Yesterday I visited the Craft Festival at Bovey Tracey, in Devon, which has been held annually for the last 18 years. The festival celebrates the craftsmanship of over 200 of the UK’s established and start-up designer makers and also provides an opportunity for budding creatives to learn new skills and get their hands dirty with over 20 practical workshops. Another tick on my list is the festivals aim to uphold a Zero to Landfill policy, providing free Refill Stations where I could top up my refillable water bottle and it also vows to recycle ALL waste.
The Loopy Ewes Undyed Natural Wool Knit Collection
What was most inspiring though, was that the Craft Festival provided the opportunity to see so much creativity in one place. I was especially interested in Loopy Ewes a regenerative farming operation and clothing line that uses minimal textile production methods to create sustainable wearables from a flock of rare breed sheep.
I spoke to shepherd and maker Katie Allen about her award-winning undyed knits collection of clothing and homeware, which is Fibreshed accredited and embodies the most natural features of her flock, beautifully showcasing the contrasting colours their wonderful fleeces produce. This year Katie was the winner of the RSA Soil-to-Soil Knitwear, Farm to Finished Product Awards, with her collection that requires minimal processing, ensuring no harm to the environment, as Katie and her husband farm in a way that helps to restore soil health and protect and enhance the natural environment. This is called regenerative agriculture and is a closed-loop way of farming the land to help improve and regenerate the natural world around us.
What is Fibreshed Accredited?
One of the founding principles of the Fibreshed movement is regenerative agriculture, where efforts are made to harness and use natural resources – in this case fibres, dyes and labour – in a responsible way that minimises waste and creates opportunities not just for sustaining these resources, but for improving them over time in a positive way that feeds back proactively, encouraging wildlife habitats and improving soil health.
” 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”.
FIBRESHED
The Fibreshed ethos goes beyond sustainability, to something that is truly regenerative. It does this by considering the whole system in which the fibres, the textiles and the garments are manufactured, but it also considers how they worn and how they are disposed of at the end of their lifecycle.
In order for Katie’s knitwear to bear the Fibreshed logo, it must uphold the core values of the Fibershed soil-to-soil model for local, regenerative textile production and all fibres, dyes and haberdashery (including threads and fixtures) must be 100% natural and biodegradable.
How regenerative agriculture works
The regenerative farming approach focuses on restoring soils that have been degraded by the industrial, agricultural system. Its methods promote healthier ecosystems by rehabilitating soil organic matter through holistic farming and grazing techniques that place a heavy premium on soil health with attention also paid to water management and fertilizer use.
Regenerative farming also benefits water quality and quantity. Less chemical and pesticide inputs on regenerative farms means less chemical pollution impacting ground and surface water, and in turn, a reduction in harmful algal blooms and drinking water pollution. In short, regenerative agriculture practitioners let nature do the work.
Regenerative agriculture is today a worldwide revolution designed to revive low carbon regional textile production using only natural fibres that have been grown regeneratively and processed naturally and is revitalising a local community of fibre and dye growers, processors, makers and manufacturers across Southwest England.
What is Soil-to-Soil?
Fibreshed is grounded in the concept of soil-to-soil systems, which means that each garment is constructed using entirely natural fibres, without chemical or artificial inputs, and is entirely biodegradable and compostable, and can therefore return back into a regenerative fibre system by feeding and building the soil from which the fibres were first grown. As each garment decomposes at the end of its lifetime it traps carbon by re-embedding textile production within the natural carbon cycle and enriches soil microbiology, making it a sustainable closed loop process.
“MY COMPASSION FOR MY SHEEP AND CARE OF THE FARMED ENVIRONMENT, COMBINED WITH AN INNOVATIVE COMMITMENT TO REGIONAL, LOW-CARDON PROCESSING ENABLES ME TO WORK SUSTAINABLY ALL ALONG MY SUPPLY CHAIN AND CREATE AN IMPORTANT CONNECTION BETWEEN PEOPLE, PLACE AND PRODUCT”.
A Brief History of the Wool Trade
Wool as a raw material has been widely available since the domestication of sheep and provides one of our greatest natural resources. With a heritage stretching back to 10,000 BC, sheep and wool were major sources of revenue in medieval times, becoming vital to the economies of Spain and England from the 1400s to the 1700s, and until cotton was introduced in the Western world on an industrial scale, sheep breeding for wool was also a staple for many other major European economies, including, Flanders, Germany and Italy.
Britain had a long history of producing textiles like wool, thanks in part to its damp climate, ideal for raising sheep, but prior to the Industrial Revolution, the British textile business was a true “cottage industry,” with the work performed in small workshops or often in homes by individual spinners, weavers and dyers.
