In August 2020, botanical textile dyer and founder of the Northern England Fibreshed, Justine Aldersey-Williams began a collaboration with her friend, clothing manufacturer and judge on the BBC’s Great British Sewing Bee, Patrick Grant. Together they hoped to help incentivise the reintroduction of textile crops within British agriculture while raising awareness of the international Fibershed movement and the climate beneficial potential of regeneratively grown clothing.
Inspired by Fibershed founder Rebecca Burgess’s 2015 ‘Grow Your Jeans’ project in California, they invited arts commissioning organisation SuperSlow Way to join the experiment and with a team of volunteers planted their first crops on unused urban land in the centre of Blackburn in April 2021. Their plan was to grow flax and woad with the aim of bringing the UK’s first indigo linen jeans to market via social enterprise Community Clothing in time for the October 2023 British Textile Biennial, with the first stage being to produce a prototype pair by October 2021.
It transpired that both these deadlines had been optimistic but while leading the upscale stage of the project during 2022, Justine was awarded Arts Council England funding for #WomanGrowsJeans which enabled her to develop all the skills needed to transform seeds into jeans herself. After years of growing and storing her own flax and indigo at her allotment, 9 months learning to spin and weave, 9 weeks hand spinning for 3 hours a day and some unexpected help along the way, Justine completed the U.K.’s first pair of Homegrown Homespun jeans.
She explored the deeper implications of regenerative practice and ‘deep ecology’ during this initiation into traditional clothing production and connected to ancestral and environmental wisdom from a time before ecocide, when people had more time and did less harm. Her yearly online course ‘Growing Slow Textiles’ emerged as a result of these experiences and has already helped over 100 people journey from seed to cloth.
On Sat 28th October 2023, Justine was interviewed by Perelandra Beedles for Creative Lancashire’s ‘Conversations in Creativity’ at the British Textile Biennial to round-up her 3 year Homegrown Homespun collaboration and to reveal this historic garment. A documentary is to follow along with a book entitled, ‘Woman Grows Jeans: An initiation into sacred clothing.’ For updates, follow @thewilddyery on Instragram or visit TheWildDyery.com
27 ноя 2023
