The Alberni Valley Fibre Guild launched our “100-km Wardrobe Challenge” in the spring of 2025. We are one year into the two-year challenge, and it has been a busy year!
The Challenge brings together 21 makers from the Alberni Valley, Bamfield, and the Gulf Islands to craft wardrobe pieces (perhaps whole outfits!) with materials sourced within 100km of our homes. With this project, we are exploring the craft and skill of local resourcefulness, responding to the deeply exploitative nature of the global textile supply chain, and celebrating the humane and sustainable potential of local textile economies and cultures. Our projects and stories will be displayed at the Alberni Valley Museum as its exhibit in the fall of 2027. Gulp – that deadline is fast approaching!
Our first challenge was recruitment, which turned out to be not very hard at all! This project instantly appealed to many makers for a wide range of ethical and creative reasons. We were also fortunate to get local media coverage as well as an interview on CBC’s All Points West with Jason D’Souza (April 16, 2025). Our participants are working with a wide range of textiles, including animal fibres (wool, llama, angora), plant (nettle, flax-to-linen), recycled materials, paper, hides, and a nascent project on fish skin! Many of us have also tumbled deep down the rabbit hole of natural dyeing and pigments.
It was important to us to ground the challenge in the millennia-old textile tradition of the First Nations whose lands we are on. We have partnered with C.R.A.F.T./qʷicčiƛma, a local Indigenous-led Arts organization, to explore and elevate the history and contemporary practice of Indigenous textiles art and culture. Through this partnership, we participated in a cedar rope making workshop with Jan Green, and we hosted Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa and Sul milthia’ Violet Elliott to speak at the Alberni Valley Museum about their book The Teachings of Mutton: A Coast Salish Woolly Dog (Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd, 2025). We also conducted a walk through of the Alberni Valley Museum’s First Nations basketry and textiles collection withHupač̓asatḥ, Ahousaht, and Dene elders.
To support the learning and skills required to undertake this endeavour, we have offered a number of introductory workshops, including Introduction to Weaving, Introduction to Spinning, and natural dyeing workshops. We are also muddling through a flax-to-linen project. In our second year, we will focus on community building and supporting each other through the final stretch, as well as documenting the process and recording our stories to share with each other and our communities. We’re a busy guild with lots going on. If you want to get involved or get in touch, send an email to AlberniValleyFibre@proton.me, or check out our website at: https://albernivalleyfibre.ca/. We are also hosting a fibre fair at Arrowvale Campground in Port Alberni on May 9th from 10am – 4pm – come check us out! And of course, come check out our 100-km outfits in the fall of 2027 at the Alberni Valley Museum.
Alberni Valley Fibre Guild, Port Alberni
On the traditional territories of the Hupač̓asatḥ and Tseshaht First Nations