Textile designer with a focus on material innovation and sustainable approaches. Abi’s work is driven by circular design strategies to create solutions for the environmentally detrimental practises within the fast fashion industry. She aims to challenge preconceptions of what waste is by utilising it as a valuable resource to create beautiful, luxurious materials that leave no negative trace on the environment. Her creative practise has an experimental, multidisciplinary approach, with a specialist interest in biodesign, natural dyeing and printing, and pre-industrial techniques such as hand spinning, felting and embroidery to defy the fast fashion throwaway culture and promote a more responsible, slow fashion movement.

‘Conscious Crystals’ explores creating closed loop, compostable fabrics for the music festival wear market. Experimentation with growing and hand embroidering monoammonium phosphate crystals onto silk, which not only adorn the fabrics with luxury and mimic the glitter of sequins, but slowly fall off with dancing and movement, providing the festival fields with nutrients to restore healthy soil growth. This benefits the environment in which they are worn, promoting a restorative solution to the impact of human behaviour on the soil. Low impact print processes, circularity and minimising waste has been addressed in the design and production processes; household food waste has been used to create natural dyes and print pastes. These prints are revealed with time as the crystals slowly fall off. The fabrics can be added to the compost heap at the end of their life, leaving no negative trace on the environment.