The Dignity of Craft with Natalie Chanin

In this conversation, Jennifer discusses the impact of the Victorian era and the Pre-Raphaelite movement on modern craft and dignity with designer Natalie Chanin. They explore the significance of hand craftsmanship, the relationship between dignity and work, and the need for a cultural shift in how we perceive and value craft in society. Chanin shares her journey of creating a sustainable fashion movement in Alabama, emphasizing the importance of community and environmental consciousness. She describes her own relationship with dignity.

Resources

• The Geometry of Hand-Sewing: Project and Stories Celebrating Hand-Sewing, Quilting, and Embroidery for Contemporary Sustainable Style by Natalie Chanin
• Embroidery: Threads and Stories from Alabama Chanin and the School of Making by Natalie Chanin
• Alabama Studio Sewing + Design: A Guide to Hand-Sewing an Alabama Chanin Wardrobe by Natalie Chanin
• Alabama Stitch Book by Natalie Chanin
• William Morris Gallery

Takeaways

• Craftsmanship is essential for personal dignity and fulfillment.
• Natalie Chanin's work blends environmental consciousness with cultural preservation.
• Dignity in work is crucial for individual and community well-being.
• The concept of craft has evolved but remains significant in society.
• Industry's disregard for dignity has roots in the Industrial Revolution.
• Handcrafted items foster a deeper connection to the creator.
• A shift in corporate culture is necessary to honor dignity.
• Craft can be both a skill and a form of expression.
• Connecting with one's work enhances the perception of dignity.

Exploring what it means to live and lead with dignity at work, in our families, in our communities, and in the world. What is dignity? How can we honor the dignity of others? And how can we repair and reclaim our dignity after harm? Tune in to hear stories about violations of dignity and ways in which we heal, forgive, and make choices about how we show up in a chaotic and fractured world. Hosted by physician and coach Jennifer Griggs.

For more information on the podcast, please visit www.thedignitylab.com.
For more information on podcast host Dr. Jennifer Griggs, please visit https://jennifergriggs.com/.
For additional free resources, including the periodic table of dignity elements, please visit https://jennifergriggs.com/resources/.

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Transcript

Jennifer

During my first year of college at Mount Holyoke, I applied to take an advanced level course on the poetry and literature of the Victorian era, in which we read authors of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. This movement emerged in Victorian Britain as a counter-cultural response to the Industrialization Revolution. 

The Industrial Revolution had marked a profound transformation in the relationship between workers and their craft, fundamentally altering centuries-old traditions of skilled workmanship. As mechanized production replaced manual labor, the intimate connection between craftsperson and creation began to erode. Instead of completing entire pieces and experiencing the pride of creation, workers were relegated to repetitive, fragmented tasks that offered little creative fulfillment with the sole goal of increasing efficiency, that is production, and of course money. This transformation not only affected the physical conditions of work but also disrupted the social fabric of manufacturing communities as personal relationships and local production networks were replaced by impersonal industrial systems.

Founded in 1848, the Pre-Raphaelite authors and artists opposed the period's increasing mechanization, mass production, and materialistic values by championing handcraftsmanship and spiritual values. 

William Morris, predominantly a designer, is considered a second-wave Pre-Raphaelite. He believed that people should be surrounded by beautiful, well-made objects. You would probably recognize both his designs and his influence in the Arts and Crafts Movement. Check out the show notes to take a closer look. Morris maintained that without dignified, creative human occupation, people become disconnected from life.

Our guest today is Natalie Chanin. Natalie is a visionary designer who transformed her Alabama roots into a revolutionary fashion movement. After returning from New York's fashion scene to Florence, Alabama, she founded Alabama Chanin, reimagining traditional Southern hand-sewing techniques while empowering local artisans and championing sustainable, community-based fashion production. Her work interweaves environmental consciousness with cultural preservation.

I recently read Natalie’s book Embroidery: Threads and Stories. I’d love to read you  a short passage: 

The word craft is both a noun and a verb. It can describe an activity involving skill in making things by hand, or the action of exercising skill in making something. Add "man" or "woman" to the end of this word and we become craftswomen and craftsmen, words often used as honorific titles for the most worthy and celebrated makers. Add the letter y, and you get crafty, which is sometimes understood as homemade or even mischievous. Though the notion of craft is sometimes diminished to the purview of children and quirky creative types, it has traditionally held a significant place in society and thought. … Man, woman, and person as maker is man, woman, and person active participants in the life of the society, the nation, and the world.

