This week on FEEDBACK FRIDAY we had organic cotton guru SALLY FOX. Sally Fox is a cotton breeder who breeds naturally colored varieties of cotton. She created Foxfibre®️ and founded the company Natural Cotton Colours Inc. Sally developed the first species of environmentally friendly colored cotton that could be spun into thread on a machine and has been called a “cotton pioneer” for her efforts regarding organic, colored cotton and heirloom wheat.
Watch the video below:
Sally has been breeding and growing organic naturally colored cottons since 1982 and has spent decades breeding naturally colored cotton. She recently noted that her careful land stewardship has more than doubled the amount of organic matter in her soil over the years as she has built a productive organic farm. Sally also tends a large herd of naturally colored Merino sheep in the beautiful Capay Valley. Her focus has always been on sound land stewardship and carbon capture and retention and we are proud to carry her quality fabrics.
Shop Sally’s website and learn more about her journey here.
Donate to Sally to get a finger weeding system machine here.
Shop all Sally Fox fabrics on our site here.
Check out Taishoboseki where she gets her cotton milled here.
We do production for Sarah Danu who uses all of Sally’s cotton too! Shop here.
We also had a post-FEEDBACK FRIDAY event for our month-long celebration of indigo. Blue Light Junction’s Kenya Miles and Indigo Shade Map’s Rosa Chang answered all the questions you had on indigo growing and harvesting!
Watch the video Kenya made for us on how to get growing indigo here.
Curious about how to grow and harvest indigo from seed? You’ll learn a lot from the video.
NEXT WEEK! Join us July 23rd, 9am Pacific, 12pm Eastern for a live Zoom FEEDBACK FRIDAY with Claire Wellesley-Smith. Claire is an artist, researcher and author based in West Yorkshire, UK. She specializes in projects that use local, natural color, created from home-grown and locally foraged plants. She’ll be talking about her practice and some of her community-based projects; including an ongoing Stitch Journal now into its eighth year as well as recent work around textiles and resilience.
We’ll also be having a 1/2 hour post FEEDBACK FRIDAY Q&A with Britt Boles, founder of Seaspell Fiber and the Indigo Pigment Extraction Methods group on Facebook. Come with your indigo questions as part of our #indigojuly!
FEEDBACK FRIDAY
If you are not familiar with FEEDBACK FRIDAY, every week, we speak with dyers, artists, scientists and scholars about our favorite topic, natural dyeing and color. Curated by Amy DuFault, Botanical Colors’ Sustainability Director and presented by Botanical Colors’ Founder Kathy Hattori.
We even have our own theme song thanks to musician Jimmie Snider!