for community-rooted arts education. Together, they are deeply rooted in their neighborhood, living out an ethos to love their neighbors as themselves by hosting spaces for artists in residence through Neighborhood Art School, The Selah House, and Slow Stitch. She is also co-founder of Detroit Fashion United, dedicated to connecting Detroit’s conscious fashion community in alignment with the global movement Fashion Revolution.
Slow Stitch continues this thread—inviting people to slow down, make with intention, and be part of a creative community grounded in place, story, and care.