This reminded me, as many things do, of dignity, particularly the dignity of creating things, that is, work. 

In our conversation, Natalie and I talk about the role of craft in connecting to the earth and to others, Natalie’s relationship with dignity, Natalie’s idea for a tattoo if she ever gets one, and the dignity of supply chains. We are so pleased to be able to share this conversation with you. And we’ll put links to the book Embroidery: Threads and Stories and to Natalie’s other books in the show notes, where you can always find more information about our guests and about the things we mention in our conversations.

Jennifer 

Natalie Chanon, welcome to the Dignity Lab.

Natalie 

Thank you so much for having me today. I'm very honored to be here.

Jennifer

I’d love to start by having you introduce yourself to our listeners.

Natalie 

Hi, well, my name is Natalie Chanin. I'm a designer and a writer, mother, friend to many, and lover of gardening and cooking. I work in the northwest corner of Alabama in a community called the Shoals in Florence, Alabama. I've been working with embroidery artisans almost 25 years now, creating garments and projects and just feel very honored to have been able to do this work.

Jennifer 

How did you come to do the work that you do?

Natalie

You know, I was born in a rural community and you know, they were very thrifty. There wasn't a lot of resources. And so my grandmothers made everything their daughters wore. They raised all the food that we ate. They did everything, you know, that the that a family would need. 

Today I call this living arts and I always feel like that was my first design school was watching them create these beautiful things to enrich the family existence. After I graduated high school, I discovered there's this thing that you could study in university called design and so I studied design and have always been very drawn to textiles so wound up doing a double major in design, textile design, and like on an industrial level. And then in the design school, my focus was really on, it was called environmental design, very much inspired by a Bauhaus education.

I've written six books and I have a nonprofit organization now called Project Threadways. Are we, it's, you know, this is not the work of one, this is the work of many. We have a nonprofit organization, And there's a line of clothing called Alabama Chanin that now operates under the nonprofit. It's really centered on craft preservation. And so we work with a group of altogether about 40 artisans. Some of them are independent contractors who work in their own homes to do this hand in breweries. And then some of the artisans work in the preparation of the cloth for these garments that we make. And we have another arm of the organization called the School of Making, which the books would fall under that category. It's really documenting the process of sewing the techniques that we use. And the last book titled Embroidery is really stories about how this work came about and why we do it, the people who do it, and some of a little bit about how we do it.

Jennifer 

The process of making something by hand feels so connected to the body, to communities, to the earth. I don't know if you have thoughts about that.

Natalie 

Yeah, a lot of thoughts. know, when I first started, I I originally started doing this work after, you know, I had graduated from university, I had worked in the fashion industry, I had worked as a stylist sort of on the other side of the fashion industry and I went on a sabbatical and had really, let's say, depleted the resources that I had during that time. Towards the end of the sabbatical, I cut up a t-shirt and sewed it back together again by hand. And I was very proud of the theme, the object, the material culture that had been made from this and I wore it and many people had very nice things to say about this piece. 

But the thing that really moved me was that it had been a very long time since I had done something like that, like really being connected with needle and hand to the fabric. I had been going through a little bit of just a tough spot in my life and I felt very raw, sort of turned inside out. I like to describe it because our garments are oftentimes sort of, someone might explain them by saying they look like they're been turned inside out. And so I did use that work as a way to connect to the fabric and the fabric, you know, the cotton comes from the soil, it comes from a farm.

And so today I know that that work, really the work that has been very interesting to me is this full life cycle, you know, from the farm through the production to fabric and then the hands that cut that fabric, paint that fabric, sew that fabric. It is about a community of makers who make this possible. I was very lucky recently to for the first time in 20, 23 years we've been working with organic cotton that's grown in Texas and last week I got to go and meet those farmers in person, you know, spoken to them on the phone originally, and then of course via, you know, digital devices where we can see one another. But I had never walked the farms or, you know, sat with the farmers. And it was such a moving experience to be able to close that circle.

Jennifer 

I love that. I'm picturing you raw, turning yourself inside out and creating something beautiful out of what was broken. Then this closing the circle of walking on the land with the farmers in Texas. There's a wholeness to that story and that arc.

Natalie 

Thank you. Yes, it did feel being there and being with the people there, you know, I think they made a commitment to something that was very difficult to do. You know, some of the farmers there started working in organics in 1992. So before many people were even thinking about it. I, you know, I think even today there are, you know, there are others who don't feel that this work is important and, you know, perhaps are frustrated or threatened by the work that they continue to do. So if you think about, you know, 30 plus years of doing this work since 1992, what they've had to brush up against, you just have incredible respect. 

