July 7, 2025 · AlabamaTHE PROJECT THREADWAYS MANIFESTO
At Project Threadways, we believe making is more than a practice—it is a way to restore dignity, reclaim voice, and imagine new futures. One stitch, one story, one system at a time.
1. We believe in the power of making.
Making connects. Making restores. Making transforms. Whether through garments, farming, stories, or systems, this work holds the power to reshape the world.
2. We don’t just make clothes—we build ecosystems.
Alabama Chanin is a 25-year experiment in circular design: artisan-led clothing and textiles, transparent supply chains, and ethical labor systems rooted in the American South.
3. Where tradition meets transformation.
Together with The School of Making, Alabama Chanin forms a community-powered platform for sewing, storytelling, and systems thinking—practices that build skill, restore dignity, root work in place, and unlock creative agency.
4. Our tools are education, experimentation, artisan craft, and archives.
Through workshops, open-source resources, and collaborative making, we invite people across generations and geographies to claim authorship and connect through shared learning.
5. The Maker Lab is our next chapter.
A rural research and design studio in Florence, Alabama—bringing together artisans, technologists, farmers, educators, and makers of all kinds to co-create regenerative textiles, products, material culture, tools, and systems that serve both people and planet.
6. We honor the past to build the future.
While we are rooted in the American South and shaped by its deep legacies of craft, labor, and resilience, this work is part of a global movement—connecting circular design, dignified work, and creative justice beyond geography to build a better future.
7. Slowness is not delay—it is design.
Slowness makes space for care, for deeper systems, for human-scale production. It is our resistance to speed and waste—and our commitment to a more thoughtful future.
8. Sustainability is not a checkbox.
It is the seed. It is the soil. It is how we work—from the cotton we grow to the hands that sew, to the lives that wear and eventually return garments back to the earth.
9. Education is a form of liberation.
To teach someone to make—whether sewing, growing, shaping, or creating—is to teach them to see. To question. To imagine. Making is a way to reclaim self, voice, and future.
10. We’re still here.
After 25 years, we are still creating. Still resisting. Still evolving. Still rooted in Florence, Alabama, and The Shoals community. Still connected to the world. Still building a new narrative for making—one stitch, one story, one system at a time.
We invite you to join us.
As makers, wearers, supporters, and collaborators—your presence in this work helps build the future we believe is possible.
xoNatalie and all of us @ Project Threadways