Wild Textiles: Grown, Foraged, Found. Alice Fox

In Wild Textiles: Grown, Foraged, Found the natural world becomes the maker’s studio — bark, weed, nettle, leaf, even mud or plastic detritus are re-imagined as raw material, ready for hand-stitching, weaving, bundling or wrapping. The book invites you to re‐see the landscape: what once was underfoot or overlooked becomes fibre, cordage, quilt panel, vessel or sculptural form. Its pages encourage a slow, careful engagement — not factory-speed consumption, but seasonal gathering, local sourcing, and deep, tactile awareness. The result is more than craft, more than art: it’s a call to reconnect body, place and making through material honesty and ecological curiosity.

Practically, the book functions as a compendium of possibility. Alongside essays about growing your own plants (flax, nettles, etc.), there are concrete ideas for foraging weeds, grasses, leaves, shells, wood, found wool, even urban discards — all ready to be reworked into textile art. The projects range from the humble (cordage, stitched leaves, grass baskets) to the more ambitious (vessels, quilts, wall hangings), allowing makers to explore and adapt according to resources and season. With its blend of experimentation, sustainability and craft-mindfulness, this is a volume that transforms the notion of “textile” from commodity to craft-ecosystem.

About the Author
Alice Fox is a textile artist whose work lives at the intersection of craft, ecology and place. Her practice — rooted in embroidery, soft-basketry, found-object weaving and print — draws heavily on materials gathered from nature: plants harvested on her allotment, weeds repurposed, natural fibres re-used. Her approach emphasizes not only aesthetics but ethics, advocating for creative reuse, sustainability, and a reconnection to environment through hand-work. Over the years she has exhibited, taught, and inspired makers globally to slow down, look around, and imagine what could become cloth, cord, or vessel from what lies in the wild or underfoot.

Publication date: 2022
Publisher: Batsford / Rizzoli (Craft/Textile Art)
Pages: 128
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781849947879