And then you hold the cotton that becomes the clothing. And I mean, I've always known it was such a hard thing to make this, you know, we talk about it in our studio a lot, like every scrap is important because, you know, it's such a journey that it's been through from this farm, you know, this farm in Texas where they literally fight sand, that that's a thing that they talk about a lot, sand fighting. And, you know, all the way through it's just, you know, it's something I feel like in our in the lexicon of us as consumers and the lexicon of our nation it's something that we stopped valuing somewhere along the way It's really beautiful to see that it still exists and exists in such a heartfelt passionate committed way is very honoring.

Jennifer 

Honoring is such an important word. We talk about honoring dignity and the ways we do that, whether it's Ari Weinsfeig's taxonomy or Donna Hicks' taxonomy,  these different ways of looking at dignity and they all seem to recognize the importance of being fully present and being able to be raw. So many images are coming up for me as you're talking about the farmers and your own experience creating this t-shirt and what that meant to you and what an inflection point it was for you.

Natalie 

Yes, it was, it was that moment of taking needle and thread to these, you know, this very humble material that is t-shirt fabric. 

I mean, it healed me in some ways, you know. We have this saying before you start sewing, you love the thread and you do that by running your fingers over the strands of thread once you've threaded your needle. So, you you talk to the thread and you tell it what it's supposed to do. And we say, “This thread is going to sew the most beautiful garment that's ever been made.” The person who wears, it will bring them joy or love or peace or beauty or dignity or whatever you want to wish for that person or for yourself if you're making for yourself. This act of centering around the thread and the fabric did heal me.

Jennifer 

Thread connects things to one thing to another, whether it's the same piece of fabric to make a sleeve or another piece of fabric. And I'm thinking about community and you're talking about working with the farmers and how you're channeling your grandmothers and you've created a community of learners and makers and artisans. It's beyond metaphor. It's beyond, it just feels essential, as in, it's the essence of something.

Natalie 

You know, we use that word thread in so many ways. Like it's a thread of a conversation. It's a thread of a text message. You draw a line with a thread between things. So it connects. It is a metaphor for connection.

Jennifer 

What's your relationship with dignity?

Natalie 

That's a really hard question. It's such a beautiful word and I think it's also very fraught, you know, with, I think as humans we're such wildly imperfect beings, you know? So it's...t is difficult for us, I think, to connect with dignity. And such an important word, I wrote in advance of this, I wrote a little bit about it because I knew that you were going to ask me what my definition of dignity would be.

I, and I think so many of us, we find ourselves always called to be better people, a better citizen, a better mother, a better, you know, better in so many ways. I find it baffling because we're so often reminded of all the ways we utterly fail at something right? And so I wonder if dignity is rooted in the grit of standing up every day and continuing on despite falling down. And maybe… maybe that is human dignity, right? And what we honor in one another when we meet at the table. I'm wildly imperfect, but I show up here in all my imperfectness and offer you what I have to offer over and over and over again every day. Is that dignity?

Jennifer

That sounds like dignity to me.

Natalie

I've thought about this a lot recently, like what would I say to a younger me? You know, what would I say to young women who look and believe they see, you know, someone standing in the prime of their life? I mean, I'm 62, 63, I'm something like that, somewhere in my 60s.

I'm still learning every single day. You know, I'm reminded all the time, you know, of ways that I can be a better person and a better citizen, right? And that is beautiful. I want that for myself. I never want to stop learning or, you know, feeling like I'm contributing in some way to the story of my community.

But I think, I mean, looking back, obviously I've spent a lot of time thinking, preparing for this conversation because it does, it has felt so outside of my wheelhouse. And I think that one of the things, if I could go back in time that I might try to say to myself is, you you were born inherently with dignity. I don't think I felt that as a young person, right? I don't, everyone has dignity and I think I did not know how to protect that. I did not understand that that is a power and that I felt most often, you know, powerless over so many things, but it's not true. That is not a truth. The truth is, is that I always had dignity. I always had power. I always had something that I could contribute. And if I could have, you know, I, by living in this space of scarcity of there's not enough of this, there's not enough of that. There's not enough of the other.

