Category Archives: repurpose

Sew 213 – Op shops are tops

My sister Joanne, right, and I were raised by a mother who made clothing for herself and for us, in the time before sweatshops and cheap fast fashion. As a child, I remember being told not to say anything if we saw our young neighbours wearing our cast-offs.

Clothing is still passed on through social and family networks, to maximise use of garments and the fabrics from which they were made. Thrifty values are ingrained, so Jo and I still share unworn clothing before it is donated to opportunity shops, turned into rags or dumped.

These day clothing swaps and swish parties are happening things and I am an avid supporter of op shops – both buying from and donating to.

Op shops operate with a lot of wonderful volunteer support, play an important role in helping those in need and keeping textiles out of landfill through reuse and recycling. Continue reading →

Sew 212 – Clothing is not fashion

I’ve learned so much from reading Kate Fletcher‘s Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys book – including an understanding about the difference between clothing and fashion.

Here’s a big slab of what Fletcher says about that: “Fashion and clothing are different concepts and entities. They contribute to human well-being both functionally and emotionally. Clothing is material production; fashion is symbolic production. Although their use and looks sometimes coincide, fashion and clothes connect with us in different ways. Fashion links us to time and space and deals with our emotional needs, manifesting us as social beings, as individuals. Fashion can be what is set in motion when a designer presents a new collection on a catwalk on Milan. But equally, fashion can be the moment when a teenager crops a pair of jeans, adds a badge to an old sweatshirt and paints their Converse pumps. Clothing, in contrast, is concerned chiefly with physical or functional needs, with sheltering, shielding and protecting. Not all clothes are fashion clothes and not all fashion finds expression in garment form. Yet where the fashion sector and the clothing industry come together (in fashion clothes) our emotional needs are made manifest as garments. This overlaying of emotional needs on physical goods fuels resource consumption, generates waste and promotes short-term thinking as we turn our gaze from one silhouette, hemline and colour palate to the next in search of the next new experience. It also leaves us dissatisfied and disempowered, as physical goods, no matter how many of them we consume, can never truly satisfy our psychological needs.” Continue reading →

Sew 211 – Use skills to renovate clothes

I’m up to day 211 of upcycling and renovating existing clothing to give them another chance at life through the 2014 Sew it Again project.

We don’t live in a perfect world so why expect our clothing to be so? Clothing requires maintenance and can be renovated. Sometimes we wash them more than we need to (Levis CEO doesn’t wash jeans) and often times we rush off to buy something new instead of checking and changing what we already have.

As an op shop queen, I buy very little new, am into DIY and use the library. But when I found Womankind magazine while browsing the newsagent, I saw something special.

The cover is symbolic, a beautiful butterfly collage of a woman’s face, the editorial by Antonia Case a compelling case for using time wisely to create a good life and the article about Julia Schor was the decider to add Womankind to my collection of affirming publications. Continue reading →

Sew 207 – See old jumper sew skirt

This was an ordinary old cotton jumper that Helen transformed into a skirt, scarf, toggle and headband at the Textile Beat jumper-to-skirt workshop – and Desirea modelled at the gorgeous Abbey of the Roses in Warwick, Queensland.

Cotton farmers are paid about $500/bale (which is 227kg) for raw cotton or about $2/kg for the cotton in a standard jumper which weighs less than 500 gms. A lot of water, energy and other inputs (insect control, defoliant) go into producing this natural fibre. After being grown on farms, the fibres then go through ginning, spinning, colouring, knitting to turn it into garments which we buy so easily and cheaply in clothing stores because they are made en mass. Billions and billions of such garments are produced every year to clothe the world. Continue reading →

Sew 206 – Jumper becomes jazzy skirt

Most of us have clothes we don’t wear in our wardrobes. We can give them to friends, donate them to charity, put them in the rubbish bin – or upcycle them into something else.

At our Jumper to Skirt workshop in Warwick today, Desirea converted this jumper (that was no longer being worn as such) into a jazzy skirt with two scarf options.

It is also exciting that Desirea hasn’t sewn before (she has always called on her mother to do that) so this simple project was a good way for her to get quick results and hopefully be inspired to sew more in future. Continue reading →

Sew 203 – Where clothes come from

During the past decade there has been growing interest and awareness in where food comes from, how it is grown and what are its nutritional and sustainable values. We’re alive to fact that we are what we eat.

In a similar way, there now is growing interest in where clothes come from, who made them, what they are made of and whether they are ethical and sustainable – because we are what we wear.

Skin is our body’s largest organ, so the clothing we wrap it in influences feel, comfort and interactions by osmosis. Natural-fibre clothing free from contaminants and toxins must be best. The benefits of natural fibres are eloquently summarised by Wildfibres UK. Continue reading →

Sew 202 – Crazy pants for Splendour

Although ‘buy once, buy well’ is an excellent strategy when making any purchase, it is not always easy to implement. Somehow we gather a lot of ‘also ran’ clothing which clutter up the place – eventually becoming upcycling fodder.

When my son Max moved out last year, he left various boxes of ‘treasure’ to be collected at a later date along with a bag of sweaters he didn’t want anymore. For months now, Max has been asking for upcycled gear and these crazy pants for the upcoming Splendour in the Grass festival at North Byron are a delivery on my promise.

I’d already used this Kwik Sew 3701 pattern to made house pants for Max, so I knew it fitted. The creative upcycling element with the crazy pants comes from cobbling together off-cuts of three cotton sweaters (including his old school sweatshirt) into trousers. Continue reading →

Sew 200 – Leather skirt becomes bag

With a background as an agricultural scientist and growing up on farms, I appreciate and value natural resources as authentic, non-toxic. and lasting a long time.

The greenest resources of all are ones that already exist in the world. Instead of seeking new materials, my practice is to harvest reject natural resources at op shops and markets either to use as they are or repurpose.

My leather handbag of the moment was once a mid-calf length straight skirt. After finding the skirt in tip-top condition at an op shop, I wore it once as a skirt before deciding to repurpose it as a carry-all bag. Continue reading →

Sew 198 – Refashion to suit yourself

The benefits of upcycling are you can wear clothes that suit your body shape, are comfortable, in colours/fabrics of choice … and reduce your environmental footprint as you dress with conscience.

Apart from underwear, it is many years since I bought a ‘new’ garment. I’m upcycling and refashioning every day this year as a way of auditing the many wardrobes of pre-loved clothing I’ve rescued from opshops, family and friends. I do this because there is pleasure, reward and satisfaction in rescuing natural-fibre garments that are under-valued and worthy of refashion – and to demonstrate an alternative to fast-fashion churn and buying new.

Sew 198 was an assortment of op-shop garments that I’ve massaged to suit myself. The long navy knitted wool-blend skirt had two white stripes at the bottom. Continue reading →

Sew 195 – The flip skirt

Those of a certain age will recall when shirts with stretch waistbands were fashionable. Black and white animal print seems perennial, so a small amount of time flipping shirt for second life as skirt seems a worthwhile investment.

This upcycle is another of the garments my artist friend Lena is revitalising from her late mother’s wardrobe, after she passed away last year. This is a sentimental, sustainable and resourceful strategy on Lena’s part. It is so easy and cheap to purchase new clothing these days, therefore upcycling is not about money. It is much more meaningful, purposeful and sustainable to modify what you already have to suit yourself than simply go shopping for new. Lena is deliberately choosing to reuse the special features, fabric and function of existing garments for a second life rather than shunting them off for a likely future as landfill. Continue reading →