The marks of wear

Just noticed these tender tracings left behind; darker blue lines left behind where the sheltering red thread has worn out.

Boro Evolution

Left leg, 9th October 2013

I was looking through my photos today, and I was struck by how much my jeans have changed. In the first picture here the front of the left leg is almost intact although you can see where I have reinforced the fragile original material with the first layers of patch and boro style stitching.

Left leg, 4th May 2015

The second photo is of the same section of the jeans, but it's almost unrecognisable. Most of the fabric of the original jeans has eroded away and the patch that was hidden in all but the tiny cross-stitched area in the first photo has come to the surface. Many of the first lines of stitching have also got somewhat eroded. I have just added a third internal layer where all the dense red stitching is and once again my cat can't stick his claws through it and into my knee!

Boro Jeans

It's just over two years since I began mending my one pair of jeans. The first two patches were over the kneecaps: on the left knee is a piece of my godson's traditional Norwegian naming day shirt and on the right a bit of tweed from his sisters' coat. I am very hard on the knees of all my clothes; I always have been as I love getting close to the tiniest details of nature and, for me, that has always meant getting down on my knees.

Third layer going in on the left knee, but the of-cut from my godson's shirt is still strong.

Inside my jeans is a crazy jigsaw of overlapping patches, made from another pair of old worn out jeans that didn't fit me any more. In a few places the old seams still show up with their yellow stitches.

 

Not much of the original fabric is visible from the inside any more.

 I love the visual texture of the boro stitching, particularly on the inside. As an experiment I decided to put one patch on the outside and do the darning from the inside so that the wonderful texture shows. Not a great choice of placement though - right in the middle of my backside!

Back pockets - nearly gone.

 I have a habit of ramming my hands into my back pockets when I'm thinking. If I want to continue having that comforting thinking aid I will need to do some creative mending here... But visually I'm enjoying the disintegration of the fabric unimpeded by mending.

Interesting contrast between new patch and disintegrating original fabric.

The rhythm of stitch blends well with the rhythm of thought: I sit in my studio and muse on next steps for the evolution of my practice and catch both thought and patch into place with neat tight stitches.

Ouch!

Just have to remember not to stitch while thinking or talking about things that make me angry: Blood is always the result! My own I hasten to add...

Defining Beauty

True beauty has little or nothing to do with fashion or age and a whole lot to do with being comfortable in your own skin, with your own skin. Folds and crumples and worn bits and all.

My jeans become more and more beautiful to me as they age and evolve.

I know this is contrary to what most of our culture is based on, after all, if people were happy with ageing they couldn't be sold so many products, and people being content with the old and worn would damage the fashion industry.... Can't have that.

Red Thread

'All we love deeply becomes part of us.'

This is one of my Red Threads: the interlacing and entwining of the fabric of my jeans with the fabric of my self. Every stitch taken in the darning of my jeans involves the fabric more deeply and irreversibly with the beingness of my self. I am stitching myself a thick skin from the fragile and worn layers of the past darned into a strong fabric with the thread of present strength and determination.

Another of my Red Threads is gradually dancing into place on my loom. It's a painstakingly slow dance of hands, thread and warp. There is a sense of the Weaver becoming the Woven....

Fragile Fabric

Fragility

Elderberry cordial

My jeans are fragile after lots of wild-food gathering this autumn. Scrambling through brambles and heather is tough on fragile old fabric! The layers of erosion and repair in my jeans make me think of the soil ecosystem: leaf litter building up is like the layers of patch and stitch, but without that constant rebuilding the soil wears thin and the bones of the earth show through.

Elderberries to keep flue at bay

Wild mushrooms

It feels really good to stock up the larder with free food to keep me going through the winter. I should have enough Elderberry and honey cordial to keep me cold and flue free through the winter term with luck, and the Ceps and Boletus, dried into crisp slices, will enrich soups and stews all the way to the next wild harvest.

Boro and Travelling

Darning on the train

Journeying from Scotland to Norway and down the back of the left leg of my jeans. 

When in the middle of make-do-and-mend, travelling by train is good. There is a wee bit of room to spread out materials and tools - scissors, needles, patching material and darning threads. There's even a wee bit of elbow room if you are small like me!




