What is a Fibershed?
A Fibershed is a geographical landscape that defines and gives boundaries to a natural textile resource base. Awareness of this bioregional designation engenders appreciation, connectivity, and sensitivity for the life-giving resources within our homelands.
How did the Fibershed project start?
In the spring of 2010, Rebecca Burgess began a personal one-year challenge to live in clothes whose fibers and dyes were sourced within 150 miles of her home in San Geronimo, California, and dubbed it the Fibershed project. Her wardrobe was made to illuminate that our community could provide a most essential human necessity—clothing—within the confines of its own bioregion. Rebecca’s homeland proved to be an abundant source of ranchers, farmers, designers, weavers, seamstresses, spinnners, knitters, and natural dyers. The clothing that came from the collaborations between artisans and farmers were warm, soft, and functional garments that allowed her to live comfortably through every season, and every occasion. The hurdles and challenges that the project team experienced in creating the wardrobe proved to have nothing to do with the quantity or quality of the fiber or dye plants, nor the raw human talent. It was, instead, the fact that mills had almost disappeared from the landscape. Without the ability to process the wool, cotton, alpaca, mohair, cashmere and guanaco into fine gauge yarns, the designers and artisans were like chefs without a kitchen…. and we all know you just can’t make a fine meal without your tools. To bring local clothes into the closets of our fellow community members, we at Fibershed are now very aware of the requirements for this task, and are in the process of establishing a new supply chain unlike anything we have seen before.
The Future
We envision a region where the life giving systems from which we depend are enhanced and regenerated through the process of textile manufacturing. Fairly paid farmers will be able to organically grow and raise bast, cotton, and animal fibers that are processed in renewable energy powered, human scale mills that exist on, or in close proximity to, where the fibers are grown. We see a nourishing tradition emerging…. one that connects urban and rural textile hubs, and allows designers and farmers to work together to innovate and create clothes and usable household textiles for the community.
Our Mission
Fibershed empowers, educates, and networks the region’s farmers and artisans in the design, implementation, and use of a bioregionally-based, renewable-energy-powered supply chain. Fibershed exists to support innovations within our region, to enhance and create where necessary, the essential tools and materials needed to produce ecologically conscious clothing that represents systemic beauty—from seed to skin.