How do you reinvigorate a stalled project? – Summer Wardrobe Infusion Update #2
We’re about halfway through July, and there are no ifs, ands, or buts, about summer being well and truly here. But my plans for infusing my wardrobe with summery clothing? Feeling a little stuck in the muck at the moment.
So I thought now would be a good time to take a step back and look at the whole picture.
My Original Summer Wardrobe Infusion Plans
In case you don’t remember (because I certainly didn’t) my original plan was:
: tank tops & camisoles
: overshirts
: PJ bottoms (!?)
: maxi sundresses
: my well-traveled sweater
Not sure what the PJ bottoms were about, but whatever, they’ve gotten nixed.
So how’s the plan going?
Tank tops & camisoles
Status: drafted the pattern. Made one. Tweaked the pattern. And have fabric for more.
Next Step: make a second to test the tweaks to the pattern (and to have another tank top).
Overshirts
Status: pattern drafted. Cut one.
Next Steps: sew first shirt together. Tweak pattern if necessary.
PJ bottoms
Status: nixed.
Sundresses #1: the no-longer-really-an-Anna Dress
Mental Status: bogged down in over thinking.
In the Fabric Status: the skirt is cut & sewn, the skirt lining is cut & sewn, the bodice was decided on, the bodice fabric & lining were cut.
Next Steps: buy a zipper. sew the bodice together.
Sundress #2: the Plaid Sundress from SFO Fabric
Status: waiting in the wings.
Well-Traveled Sweater
Status: Finished!! Just in time for summer…
It is the perfect weight for sometimes chilly summer evenings, so I’m sure it’ll get worn this summer, but I did manage to finish it just as spring turned into summer.
And then there are the unplanned clothing projects
Of course some of the reason that my summer wardrobe infusion plans aren’t going quite as planned, is because of the clothing projects I’ve worked on that weren’t part of the original plan.
Mended Uniqlo Jeans
Status: Finished! Washed! Fantastic!
Lady Bat Sweater
Status: on the needles.
Getting ready to add more length to the front & back pieces.
I have the feeling that this sweater will be slow going for awhile. The yarn is pretty fuzzy, which makes knitting with it in high humidity weather rather horrible.
Summer Wardrobe Infusion Next Steps
I know from my self-made wardrobe project, that I prefer sewing when I have an extended period of time to concentrate on a project. I like sewing in multi hour chunks of time, and prefer sewing during the day, rather than in the evenings.
So, I think the next step for this wardrobe project is to see if I can do some schedule flipping about and find an afternoon to devote to this project. Where that afternoon will come from, I’m not entirely sure, but I’ll find it somewhere.
Although.
Another possibility is spending a day alternating between scribbling out Shawl Geometry edits, and sewing. Which, now that I’m thinking about it, feels far more doable than freeing up an entire afternoon in my schedule.
How do we decide when it’s time to throw a piece of clothing out?
Buying, mending, and disposable fashion.
Writing about mending my favorite pair of jeans last week got me thinking about how we decide when it’s time to throw a piece of clothing out.
How do we decide it’s time to throw a piece of clothing out?
Or rather, when do we decided it’s time to donate a piece of clothing, so someone else can throw it out?
When a piece of clothing can easily and cheaply be replaced, it’s almost never a case of necessity that prompts us to dispose of a piece of clothing.
And more than that, when the common avenue for disposing of our clothing is by donation, then we’re asked to donate them in “good working condition” – way sooner than the end of a piece of clothing’s life cycle.
It used to be (not that long ago) that clothing was designed, patterned, and manufactured with the idea that it would be altered, worn, altered, worn, passed along, altered again, worn, altered, worn, mended, worn, altered, worn, mended, worn, and re-purposed until they became rags.
Clothing was designed, manufactured, and purchased with an intimate understanding of how labor intensive & expensive making fabric is.
Wide seam allowances & generous hems make it exceptionally easy for garments to be altered – both to fit the original purchaser, and also to fit whoever ended up with the garment next. Consumers knew what a quality garment was, and shopped with quality (as well as price) in mind.
Disposable fashion isn’t disposable until we throw it out.
When it comes to fast & disposable fashion, tons of attention is given to the beginning of a garment’s life cycle. Lots of focus is put on manufacturing clothing in ways that is less devastating to the people making them, and the environment.
With all this attention on the creation of a garment (which should absolutely be getting attention), it’s simple to forget about the end of a garment’s life cycle.
