Justine Aldersey-Williams a textile artisan and teacher specialising in natural fabric dyeing. She hand-dyes textiles at her studio, The Wild Dyery, in Hoylake 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, universities and crafts groups. She completed an MA in 2013 and has exhibited her work at New Designers, Indigo Paris and Rio. She is a guest lecturer and delivers her own curriculum ‘Make it Sacred: Regenerating Fashion with Natural Dyes’ to students at Pearl Fashion Academy in India.

As a former yoga teacher, 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 nature.

She has collaborated with Fashion Revolution Week, offering ‘ReWild Your Wardrobe’ workshops and advocates for the use of natural dyes as an ‘haulternative’ way to extend the life of your clothing rather than buying new, fast fashion. In addition, she has spoken at industry events for the Royal Society for the Arts, British Council, Edinburgh Science Festival and The Wildlife Trust along with being featured in multiple publications.

She founded the North West 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 is collaborating with Patrick Grant of social enterprise Community Clothing and the BBC’s Great British Sewing Bee and Laurie Peake of the Super Slow Way who host the British Textile Biennial on the Homegrown Homespun project which aims to bring a line of locally grown, indigo linen jeans to market by October 2023. She is undertaking the ambitious challenge of growing, processing, hand spinning, naturally dyeing, weaving and sewing her own pair of Homegrown Homespun jeans to coincide with the culmination of the project.

Justine lives on the Wirral peninsula in England with her husband and has two adult children at university studying Fashion Communication and Styling and Conservation Biology and Ecology.

Justine wearing mended jeans and an old top rewilded with madder and indigo dyed embroidery threads.