Fiber Sprite
  • Blog
  • About
    • Classes
    • Policies
  • Tutorials
  • Store

Fiber Sprite​

Slow Fashion October: Rags and Riches

10/12/2016

 
Picture
​One of my favorite Dolly Parton songs is “Coat of Many Colors,” a song about how her mother sewed her a coat from rags given to her family. She was proud of her coat because her mother made it with love. The final verse of the song goes:
 
Now I know we had no money
But I was rich as I could be
In my coat of many colors
My momma made for me

 
It’s a true story, and the original coat is on display at Dollywood. There’s so much love and tenderness in the song, but what fascinates me right now are the rags.
 
The topic of waste is an important one to Slow Fashion October, and it’s one I’ve been thinking about a lot. Maybe it’s because I just moved, and moving unearths all the junk that accumulates in a house over the years. The experience has me trying to be more mindful of what I purchase, and has me looking at waste in a different light.
 
I tend to wear clothes until they’re totally worn out, and would never expect anyone else to want them once they reach that state. So if sending things to the thrift store isn’t such a viable option, what to do with the clothing waste I generate?
 
There seems to be a certain amount of waste that Western culture has grown comfortable with. It’s so ingrained, most people don’t even think about what happens to their pile of rags when they drop them off at the thrift store or dump them in the garbage bin. The article No One Wants Your Old Clothes is worth a read – it describes what really happens to old clothes once we think we’re done with them.
 
The bottom line is this: thrift stores can’t possible resell all the donations they receive. Tons of old clothes are shipped off to third world markets where they depress existing textile economies, and clothes that get thrown into landfill contribute to greenhouse gases and leach harmful chemicals into the soil. Not pretty.
 
We talk a lot about the waste associated with clothing, but as a crafter, there’s another aspect of waste. It’s easy to pat myself on the back for my DIY spirit and the fact that the few handmade clothes I have didn’t come from a factory. Don’t get me wrong, I think that’s an important step towards wasting less, but even in these pursuits, there’s a lot of waste that’s generated.
 
When I knit, even if I use up every yard of yarn, there are still ends to weave in and snip off.
 
When I spin yarn, there are neps and vegetable matter to be pick out. Not to mention snarls of unusable yarn when things go wrong.
 
When I sew, there are scraps of fabric left on the cutting room floor, seams to be trimmed, threads to be snipped off.
 
When I weave, there is “loom waste” built into every calculation – yarn that is used to attach the weaving to the loom and that can not be woven.
 
My maternal grandmother, who grew up in the Great Depression and taught home economics for twenty years, could often shave as much as half a yard off what the pattern called for. Experience and necessity had taught her the most economical ways to use fabric. But there was still plenty of waste. She’d often tuck away scraps with a wink, saying “this could make a nice pocket.” Yet there were no scrap pockets. She was a long way off from the flour sack dresses and coats of many colors of the Great Depression, and understandably wanted the nicest looking clothes she could make. And when she stopped sewing and it was time for her to downsize to a retirement community, there were boxes and boxes of hoarded scraps.
 
There has to be another way, somewhere between throwing things away and hoarding them, which really is its own kind of waste.
 
The textile industry certainly is aware of waste, and has been working to cut down on waste for hundreds of years. After all, wasted fabric is a wasted investment, so any efforts to reduce waste are worth the time and effort.
 
  • There are fascinating documentaries that detail how clothes are sorted and recycled into yarn in India. That yarn is then turned into new clothes, or blankets.
  • There’s also shoddy, which is actually a noun as well as an adjective. It’s fabric made from the shredded fiber of waste fabric. Historically, it was made with wool. Now fabric can also be made from recycled cotton and other fibers. If you’ve ever used those furniture pads you can rent from U-Haul when you move, they’re actually felt made from recycled jeans.
  • Recycled yarn has even made its appearance in the craft world, with recycled denim yarn and yarn produced from other textile manufacturing waste.
  • And when I visited the Pendleton Woolen Mills this summer, there were huge bags of loom waste that were sold to weavers of rag rugs.
 
One thing I’m really interested in is how I can use my rags, scraps, and textile waste myself, before it gets sent off to the dump. The reality is that the amount of waste I produce could probably never get sent to a shoddy mill, and yet, it seems so wasteful to send it to the dump.
 
I’m experimenting with rag rugs this year, but I’m also interested in other ways to reduce my textile waste. My weaving teacher told me that weavers often make their own chenille yarn, and I’m interested in trying that. And while watching a spinning video, I realized that wool unsuitable to become yarn is great for quilt batting. Of course. It’s all about perspective and valuing your materials, even when they can’t be used for the main purpose of your project.
 
It’s an ongoing journey, to be sure, and not the easiest one, at that. But like so many things about slow fashion, I think it’s worth it.


xx,

​Pamela

Comments are closed.

    Archives

    January 2025
    July 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    May 2022
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Affiliate
    Annavestkal
    Bangoutasweater
    Basketweaving
    Books
    Breed Swatch
    Cables
    Classes
    Color Theory
    Colorwork
    Design
    Differential Shrinkage
    Diz
    Dog
    Downloads
    Drum Carder
    Dyeing
    Embroidery
    Ergonomics
    Felting
    Fiber Fix
    FOs
    Freebies
    Knitting
    Konmarie
    Kumihimo
    Lace
    Links
    Log Cabin
    Mending
    Multitool
    Onesockkal
    Patterns
    Podcast
    Ravelry
    Rigid Heddle
    Rug Hooking
    Samplealong
    Sashiko
    Sewing
    Shop
    Slow Fashion October
    Socks
    Spinning
    Spinzilla
    Stash
    Steek
    Swatching
    Sweaters
    Tour De Fleece
    Travel
    Tutorial
    Tutorials
    Upcycling
    Video
    Warp
    Weaving
    WIP
    Wool
    Wovember
    Wpi

    This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies.

    Opt Out of Cookies
Copyright P.S. Kreative LLC © 2015-2024
  • Blog
  • About
    • Classes
    • Policies
  • Tutorials
  • Store