Tag Archives: upcycled

Slow Clothing

04 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

I don’t ‘do’ Facebook, but I do occasionally look at others’ pages, and something on the Australian Sewing Guild’s page caught my eye recently. It was called ‘Slow Clothing – 40 garments in 40 days’. Wow, I thought, if I made 40 garments in 40 days I wouldn’t call that slow! At my recent rate of progress 40 garments in 4 years would be more likely.

Of course, all was not what it seemed. The Slow Clothing Project is an initiative by a Queensland sewer (or maker, to use her term) designed to get people to think about where there clothes come from, who made them, and whether they really need yet another pair of jeans. It’s the antithesis of fast fashion, the current cult of buying the latest look, having a whole new wardrobe every season, a new dress for every party, and then just discarding stuff when it’s only been worn once or twice, or maybe even not ever.

The 40 garments will be made by 40 different people, a diverse batch of makers scattered around Australia. Using either cast off clothing, or fabric from their own stashes, they will refashion, recycle, upcycle, reclaim or rework the fabric into new garments. The intention is to demonstrate that even though something isn’t brand new, it can be a useful and stylish garment which can have a new life.

Apparently Australia exports 70 million kilograms of cast off clothing to the third world each year, and presumably other countries are on a par with that. Only 20% of the clothing in op shops actually finds a new home, so even if you give your unwanted clothes to the op shop you aren’t really helping the situation much. Not buying so many new clothes would be far better, and save you money!

I started shopping in op shops some time ago when money was short, and now I still do it, because I can find plenty of things to wear without contributing to the wasteful industry that is high street fashion. Some things I buy to wear just as they are, others get re-fashioned. I’ve recently been shopping for some garments to use for the Castaway to Couture competition, but even that gives me pause. I wanted about 5 garments to use to make my one entry, and I do feel uncomfortable about destroying 5 perfectly good pieces of clothing which somebody else could have bought and worn as they were, whereas I will only end up with one garment. With that in mind I limited myself to shopping for the items which were half price, since I am pretty sure that these are the ones which are destined to go to landfill next week, or shortly anyway. I’m quite happy with what I’ve got, now to start creating!

Projects Big and Small

06 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Four whole months virtually, and no blogging. That’s just being really, really slack, and I have no excuse. So I’m not going to make excuses, but just carry on gracefully as if nothing had happened.

Recently I went to an 80th birthday party of a friend, and wanting to take a gift I made some more of the patchwork brooches or pins that I have made before. I’m not sure these were quite so successful, here they are. They are actually red and purple, but purple is really difficult to get right in photos.

Patchwork brooches or pins, red & purple

Patchwork brooches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t know why, but they just don’t seem quite right. The triangle one is a little too small I think, and I just didn’t take enough care over the selection of the fabrics, and the placement of the pieces. However, they served their purpose.

I have several other projects in the pipeline, but definitely not in the blogging-about phase yet. However, I was very happy with my entry in the Australian Sewing Guild’s Castaway to Couture competition. The idea was to buy a garment or garments from a Red Cross opportunity or thrift shop, and recycle or upcycle it or them into a new garment.  This is my entry, and the others can still be seen on the Guild’s Facebook page here.

Jacket made from an Issey Miyae pattern out of cast off men's shirts

My entry in the Castaway to Couture competition

 

 

 

 

 

Until next time!

On starting a New Year, what I intend to do with this one!

14 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

As is often the case, I was struggling for a topic to write about. Don’t get me wrong, I have lots of ideas in my head, but discard most of them, usually because I think they will be uninteresting to anybody but me.

Today I turned to other sewing blogs for inspiration, and landed on Hand Made by Carolyn. I have read Carolyn’s blog quite often in the past, and been stunned by the clothes she makes, not least by how she finds time to do so much sewing. I have great admiration for a fellow West Australian.

Her most recent post was what got me thinking. She wrote about ‘thoughtful sewing’, using less, using locally sourced materials, and taking time to make fewer more labour intensive garments.

So, I have decided that this year I am going to concentrate on using up some of the stuff I already have. Like most sewists, I have a fairly comprehensive stash of fabric. I had planned last year to re-vamp my sewing space, and get some organisation into the storage, but so far that hasn’t really happened, at least not as much as I would have liked. I have started to go through the stash, with the result that I now know where most things are, but I haven’t started on the workspace yet. That always seems to get put off until I have finished my current project, but I am determined that once I have finished this current project (a quilt for a recently moved out of home daughter), the workspace comes next.

The sewing is bound to continue though, and I will really focus on using up the stuff I have. Fabric, patterns, notions. I have patterns I have never sewn (some with good reason – those 80’s dresses, what was I thinking!). Probably unlike most sewists though, although my stash contains a good number of uncut, garment size pieces, it also contains a lot of scraps. When I cut out a garment, I don’t throw away the odd-shaped bits that are left over. I gather them up, wrap them in whatever large bit of fabric is left over at the end of the piece, and stash them. I’ve been doing this for well over 30 years, so there are a lot of left over bits, varying in size from quite large to hardly useable.