It's also an intriguing social experiment: some of the reactions from my fellow travellers were very interesting. One older man asked what I was doing and when I explained about my 2 year shopping fast / make-do-and-mend challenge he looked at my beloved jeans incredulously and said 'well those are only fit for the bin aren't they?!'


No. No they aren't 'fit for the bin'. They will last me a long time yet if I tend them with care.

Retrieving fragility

A journey's worth of darning

Every stitch I put in to rescue another small section from disintegration makes these cheap, second-hand jeans more and more precious  to me. The layers of time and attention make them more and more priceless and irreplaceable.


The time invested is visible here in this block of stitching, all one colour, neatly filling a gap between three previous patches. Not even a whole hand-span it's true, but no longer a raggedy hole on the back of my leg!

Walnut ink

Two layer screen print using two mixes of home made walnut ink.

Walnut ink screen print on darned vintage sheet

After many failed and splodgy attempts at making and printing with walnut ink, I have finally worked out how to get ink that is thick enough to squeegee through a silk screen. It goes nicely onto fabric as well as paper, and my fragile scraps take it nicely.

This piece of cotton sheet came from my Nana's cleaning cloth bag. When you unfold it you can see where she got every bit of use she could from it. It started out as a sheet, was worn out in the middle, then turned "sides to middle", then reincarnated as an ironing board cover, and finally, after being worn out in this spot by the iron being stood on it, it has been relegated to the cleaning cloths bag. Talk about "make do and mend"!
And now I am playing with it, adding boro style darning, printing on it with walnut ink, stitching into it more. Who knows what it may yet become?

Part of the section of my jeans that inspired the screen print.

Mending mending mending

The mission to keep my jeans wearable continues... Gradually the original fabric is disappearing beneath a layer of boro style mending stitches and a few surface patches. As they develop, I am loving them more and more, they have a really sturdy feel and are beginning to look really loved and real - like the velveteen rabbit " Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
That kind of says it all about my jeans :)

Studio Practice

I am settling into "Studio Practice" at Moray School of Art; it's starting to feel like I'm heading in an interesting direction through my explorations with printmaking, and just generally finding my feet in this second year. My studio space is constantly evolving and changing, and my tutor suggested that I keep a record by taking photos each time I take stuff down, put stuff up or just shuffle things around as I make new connections. This is the first photo of my evolving visual thought process, complete with pictures and quotes from artists who inspire me, and a whole mix of mono-printing, eco-printing, transfer printing and notes/mind maps. Bit of a jungle really, but sense of purpose is emerging gradually!

Looking at this photo, I notice that I haven't taken down the bright orange number two that told me which was my space in the room! Must get rid of it and put my name up instead.

As for the "Make do and Mend" mission - my jeans are still holding up!

The next part needing darning and reinforcing is the backside.... As you can see, it was getting a wee bit thin here and there!

Time to step away from the laptop and pick up the needle again...

Make do and Mend

At the moment I am studying for a BA in Fine Art Textiles at Moray School of Art: I have just begun my second year and have entered Studio Practice. I am gradually getting the hang of what I want to focus on for the next two years - I have been thinking about our relationship to fabric and clothing, how throw-away our society has become and the impact this is having on our home, the Earth.

As a way to help me really understand my own relationship to clothing and fabric I have decided to set myself the challenge of not buying any clothes for the next two years! What I have now I will have to mend, patch and make do with. However, I will allow myself to make new things from old semi worn out clothes; and use fabric, threads and findings I already have to make new, as long as I don't bring anything new to me into my home.

Jeans resurrection mission

This idea has been partly sparked off by my favourite, in fact my only pair of jeans, which over the summer were getting to the point of completely falling to pieces. I had recently seen pictures of Boro mending and this inspired me to use a second pair of worn out jeans to mend my beloved comfy ones! I have been gradually adding patches to the inside of my jeans and attaching them with running stitch over and through the whole surface. This labour of love is turning a throw-away pair of fairly cheap jeans that were second hand (if not 3rd or 4th!) when I first got them, into a work of art that are a delight to wear. The fabric thus created has a robust and substantial handle, looks really interesting and feels full of good vibes.
I am also really enjoying exploring eco dyeing using locally gathered plants and little or no mordants: I can see many of my clothes landing in a pot of leaves and flowers for a new shot of colour over the next two years!

I am going to record my journey through these two years of Make Do and Mend here on this blog, do follow and feel free to comment if you are interested in this idea!

Eucalyptus and Rust