Soul Searching Through Scraps

Sigh.

I reached for the seam ripper...again. It didn't matter how many attempts I made trying to tame it, the satin didn't want to lay flat or play nice.

If I do this one more time, it's going to shred. The fabric did shred - rudely and defiantly. But, sometimes mistakes, as vexing as they are, can lead to more brilliant creations.

Fashion production is the third-leading cause of the climate crisis and carbon emissions. Today's fast-fashion operates on a global scale and creates waste at every level of production to meet historically high-demands. In this race to the bottom for cost and quality, sustainable fashion has become more important than ever in connecting people to the craft of sewing and combating the ever increasing failure to protect the environment.

I started sewing by hand when I was five years old, and on a machine at age ten. I grew up watching my mother make our Halloween costumes, sewing our renaissance faire garb, fixing the clothes we bought from thrift stores. Our family rarely bought new clothing, but altering a dress from the local second-hand shop was always magical, personalized. These designs, successes and failures, led me to pursue a degree in Fashion Design.

My program was wonderful in teaching marketing and the design techniques, clearly demonstrated product line chains and the life cycle of clothing. But it was all about profit. There was no class, no seminar or guest speaker that spoke about sustainable fashion or second-hand. The environment of the department looked down on thrift stores and scraps, never batting an eye at throwing away excess fabric - because that's what companies do. This went against everything I had learned growing up, every instinct to make the most of each piece. In 2015, I changed programs.

Despite leaving the fashion field, I never gave up my hobby, just changed direction. I started thrift-shopping for clothing that could find new life as re-designed garments. A blue velvet sheath became a body-con wrap dress, a sheer curtain became a button up blouse, and many pairs of jeans became a denim mermaid skirt. In addition to saving money on materials, re-using pre-existing fabrics is a zero-waste alternative to standard fabric shopping.

Through fashion design, sustainability has emerged as a core value and call-to-action in my life. Sustainable fashion takes many forms - including renewable textiles, lower waste and carbon emissions, and fair labor practices. Folk fashion, bringing creation back to the everyday person and altering items for new life, is more important than ever and speaks on a very personal level to me. Still, practicing sustainable fashion and sewing creates some waste in the form of scraps, so I challenged myself to use them.

Covid-19 struck March 2020, shutting down areas of production and employment worldwide. Many people, myself included, suddenly found themselves at home with unprecedented free-time. So I started my most time-intensive project to date.

Scraps from a dozen projects were ironed and cut into 4 by 4 inch squares, resulting in 208 individual pieces. The squares were then assembled with no fabrics matching on any side, nine long, creating a patchwork fabric of colors, prints, and weaves. From there, it was cutting and sewing as any circle skirt, with larger scraps used for the lining. The patchwork skirt took 10 weeks to complete, and is my favorite creation.

I am inspired by change, by preserving what we already have. There is so much waste in the world - the island of Haiti is almost completely a second-hand clothing market. Through sewing, I've discovered new ways of interacting with sustainability and research into the closed cycle on both a home-sewing level and global production.

Sewing allows control over all elements of the creative process to end product, and sustainable choices can yield the most unique results. Even simple alterations can breathe new life into old clothing, and everyone can rise to the challenge.