Judi Jetson is a fiberactivist who loves to build community. She’s been making things with fiber since her grandmother taught her to knit at age 5, did tie dye and batik in the 60s, learned to weave in the 80s and added lots of techniques to her fiber artist skill set while a member of the Pinellas (FL) Weavers Guild in the 90s and 2000s. During this time she worked full-time in job creation programs, for a national public interest group addressing issues like the farm crisis and rural economic development, joined the US Small Business Administration to develop a rural small business creation initiative, and in 2010 she combined her love of craft with her profession as an economic developer and went to work for HandMade in America. For 30 years she worked to help reinvent the economy in rural communities in order for them to survive and thrive, working in Appalachia, in medium and small towns throughout America, and for states in the Midwest and Southern US.

For the past 10 years, she’s led a nonprofit she helped found – Local Cloth - to grow the fiber economy in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Today she regularly teaches spinning and dyeing classes and likes to knit, spin, dye, weave and make paper. And when time permits, Judi loves yarnbombing.