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/

Instagram @thewilddyery

Home Grown Colour

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

Satish Kumar

Medicine Festival

Zach Bush

Uma Dinsmore Tuli

Women who Run with the Wolves

Vandana Shiva

The Feminist Lecture Program

Patrick Grant

Manda Scott Boudica books

TreeSisters

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