This history skirt is refashioned from pieces of eight wool jumpers, with another jumper as waistband and hem.
Being winter in the northern hemisphere, I’m doing some woolly upcycles since there’s growing interest in sewitagain.com from United Kingdom, Italy and United States.
Nothing is ever entirely original in this world it just evolves from something or somewhere. In his book Think! Before It’s Too Late, Edward De Bono says the human brain is designed to set up routine patterns and to use and follow these patterns.
He says all valuable creative ideas will be logical in hindsight. Creativity is not a mysterious gift or special talent – it is the behaviour of a self-organising information system that makes asymmetric patterns (the brain).
“It need no longer be a matter of sitting and waiting for ideas and inspiration. We can do certain things that will result in the brain having new ideas. This is a big step forwards in the history of mankind,” says de Bono.
In hindsight, my 365-day resewing campaign this year is a natural progression from the 365 Challenge campaign in 2013 by Redress CEO’s Dr Christina Dean to wear only second-hand clothing and the 2012 campaign New Dress A Day by Marisa Lynch.
Redress is now extending its clothing awareness campaign to a new audience focusing on monthly themes – February being ‘durability’. It’s worth revisiting their 365 campaign video:
Wool is extremely durable, providing it is washed and stored thoughtfully. Over time, I gathered eight jumpers of similar weights and compatible colours from op shops, then chopped them into enough panels to make four of these gored history skirts – each with eight panels. Using another jumper, I cut the bottom portion as a waistband, sewing hem directly on to the top of gored panels and added elastic as waistline. I cut up the rest of that extra jumper to make a long strip and sewed as a hemline trim. I made these skirts last winter, so don’t have photos to show this time but will make more soon. I find if you sew the jumper straight away with overlocker or zigzag, fraying is not an issue. For this outfit, I cut the polo neck from another jumper, and knotted it with other necks and offcuts to make a necklace that brings it all together.