What exactly happens after we donate a piece of clothing is information that is readily available with a quick google search, but hadn’t entered the collective public consciousness in the same way the exploitation of garment laborers has.
Which is kind of a shame, because the end of a clothing’s life cycle is something we, as consumers, have a tremendous amount of influence over.
Just because a piece of clothing was designed to last for 30 seconds, doesn’t mean we have to pass it along after 30 seconds. Disposable clothing and fast fashion, aren’t disposable until we dispose of them.
We can mend our clothes. We can alter our clothes. We can re-purpose our clothes.
And they might just last longer than we think they will.
Mended: black Uniqlo jeans mended with Sashiko stitching
If you sew, or knit, or otherwise craft, you know that requests for “favors” – mostly that start with “can you make…” or “can you fix…” – are not uncommon.
Every crafter responds differently, and my general rule of thumb is “no to makes. yes to mends.”
As gifts? I make things. As commissions and for work? I make things. As favors? Generally not.
The flip side of this being, if someone asks mend something, or fix something. I’ll almost always say yes. Usually they’re not time consuming or complicated fixes, so I’m happy to.
The one general exception to my “yea sure I’ll fix it for you” response being jeans.
Will I hem your jeans? Sure. Will I fix a hole in your jeans? No.
Why? Because mending jeans is not so simple.
As a general rule of them, denim is an incredibly durable fabric. Of course some denim is more durable than others, and some is just downright delicate. But taken as a whole category of fabric, denim = durable.
That means that when your jeans get a rip in them due to age (by which I mean, you didn’t sit on a nail in a brand new pair of jeans), you need to fix the whole, as well as, reinforce a significant amount of the surrounding fabric.
If you’re ever patched a pair of jeans (or a flannel shirt for that matter), and had the patch, or stitching quickly rip away again, it’s because the stitching was sewn to weakened, or compromised fabric.
The pair of jeans I wanted to mend, had a (relatively) small rip in the crotch. It was, maybe, two inches long, and would have taken 5 minutes to whip stitch closed.
However. If I had mended these pants that way, the fix would have also lasted about 5 minutes.
Because, that small rip is indicative of weakened fabric in the whole surrounding area. The original fabric is very soft & thin, there are creases where it’s (almost) threadbare, and along the seams the fibers are beginning to wear away.
To create a mend that lasts, I needed to reinforce the fabric in the entire crotch area. So I used a patch of black cotton twill, and Sashiko inspired stitching to reinforce all of the weakened fabric.
Sashiko, is a traditional Japanese quilting technique, that uses rows of running stitches. Traditionally, it was used to reinforce fabric, prolong the life of garments, and stitch together patches of fabric into new clothes. It can be entirely utilitarian, or decorative. But either way because the stitching itself is so simple it’s incredibly quick to execute, and because it’s an all over quilting technique it creates exceptionally durable (and warm) fabric.
(There’s a reason it’s quite “on trend” in mending.)
As with any mending, or fixing, or repair project, the trick is seamlessly blend the old and the new. In this case, blending the patch (which on the inside of the pants) and the worn fabric.
My first attempt went ok in the beginning, but as the project went on, I started getting some pretty epic rippling. Which translated to binding around the top of the leg. Which I was not about to live with.
So rather than leave it half assed, out came the scissors, and into the garbage that stitching went.
Take number two, went much more smoothly. (In multiple senses of the phrase.)
Rather than simply doing single rows of running stitch, I worked two perpendicular lines of running stitch to create crosses. I did this by first working lines of running stitch in one direction (being sure to off set my stitches), and then working a second set of lines of running stitch at a 90º angle to the first (being sure to cross the first set of stitches).
It’s not the prettiest, or the most even, stitching I’ve ever done. But my hope is that it’ll last for a good long while to come.
I’m not sure if a mending job can be considered “visible mending” if you can’t really see it while I’m wearing the pants, (and the stitching is black on black), but there has been something tremendously satisfying about combining my love of blackwork embroidery, with visible mending, with elongating the life of a pair of much loved pants.
Materials Used:
- 1 pair of much loved Uniqlo bootcut black jeans (which they stopped selling ages upon ages ago) (these are also the pair that I based my self-made jeans on)
- 1 large scrap of black cotton twill fabric to use as the patch
- 1 skein of black 6-strand embroidery floss (I split the thread and used 3 strands)
- 1 embroidery needle
- some pins to hold everything in place
