Blog

spring 2024 challenges include working with raw sheep's wool or alpaca fibre and sewing. image includes raw and combed BFL wool and handmade blue pants

Spring 2024 Skill-Building Challenges

Continuing on from our Winter 2024 challenges of repurposing existing textiles and planning our dye gardens, we now have some new challenges for Spring. We’d love you to take on these challenges to learn new skills and become more comfortable…

Fleece & Fibre book talk – Feb 4, 2024

Thank you Francine McCabe for an amazing Fleece and Fibre book talk at the VI Regional Library Courtenay on Sunday, 4 Feb 2024. Over 30 people, including makers, farmers, weavers, spinners, and other fibre-loving people, joined us from across the…

cropped view of a cashmere cardigan dyed olive green with needle felted wool fleece in white, green, and yellow attached to the lapels

Treasure from a thrifted sweater

We already have a lot of textiles on Vancouver Island, most imported from outside our region. While we don’t currently have commercial fabric production here, our closets and thrift shops are a great source of materials just waiting for creative…

A tale of a project

Are you seeking inspiration for the VIF Winter challenge of re-purposing a textile? Read this story below by Bobbie Williams, weaver and spinner and all-round champion of wool, to see how she took cotton scraps and old clothing and made…

composite image of rag woven fabric and dried dye flowers

2024 Skill-Building Challenges

Let’s celebrate the incredible diversity of creativity and production talent in our region and explore new ways to work with what we have here! For 2024, we are proposing a year-long skill-learning challenge with a different focus each season. Will…

Fleece and Fibre Book

Fleece and Fibre: Textile Producers of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, Francine McCabe’s recently published book, has been well received. We’re so excited to have this tangible resource and celebration of the bounty we have here in our Fibreshed!…

Alyssa Semczyszyn and Wayne Mercier’s collaborative sound

Gabriola Working Group Report (Dec 2023)

Gabriola Fibreshed Working Group Report We have had a busy fall, working on our own various projects, traveling, and planning for a big event in the New Year. We gathered once to brake and hackle our flax. Oops! Turns out…

The Nettle Dress screening

The Nettle Dress screening was a great success! On Sunday, October 29, 2023, Plants Are Teachers and the Vancouver Island Fibreshed hosted a screening of the documentary The Nettle Dress at The Spool Sewing Studio in Courtenay. Registration filled quickly, with people joining from all over the…

three raw sheep fleeces (white, light brown, brown) on a table in a garden

2019: Getting Fleeced or Getting Value Event

Sunday, 17 February 2019, 9:30-4:30pm The “buy local” and “slow clothes” movements that center on sustainability, natural, small batch or organic production, in tandem with responses to climate change are bringing renewed vitality to island fleece production. Join Vancouver Island…