Kestrel Jenkin's Conscious Chatter podcast has an interview with Rebecca Burgess, director of Fibershed. S03, episode 118, "Fibershed + Regenerative Textile Systems," June 12, 2018, http://consciouschatter.com/podcast/2018/06/11/s03-episode-118-fibershed-regenerative-textile-systems. Available on iTunes.
Good stories, technical details, and the issues around the making of small batch, traceable, community-based, natural textiles, as always.
Fibershed serves two groups: producers and buyers. This podcast is focussed mostly on the production side of local cloth and leaves recommendations for buyers until the last several minutes. Unless I missed it, Burgess did not cover options such as taking yarn from a farm and either making clothes yourself or commissioning a weaver or knitter to make you clothing with it. It was more about looking for local ready-to-wear, wearing clothes longer and mending them, and recirculating used clothing.
This is an interesting choice considering the success Burgess had with the Fibershed wardrobe she commissioned for herself. In the YouTube video, "150 mile wardrobe: local fiber, real color, P2P economy," she says she never wants to go back to conventional clothes. I'm not sure why she omitted the option to commission work. Perhaps she considered the amount of time and money involved to be too much to ask. She was able to fund the wardrobe through Kickstarter, through her Funding Fibershed - One Year-150 Miles campaign in 2010.
Burgess is a weaver and natural dyer with a spinning wheel. In the YouTube interview she says she commissioned the Fibershed wardrobe because she didn't have the time to make it herself, which is understandable. Furthermore, she wanted the wardrobe made in order to build relationships with the ranchers, cotton breeders, felters, knitters, and mills in her region.
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