One point in my favour is that I am rather keen on clothes made out of more than one fabric. I like contrasting trim, or toning trim, and garments made out of updated patchwork. I’ve made a couple of things in this vein in the past, a vest made out of about 6 different black fabrics, another made out of various scraps in lime green, white and grey.

Green, white and grey scrappy vest

There are a couple of things I’m not happy with here. First is the fact that when I made this I couldn’t get the overlocker to work properly, so in the interests of getting it finished I just overcast all the inside seams with a zig zag. It looks fine when I’m wearing it, but not so good for a photo shoot! I thought I would just do up the buttons to conceal most of the inside, but then I found that I couldn’t. I used quite large buttons, and because I hate the look of really large buttonholes, I made these smaller, so the buttons don’t actually go through them. Again, not a problem when I’m wearing it, since I would never wear it buttoned up. Here are some closer up shots. In order to blend the plain grey a bit with the other fabrics I did some machine embroidery – at the time I had just bought my new Bernina and was trying out some of the stitches.

Machine embroidery panel

Buttons and too small buttonholes

Now is the time to really focus on this sort of garment sewing, and see if I can make a dent of some sort in the pile of scraps which is my stash. Obviously there are going to be some things made out of the uncut lengths (which of course will give rise to more scraps!). And I’m not entirely ruling out buying the occasional piece of new fabric, but I am going to try hard not to. This is also going to give me ready made subjects for blogging, since I will try about once a month to write about what I have been doing for this self administered challenge.

Op-shop couture

06 Thursday Oct 2011

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

I started looking for reconstructed and upcycled clothing on the net, and never dreamed how many hits I’d get. So many people are recycling clothing into all sorts of new fashions, and most of them are way more innovative than I would be. Try Googling reconstructed clothing, or recycled clothing, and you will find all sorts of inspiration. There are things to buy from other people, and ideas for things to make yourself.

I wanted a new outfit to wear to the editing workshop, and decided to create one myself out of op shop clothing. I’ve shopped op shops for years, first out of necessity when money was very tight, and more recently from not wanting to be a conspicuous consumer. It doesn’t hurt that it can still be way cheaper!

I went op shopping, and challenged myself to find what I needed in just one shop. Eventually I came away with one black top, one patterned, and one plain which picks up the colours of the pattern. I feel I ought to call the colour apricot, or salmon, but really I guess it’s orange! These are the tops.

The black one is going to be the base, I’m able to get into it but it’s a little tight, so I plan to cut it apart, and use the other two tops as decorative ways to put it back together again. Also I’ll lower the neck a bit, so I can wear another plain top underneath it, with sleeves for warmth. I really like some of the upmarket fashion labels I’ve seen in stores, with asymmetric clothes, and each garment having three or four different fabrics in it. Like these at TS14Plus clothes, and these Koos van den Akker designs from the Vogue pattern catalogue. I also did an image search on Google for Koos van den Akker, and came up with lots of ideas, although the flamboyance quotient of most of them is too high for me. Browsing through the images led me to several blogs of other admirers of his work, and eventually to the book, Couture Collage, which I am teetering on the brink of buying.

I’m hoping to end up with something inspired by these images, without the price tag. My base garments cost me $11.50 altogether.

I started by cutting down the front of the black top, on a diagonal line. Then I cut a strip of the pattern fabric to finish the raw edge at the neck. I cut pieces of both fabrics and pieced them together to fill the gap between the two edges of the black top. Next step was to try it on, and I found that I had cut a little too far, and the V of the neckline was a bit low. I needed to construct something to put in to fill the space.

As often happens, inspiration came from nowhere in particular, or more accurately from one of my quilting books which was lying on the table. I decided to make a small patchwork square to stitch over the gap. I made a kind of uneven log cabin block, starting with a triangle instead of a square, but cut the finished block to a square, so it is completely asymmetrical. The finished square was a bit unruly in terms of having nice straight edges and corners, so I stitched it right sides together with a scrap of black lining, then turned it right side out. I think the technique is called ‘bagging out’ in the trade.

This little exercise highlighted how much easier it would be to do this kind of garment construction with a dress form. I’ve never had one, and never really felt the need, but when you are making the garment up as you go along I think it would be really useful to have something to put it on so you could see how it was shaping up, literally. I shall have to look out for a second hand one, as they are pretty expensive new. I know there are ways of making your own custom fit, but I don’t feel like investing the time at the moment, and mostly I’m not looking for a perfect fit in these garments.

Having fixed up the neckline I had only to stitch the lower part of the orange top around to the lining of the base black top. The orange top already had a nice lettuce edge on it, and because it was a wrap style with two layers at the front there was enough of the edge to go all the way around the hem of the black top. A bit of finishing off, and done, albeit at 7.30 on the morning of the workshop!

I was pleased with it. When I came home, however, the blonde dog was so pleased to see me that she jumped up and caught one of her claws in the slightly lacy black fabric, and made a hole in it. Next time I wear the top it will have either a contrast patch, or possibly a pocket added to it! It’s also occurred to me that maybe I should create some printed or woven labels to sew into my own constructions – another side project. If I’m going to keep posting pictures I need to make an effort to take better ones too.

Tags

Recycled reconstructed upcycled clothes Koos van den Akker Vogue TS 14 plus op shop design asymmetrical quilting