Embracing Slow Fashion II

Years ago I started collecting vintage, even antique, fabric - as part of my quest to embrace the tenets of "slow fashion." This fabric collection has come from all over the world; old kimonos from Japan, linen from France, and various scraps of all kinds from the craft materials I inherited from my grandmother after her passing.

I always intended to use this fabric for...something. Clothes. Embroidery. Quilting. But, to be honest, I'm not a great sewist. I like working by hand, and it's easy to get bored of a project when you're working so slowly. I have my fair share of half finished projects, many of which are - you guessed it - sewing related.

As often happens when I watch design related shows, I became inspired by one of the contestants on the most recent season of Next In Fashion. Nigel Xavier's work was a revelation; his use of patchwork, old afghans and tapestries and quilts, in modern streetwear is exciting - truly Next in Fashion. Finally, someone is making my old lady crafting arts cool again.

Granted, they were never uncool...just under appreciated. That said, I felt it was finally time to break out my collection of old fabric and start making something with it. Or, at least, start using up some of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of skeins of embroidery thread that my grandmother left me.

I started with a simple design; a bunch of Saskatoon berries. They are my husband's favorite fruit, and I bake with them whenever I get the chance. This first piece set the tone for this project, and I found myself drawn to the idea of creating a series of patches with designs inspired by my adopted Canadian home - Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan is a cold, somewhat inhospitable place. More than half of the year we're buried in ice and snow; the days can be dark and gray. So, to make up for it, Spring and Summer tend to be full of flora, fauna, and colorful events. These are things I want to celebrate about living in Saskatchewan - starting with a trio of local flora.

With the berries done, I decided to go for the most enduring symbol of the province - wheat. You can find wheat everywhere in Saskatchewan; in farmer's fields, on the provincial flag, even on the sewer grates down town. It's a humble plant, but so versatile.

One of the other major symbols of Saskatchewan is the prairie lily; a beautiful orange lily that also appears on our provincial flag. That's where I got a bit stuck; prairie lilies are great, but I rarely see them in my area. The flower I see more often in the spring time is the lilac, which grows prolifically in my neighborhood.

I also felt like the lilac would be better suited to the color palette I had started developing with the blues of the saskatoon berries and gold of the wheat. Lilac flowers are also some of my favorites, and I really enjoyed layering together the hundreds of french knots that it took to make the lilac blooms for this patch.

With my first three patches of Saskatchewan Flora done, I'm now going to start working on patches featuring the fauna of Saskatchewan. So far, I know I want to do a dragonfly and a bee, but for the third I'm not so sure. I am fond of rabbits, and we do see an awful lot of them around here - but there are also geese, moose, beavers, and so on. I guess I'll just have to see where the spirit leads me!

I also haven't entirely decided what kind of item I'm going to make with these patches - or what additional fabrics I'm going to compose my patchwork panels with. But, I think I've made a fairly good start on things, and even though things are moving slowly there is great satisfaction in having at least this much done.

In my mind, slow fashion is a little bit less about the destination and more about the journey - honoring the bits and pieces of the past that go into creating the future, and shoring up things that may have worn through. Patchwork is a bit like life that way; we're all just sewing together the scraps of our experience and mending things as needed. It may not be perfect, but there's beauty in that imperfection.