Justine Aldersey-Williams is a textile activist, speaker and teacher specialising in natural fabric dyeing and regenerative clothing. She hand-dyes textiles at her studio, The Wild Dyery, in Hoylake UK, using many plants grown on her nearby food, fibre and dye allotment and teaches both live and online courses in botanical dyeing techniques.
Justine qualified as a teacher in 1998 and has since taught extensively to schools, colleges, universities and crafts groups. A yoga teacher since 2006, Justine’s textile work intersects creativity, spirituality and environmentalism. She devises creative rituals that reconnect people with nature and sees botanical dyeing as a gateway craft that can inspire people to feel more reverence for their ecosystems.
She founded the Northern England Fibreshed, part of the international Fibershed not-for-profit organisation in March 2020 and volunteers to help establish regenerative textile systems using 'local fibres, local dyes and local labour' throughout the region.
Justine’s website NaturalFabricDyeing.com/
We talked about :
Growing slow textiles
Animism
Matrilineal textile craft
Finding the right language for what we do
The metaphor of weaving
Creative and growing rituals that reconnect people with nature
Her project making the first pair of locally-grown, dyed and woven jeans
Moving from being consumers to creators
How plants communicate to us
When creativity is disabling - burnout and being multi-passionate creatives
In the bonus episode we also discuss:
The fashion industry and environmentalism
Her relationship with being visible and being a channel
More on woad and indigo
Resources
Weaving Our Way Beyond Patriarchy
Manda Scott Boudica books
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