I think it's maybe the idea of scarcity or fear that threatens your understanding of dignity. And, you know, I would just wish for, you know, I think about my daughter, especially women, it's difficult. You know, we live in a universe where, you know, we don't always have this feeling that we have power over some things, including our own bodies in some cases. And, you know, we do have the power and we do have the dignity and I would just hope for every young woman to embrace that before she's 63 years old. You know, don't wait. If not now, then when?

Yeah, I think through this lack of dignity, you know, if I have done harm, you know, at any point in my life by not seeing someone clearly or not, you know, meeting them at the table where they are, it definitely was from this feeling of not having the power, right? This feeling of not having my opinion, not mattering. And so, and that's a kind of selfishness that, you know, we can't afford to have and live in. I don't know. And so those are all my thoughts about dignity. I really hope for this next generation and the next and the next that we raise up women, young girls, women to women that really fully understand their dignity and their power.

Jennifer

I then asked Natalie about the relationship between dignity and craft.

We're removed so much from the food we eat and we're eating while driving and we're separated from the inputs into the things we wear and consume. as you're talking, I'm thinking about craft and how you define craft. And I'd love you to explain that because you've written about it so beautifully.

Natalie  

Thank you. You know, I mean, just in the same way that I, when I first started doing that work, it healed me. And I think so many people find peace and find themselves in through this act of making, whether it's cooking, cleaning, you know, sewing, gardening, making things.

I do believe that as humans, you know, we spent millennia providing for ourselves and now providing for yourselves is not all the time like the knowing how to make a pot of rice or tending to your, you know, physical needs through nurturing food or I do think when we're able to pause part of a program that that's kind of the thing that we talk about all the time is “Pause” so much so that I've thought about having like a little “pause” button tattooed on my arm that would remind me like slow down pause, don't react. I do think when we make the space because in today's world we do have to make the space for craft, we have to make this space for time to pause, that we become better people and more connected to ourselves, to community, to the world. 

I don't sew as much as I used to, but I do find solace in getting my hands in the dirt or growing a tomato or..., cooking for people. I love to cook for others. It connects me and grounds me.

I'm not a neuroscientist obviously, but you know, I have read some things and you know now that doctors and researchers can see the brain and how the brain works and you know technology it's been it's now known that these of making like sewing, cooking, woodworking, where you get into this zone that it fires the same cortex of the brain as meditation. And so, and I believe that that's also in the happiness cortex. So, you know, this kind of work fuels connection to self and happiness. It's like a meditation. And so I think that's why so many people are drawn to it, like knitting and anything that you do with your hands.

Jennifer  

I’ve been trying watercoloring recently. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I do find it meditative.

Natalie  

I just started doing that too. was inspired by a friend who, she was like, just do it. Nobody's going to see it. Just play. You know, when was the last time I sat down to just play, except with the daughter or the son, a granddaughter. I have a granddaughter too.

Jennifer  

I was thinking the word play just as you said it. Our synapses fired at the same time! I think about that often…the dignity of play. 

Natalie (29:01.934)

I'm gonna write that down. We should have that tattooed on my arm. 

I've been thinking about having a word embroidered or embroidered tattooed on my arm. I was going to have the word unfurling.

I feel like I'm still learning and still, you know, I'm still unfurling.

Jennifer

You know, it's interesting you were talking about being better and doing better. I also think there's a role for healing ourselves. It's interesting to me how similar I want to be better, get better, do better at these things are all the same word.

Natalie

Better. I have to ponder that. Yeah, it's a word that's used really a lot, be better. Do better. I said that to be a better person, to be a better citizen.

You know, I wrote down here on my, I just spent some time thinking about it. I wrote down here the dignity of supply chains. You know, like the people, when we make things, there is a supply, there's a chain of hands that connects all those things together. And when that's done well, there is a whole dignity of those things, right? All of it. How a farmer takes care of a piece of equipment or reimagines a piece of equipment to better tend to the earth. You know, how someone collects, has a collection of needles that are perfect for all the different things. And sometimes needles become shaped like one's fingers, you know? How the tools themselves become part of the human body. There is a great dignity in all of that.

Jennifer 

I'm thinking about our present time and how much we throw things away, how much we buy things from people we've never met and will never meet, often at their disadvantage, in the global south. And then we throw our clothes away and they end up in trash heaps in the global south..

