The Wild Dyery

e-Learning Natural Dyes New Technologies Meet Tradition

 

Justine Aldersey-Williams is textile designer and teacher specialising in natural fabric dyeing at The Wild Dyery. She runs live and online workshops from her base on the Wirral peninsula in North West England where she lives with her husband, two teenagers and two dogs.

Tell us about The Wild Dyery, what happens and what is created every day in your studio?

This year has so far been very different to last year when I was running a pop-up studio for six months. In 2016, my average day would involve foraging for plants from my dye garden before creating textiles to sell in the shop and online whilst preparing for monthly workshops teaching organic indigo dyeing, shibori and eco printing. This was combined with spreading the word about sustainable textiles to the many visitors who would pop in on a daily basis and collaborating with like-minded creative working with natural materials.

This year, I’ve developed all my live workshops into a three module online training called ‘Natural Fabric Dyeing: Eco Colour, Print and Pattern’. This is the first home-study training to take people from the foundational skills needed to create a rainbow of colours from just three plants, to safely foraging for plants to eco print onto fabric, to developing unique surface pattern designs using traditional printing techniques like screen printing, block printing, jelly printing etc. with plant dyes.

So 2017 has seen me diversify my roles, not only being a natural dye teacher but a writer, web developer, graphic designer, photographer, promoter, videographer, presenter etc. as I created the training site myself, without any help – which was a very steep learning curve!