Acme Atelier
Kilt Maker
Andrea Chapell set up a bespoke Kiltmaking studio promoting the now endangered craft of handstitched kiltmaking, creating both traditional and contemporary designs. Setup the IV36 Initiative to create a local circular economy making products from local textile and fibre waste/excess that commit 20% of profits to support training for local people to learn kiltmaking.
What is so amazing about working with British wool? The knowledge that you are contributing to community endeavour, sustainable practises that support environmental and economic regeneration and continuing traditional crafts.
If any/ what have been your challenges with working with British Wool and a local way of working? Creating a fabric from my local fleece end to end in one county (Moray) —infrastructure to process the fleece and spin the yarn is few and far between (I had to take my fleece down to the Border Mill) especially for small scale production and hugely expensive.
What weaving looms do you use and how many do you have? I worked with Sam Goates at Woven in the Bone who has two heritage looms (Hattersley).
Do you find a lot of push back in the industry in terms of working with British Wool? I’m a bespoke kiltmaker working directly with the consumer who invest in the provenance of each piece as much as the aesthetic.
Do you find that customers are becoming more interested in British Wool? Yes very much from the perspective of sustainability, longevity and provenance.
Do you have any hero farmers or people in your supply chain you would like to highlight?. Andy at Plewlands Farm, Lossiemouth, Moray who supplied my fleece.
Further information:
I developed the IV36 Initiative in 2021 when my craft (traditional kiltmaking) entered the Red List of Endangered Crafts and I was looking for ways in which I could support it.
I devised IV36 as a localised circular system (actually based on the same principle as the Artists Support Pledge which began during the pandemic) that uses textile resources that would otherwise be considered waste (from agricultural, industrial and pre/post consumer sources) within only my region (Moray), to repurpose them into products that provide financial support for local people (within my postcode, IV36) to train in kiltmaking.
Each product is an individual showcase for the resourceful use of materials, taking discarded, damaged, or deadstock textiles, donated garments and my local farmers fleece, as well as my own studio offcuts to create stitch at home kits (introducing people to the basic skills and stitches of kiltmaking), re-designed woollen knits and remade kilts and pleated skirts, where each sale commits 20% to the training fund.
The Moray Weavers Tweed uses the fleece of my local farmers flock, supplemented with the deadstock yarn left from samples and previous runs of cloth made by Sam Goates at Woven in the Bone, the historic peddle powered mill just along the coast from me in Buckie. Our joint endeavour was to create a cloth from end to end in only our region, but the fleece processing infrastructure to scour and spin no longer exists here, so this element was done in the Scottish borders at the Border Mill. The resulting cloth has been designed especially for pleating, in order to create a randomised colour palette in sections using the grey Moray yarn in the weft and building up a sectional colour palette using only the available leftover yarns from Sams previous jobs as the warp.