Natalie

They are in the global south. in the ocean. Yeah, we're working on a friend of friend of mine and a scholar wrote a paper recently for an issue of Southern Cultures magazine that I'm helping to guest edit and You know, the thing is that those clothes are going back into the ocean, even our laundry, like microplastics are washing out in our laundry into the local creeks, into the rivers, into the oceans. And fish are eating those. And then we are eating the fish. Right? So the fish are wearing our clothes and we are then, it's just like this whole cycle.

Jennifer  

An unvirtuous cycle.

Natalie  

An unvirtuous cycle. Thank you. Yes.

Jennifer

The dignity of supply chains. As somebody who's thought about this so much for so, in such deep ways, what do you think our listeners are called to do in terms of the dignity of supply chains?

Natalie  

Well, you know, it's a huge commitment because it means investing, you know, family resources in a particular way. In many cases, it means making big changes and some of them that aren't possible for a family, right? But, you know, if you did think of everything that, if you do everything that you touch, if you think about the entire supply chain of it, like where did this come from? How was this made? Who touched it? You know, and then just asking, were all the hands in the supply chain treated honorably? Are they able to feed their kids? Are they able to live in the same way that we are here today? Then you buy it. And if it doesn't feel that way, then you look for other options. And that might be, in some cases, doing without it. And then some cases, that might be finding someone locally who could do something similar, like sell you some greens, a radish.

It's oftentimes less expensive if you can find that. know that not everyone, you know, that I have the luxury of living close to the land. A lot of people who are able to food have the land or plot, even a plot to grow food. So I do understand, you know, the luxury of that. I think it's just constantly questioning. Because every little tiny decision we make, we do to make it better makes it better. You know?

Jennifer 

I do think it’s worth saying that it’s not only individuals who need to think about dignity but also an entire shift in the way corporations act. The biggest problem from a macro point of view is that industry has not honored dignity since its birth in the Industrial Revolution. 

Natalie  

Yeah, it's hard, know, just for myself, I feel like such a small cog in the whole thing. It's hard for me to think about how to change that. But when we as little small cogs, consumers, well up and say, we're not going to do that anymore, we're not going to support that, it will change.

Jennifer  

That's a hopeful, hopeful image of people coming together to make change happen.

Natalie  

Yeah, I mean, I know that it's simplistic and I know I just don't know how to, me personally, how to change the whole, the giant infrastructure of it is beyond my capacity at this juncture of my life. But I can hopefully, you know, make small contributions and I can, you know, just what you're doing. You can inspire other people to think about what that means and how that affects the global South or even our own communities. When we bring this into our communities, what does it mean for our community? for the land, for the river, for the water, and potentially for someone else in this community who's doing the same thing and struggling to make ends meet.

Natalie  

Humans are miraculous in the things that we all try to do. Those are bigger than all the things we fail at, I guess, hopefully.

Jennifer 

Is there anything that we haven't asked you, Natalie?

Natalie 

Now I'm, I feel very happy that I didn't cancel this morning.

Jennifer 

I'm so grateful you didn't cancel.

Natalie 

I felt like I wasn't worthy of being here. But thank you for making me feel worthy. I appreciate it.

Jennifer 

Thank you for being on the Dignity Lab. 

Natalie

Thank you so much. 

Jennifer (47:25.819)

Thank you so much for being brave today.

Natalie 

Well, thank you for the work. I feel very honored to and grateful to have been introduced to the idea, all the ideas of dignity. I on't think I ever spent enough time grappling with that and I appreciate it. Thank you. 

Jennifer: 

We hope you enjoyed my conversation with Natalie Chanin. I was moved by Natalie’s authenticity and vulnerability about her own dignity. What is it that beats our sense of worthiness out of us? Of course we are all flawed, but as Vanessa says every week in our introduction, no matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what has happened to you, you still have dignity, that is, worth and value.

What about you? How does connecting with your work in a deeper, full-throated way, whether at home or in your job, help you see the dignity of the work and your own dignity?

We love hearing from you. You can contact us through our website, thedignitylab.com or by emailing me directly at jennifer@jennifergriggs.com. You can also share this episode with someone you love and can rate and give us a 5-star review. See what I did there?

We’ll be back next week for a dose of dignity on the weekly meeting you cannot miss. 

See you then, and thank you for listening.

Outro

Jennifer 

And boy, if you were perfect, you'd be so boring.

Natalie 

Isn't that the truth? Yeah. Yeah.

Jennifer 

Seriously. And so fictional. Yeah. I think it's our flaws and our foibles and our quirks that make us who we are.

Natalie 

Yeah, thank you for that reminder.