Wild Yarn: Creating Hand-Spun Yarn from Ethical Fibres, Imogen Bright Moon

In Wild Yarn, yarn is not just a tool for cloth — it’s the visible trace of land, animal, season and hand. Imogen Bright Moon invites us into a studio practice rooted in nature’s own rhythms, where fibre is gathered ethically, blended like paint, and spun with the same intimacy as a quiet meditation. This book isn’t simply a spinning manual; it’s a heartfelt celebration of texture and tactility, showing how raw sheep’s wool, plant fibres such as hemp and soya, wild silk, alpaca hair and more can be artfully combined into richly expressive yarns. Each page — shot with sumptuous images of the author’s own woven and knitted pieces and her studio throughout the year — encourages slow-seeing: noticing the interplay of shade and tone, the way fibres catch the light, the narrative a skein can hold.

More than a practical guide, Wild Yarn resonates as an ecological and mindful manifesto: you learn not just how to spin, but why you might choose ethically sourced fibres, how to work with natural pigments, and how the process itself rewards patience and observation. Traditional skills — from floor spindle spinning to skeining and wet finishing — are presented not as relics but as living practices for contemporary makers. Whether your work goes on the loom, into knitting, or into textile art, this volume links technique with consciousness, and yarn becomes a way of seeing the world through material exchange.

About the Author
Imogen Bright Moon is a British Romani textile artist whose practice blends heritage craft with a deep engagement with place and sustainability. Based in Brighton, she creates richly textured woven textile works from hand-blended and hand-spun yarns, integrating fibres sourced from ethically raised sheep flocks, plants and wild materials. Her work combines art-making with research and writing on textile craft history and material ethics, and she has exhibited widely, including at Collect at Somerset House. In 2022 she received a Gypsy Maker 5 award from the Romani Cultural & Arts Company / Arts Council Wales.

Publication date: 2024
Publisher: Batsford Books
Pages: 128
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781849949019

Dimensions: 22.33 x 28.32 cm