Between 1760 and 1840 the British textile industry drove the Industrial Revolution, triggering advancements in technology, as mechanised mills spun and wove wool in such vast quantities, selling in markets across the globe and proving innovative and responsive to competition and to fashion changes. According to Common Objective the wool trade remained vibrant until around the 1960s when cheaper imports from Asia began to appear. As synthetic fibres started to emerge the use of wool for clothing, in particular for men’s formalwear began to decline. Today only around 1% of all fibres used in garment production are wool, although its thermal qualities are still highly valued.
Rare Breed Sheep
For many years, sheep producers around the world have maintained exotic, rare, and coloured breeds of sheep. Naturally coloured wool which is not dyed can be used for people with skin allergies and excludes the need to use chemical dyes, saving 70% of water.
There are more breeds of sheep on the earth than there are of all other forms of livestock, yet in the UK there are more sheep breeds than in any other country in the world – over sixty different breeds are cared for by more than forty thousand sheep farmers on hills and lowlands.
In the UK we enjoy a rich agricultural heritage, and these rare, native breeds can play an important role in our farming future. They manage our natural pastures extremely well, providing grazing that is both productive yet in balance with the environment. Not only do they graze on the right sort of plants, but often they are lighter than mainstream breeds and do less damage to the ground in poor weather.
From Flock to Shop
Katie Allen sees herself as a custodian of the land and an advocate for British, native breed sheep. Katie’s company Loopy Ewes is based in the Cotswolds where her hand-crafted, 100% traceable knitwear demonstrates how British wool can be grown regeneratively and simply processed without the need for textile dyes.
“THERE IS NO BETTER WAY TO ASSURE THE QUALITY OF YOUR RAW MATERIAL THAN BY GROWING IT YOURSELF. AS THE FARMER, DESIGNER AND GARMENT PRODUCER FOR MY KNITWEAR, I TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR EACH STAGE OF PRODUCTION – FROM GETTING MY HANDS DIRTY IN THE FIELD, TO FULLY FASHIONING EACH GARMENT ON MY KNITTING MACHINE. I USE SHEPHERDING PROCESSES THAT HONOUR THE SOIL AND BIODIVERSITY TO ENCOURAGE A WHOLESOME FARMED ENVIRONMENT, ALONGSIDE CAREFUL ATTENTION TO SLOW, HAND-CRAFTED PRODUCTION”.
While there are many farms that raise these unique sheep breeds, rare breeds tend to be less valued for commercial production, as it is typically manufactured on a relatively small scale, however rare breeds represent a unique piece of the earth’s biodiversity and each different breed of sheep has its own intrinsic wool characteristics, as some grow negligible wool, while others have very long fleeces.
The cream yarn used for Katie’s undyed collection at Loopy Ewes is the natural colour produced by Katie’s Portland sheep and the brown is from the fleece of her Castlemilk Moorit sheep. Both Katie’s breeds of sheep offer very different characteristics for wool production and are ideally suited to knitwear as well as products such as cushions, sheepskin rugs and other homewares products.
I particularly love the geometric block patterned knitted Rafter Jumper, which is a relaxed box fit, cropped to the hips for a flattering shape and is both beautiful and comfortable, but also warm to wear. It has colour contrasting rib details at the cuffs and hem, and a big roll neck and is created using a knitting technique called intarsia which requires careful hand finishing.
The Portlands are a small, rare, protected heathland breed, which have long inhabited the Isle of Portland off the Southern coast of England and are unusual in that the ewes are able to breed at any time of the year. They are hardy and thrifty, used to surviving on sparse grazing. Happy to eat rough grasses and browse on shrubs, it makes them ideal for conservation grazing. The characteristic colour of their soft, creamy fleece is tinged slightly tan/brown from the legs and face, whilst the fleece is cream; lambs are born a russet red, however this fades as the sheep age. Their versatile fleeces make fantastic worsted-weight yarns, and the wool’s warm white tones nicely enhance dye colours.
The Castlemilk Moorits are one of the larger, primitive, long-legged breeds and are classified as vulnerable by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. They were originally bred in the early years of the 20th century on the ‘Castlemilk Estate’ in Dumfriesshire from Manx Loghtan, Moorit Shetland and wild Mouflon breeds, specifically to graze parkland. The base colour is a natural milk chocolate colour, naturally bleached at the tips with definite mouflon pattern markings.
Mouflon patterns are light tan or white areas on the face, inner ears, chin under the neck, belly, and under the tail.
They are renowned for their excellent fleece, tight and even throughout, producing bulky yarns with a plush, velvety handle, therefore the wool is highly prized by hand spinners.
loopy ewes organically dyed knitwear
Other designs from Katie’s collections use colours which are dyed by The Natural Fibre Company in Launceston, Cornwall, who process all Loopy Ewes fleeces and dye the yarn to her colour specification. The mill is fully licensed for organic production by the Soil Association and the dyes are organically approved to the GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standards).
For more information about Loopy Ewes go to www.loopyewes.co.uk or contact Katie at: [email protected]
You can also discover more @loopyewes on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.