My name is Sienna Long and I am a senior graphic design major. During the summer of 2017, I was a fibers intern for Backyard Fiberworks located in Silver Spring Maryland. I found out about this internship through a friend of mine who knew the owner of the company, Alice O’Reilly. My friend had talked me up to the owner and asked her if she was interested in taking on an intern for the summer so she said yes and we had a meeting which just turned into her giving me the job and showing me how everything happens in the company the day of.
The owner, Alice O’Reilly, started her own fibers company several years ago and it has blown up since. It is an extremely successful company that also attends shows such as Vogue in New York, and even attending odd gigs like small town shows in Ohio. Backyard Fiberworks is a company that sells fibers in all sorts, just regular fibers you can do whatever you’d like with or clients tend to have special requests like “making a scarf” with our own fibers.
My boss and supervisor all in one was Alice O’Reilly, she showed me how everything happened in the company and all the specifics as to how to do it all. I was in charge of doing multiple things, 1. I dyed fibers all sorts of colors — whatever was on the list of what needed to be produced that day I made it 2. I re-skeined fibers, which is just a fancy word for spinning yarn. 3. organized fibers into different categories such as, full sets into one, halves into a specific kit depending on color, thirds into gradients, fifths into presents or prizes etc.
I am most proud that I did something that was outside of my comfort zone and outside of my major. I just wanted to experiment with other things that weren’t my major so I could see if I liked it more or less or just as much. I also wanted to just take advantage of the opportunity that arose and be able to have this knowledge just for the sake of using it if I ever want or need to use it. Overall, I think that it was really nice to do something I wouldn't have imagined myself signing up for immediately because it wasn't graphic design related. But I learned all about the way fibers work and how to care for them specific ways and the various ways you can use fibers.
