Chanin's business now operates as a clothing manufacturer on the grounds of the former Tee-Jays company[2] and is now a part of the zero-waste fashion movement.
Chanin draws inspiration from her academic studies, including ideas about color as espoused by Josef and Anni Albers, the Bauhaus artists who fled Nazi Germany for Asheville, North Carolina, in 1933 to teach at Black Mountain College.
[4] Chanin came back to her hometown of Florence, Alabama in 2000 and developed an idea to create a small line of two-hundred unique t-shirts.
This started the development of Project Alabama, which consisted of a twenty-two-minute documentary called Stitch, the two-hundred limited hand-sewn and hand-mended t-shirts, and a hand-made catalog.
Historical evidence reveals indigenous people, Egyptian kaftans, and Pre-industrial society consciously tried to make garments without any excess waste.
The company employs local women aged twenty to seventy, to help sew one-of-a-kind, handmade garments, preserving the region's dwindling tradition of quilting.
Chanin originally sourced materials solely from local thrift stores, but with increased orders, the company began relying on bulk shipments from Salvation Army.
[13][14] Billy Reid and Alabama Chanin Cotton Project, 2012 Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, 2016