School House's contract with Mitt's Nitts Inc. is a bright spot in North Carolina's textile and apparel industry, which has seen dramatic declines in the past two decades.

The state's textile industry peaked in 1992, according to a report by UNC-Chapel Hill economics professor Patrick Conway. But following the signing of the North America Free Trade Agreement, North Carolina lost 100,000 jobs in the textile industry and 70,000 in the apparel industry between 1997 and 2002 alone.

The industry also took additional blows during the recession because it depends on the automotive and housing industries, according to Blanton Godfrey, dean of the College of Textiles at N.C. State University.

"When car sales go down, textiles go down because of the upholstery for car seats," Godfrey said. "And with the decline of the housing industry and new home sales, which got whacked during the recession, a lot of the industry making carpets, drapes, towels, also got hit."

Manufacturers like Mitt's Nitts, which focus on cutting and sewing apparel and not on textile production, are further squeezed because of the damage that going offshore has done to the pool of skilled labor.

"It still requires a skilled human being to sit down and sew," Tyler Bennett added. "Historically, it has been a low-paying industry and so a lot of that has gone offshore. The difficulty we've had is finding people to do the work, and do that at a proficiency and efficiency that's economical for the industry."

Now, there are glimmers of "reshoring" in the private industry, caused by stagnant U.S. wages and rising wages abroad as globalization continues its sweep.

Companies had previously gone offshore to get cheap labor. But with wages increasing abroad and factoring in shipping costs - and as the "Made in America" label has become fashionable abroad, particularly in Asian markets - more manufacturing now is being moved back to the United States.

School House CEO Rachel Weeks, who grew up in Greensboro, the center of the North Carolina textile industry, is relishing the opportunity to design to North Carolina manufacturers' capabilities. The proximity of the factories also allows her company to respond more quickly to fashion changes.

Like the farm-to-table movement for locavores, there is a growing "dirt-to -shirt" movement for textiles that's gaining steam.

"Made in America is becoming popular," Bennett said. "The younger generation has seen the effects of what happened in the 1990s and a lot of manufacturing going overseas."