There’s so much good reading on the Triple Pundit – people planet profit website, including this great article on 10 budding trends in sustainable fashion.
Number 8 of the trends is more reuse and upcycling to cut environmental impact – which is my key focus with Sew it Again, every day in 2014 refashioning existing clothing for a second life.
In the article, Mary Mazzoni quotes on the American situation: “According to the Environmental Protection Agency, only about 15 percent of the 13 million tons of clothing and other textiles that are thrown away each year are recycled, turned into products like rags or broken down to be reused as sustainable fibers.”
Mazzoni’s article also links to this fabulous one about how Upcycling is the new wave of sustainable fashion which of course I think is totally awesome. Author Beth Stewart from Redress defines upcycling “a way of processing an item to make it better than the original. In the example of clothing, this is often taking something that doesn’t fit or is stained/torn and refashioning a wearable product from it”.
Upcycle number 239 for the year is an opshop-found cotton hand-knit jumper from the ’90s and I’m showing my age by saying I remember when these were fashionable. It is simply too busy to wear as a jumper (and too big for me) so I had pulled it down over the back of my office chair and tied the arms behind its back. After deciding I liked it as a chair cover because it broke-up the black leather look, I unpicked and removed the arms (by pulling on the seam, you can spot which stitches to cut) and then sewed the body together and again pulled it down over the chair back (the leather showing at the neck is a nod to its former life). I then unpicked the sleeves, sewed them together and trimmed off the excess to make a rectangle for stuffing as a lower-back cushion. To make the right-sized insert, I used the bottom portion of an old pillowcase and stuffed it with wadding (in this case, from an old pillow). To secure the ends of the cushion, I threaded a piece of t-shirt ribbon around each end (with assistance from a crochet hook), pulled it up and tied it in a bow to secure. I also pulled some loose threads through to the back using the crochet hook. The chair cover is in-keeping with the mass of texture, colour and busyness that is my Textile Beat studio.
