Gathering Blaeberries

Testing birch polypore plaster

 Interesting to see how the polypore stood up to being worn in bed over night, wetted with blaeberry juice, scraped by heather twigs and generally coping with rough usage while I was out wild gathering. It's looking a little ragged and has lost some of its width, but its still covering and protecting the wee cut on my finger.

Blaeberry Gathering film still

Blanket recycling

 Not fashionable, not attractive, but oh so WARM! Some Scottish summer days just call for that bit extra warmth and I had this lovely thick blanket, partly made into a cloak, stowed away in my fabric stash... A bit of chopping, sewed it up with my lovely old singer and slung it on! I don't think I'll be wearing it in public, but to curl up on the couch in the evening, yes.

Boro paper!

Boro - with a difference

I first saw this idea on pinterest (while hunting for images of fabric boro) in a fascinating picture of Japanese pawn shop wrapping paper made by pasting together old ledger pages. For images of the real deal please follow this link to Sri Threads.

I tucked the image away in the back of my mind for a rainy day, or even a holiday! Time was at a premium as I was in the midst of term time focus.

Finally I have some free time and got to try out this way of recycling paper the other day.

Boro paper

Piano hinge/coptic binding on my dye sample books

I really like the textural surface of these pasted layers, the random scraps of text and image that I allowed to remain or purposefully included, and the tone on tone of white, off white and cream.

I am smitten with the results! Here comes my next sketch book: 100% recycled from receipts, offcuts, old envelopes, posters, odds and ends, and old shopping lists.

My intention is to use a hybrid piano hinge/coptic binding technique which I developed as I find this emulates the flexibility of spiral bindings but has the added advantage of never sticking at odd angles when you try to open or close it. For me this is of supreme importance as it bugs me hugely when my sketch books don't open and close smoothly!

Make-do

It's not just my jeans that are a little thread-bare after nearly two years of no chucking out and getting new. This morning as I selected colours I felt like wearing I noticed neck-lines and hem-lines in need of some rescue work.

A job for the summer holidays I think.

There is something unutterably tender and touching about the patterns of wear emerging on my long-suffering clothes. It puts me in mind of Shakespeare's words (in Hamlet I think it was) about 'sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.' As sleep can a repair a frazzled mind, so darning can repair a ragged hem.

After a long term of intense (though fascinating and joyful) study it feels like time to do some patching and darning, resting and dreaming.











One more week of extra intense effort to get everything just as I want it (to the best of may ability) in my studio, sketchbooks, and written work, and then I can settle down to knitting up the unravelled sleeves and hems of self and clothes.

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...

Sheepskin Gloves

It's taken a few days, but finally my new fingerless gloves are made. Many tweaks of the 'pattern' (I drew round my hand...) and adding in of gussets and, though they look as elegant as plaster casts, they are WARM.

The wrap-around flap had to go. Just didn't work.

 A wee note of caution - it's really not a good idea to use Stanley knife blades without the handle... I have a few fine cuts in the surface of my skin to prove it, but got away without slicing my fingers badly. Surely I have a handle SOMEWHERE if I have blades in my tool box????

Beyond Repair

Worn to a Ravelling, I am undone..... 

My beloved fingerless gloves, a present from my dad, have had it. I haven't got a fine enough yarn to mend them so it's time to get inventive with what I do have in my fabric stash.


I have a bit of a sheepskin coat that I picked up in a swap-shop. I have bees wax. I have strong fine cord. I have leather stitching needles. I have an inventive imagination.


Let's see what will emerge....

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!

Nothing to wear!

The other day I had one of those moments... You know the sort - I looked in my wardrobe and there was NOTHING to wear!!!

Nothing that is except things I didn't feel like today, or were too thin and light for the dubious Scottish weather with hail and sleet mixed in with the lively glimpses of sun. Nothing that felt like it matched my mood that day. Nothing interesting or new.
So I put my darned jeans on yet again, and grabbed the least worn-out jumper yet again, and headed out for uni. All day in the back of my mind was the question of what to do when you are buying nothing new (not even just "new to me" from a charity shop) for another year and a half….
That evening I had a good dig through my stash of "not worn out but not wearable" things (jumpers shrunk in the wash, shirts that don't fit right, trousers that are too big or too small and so-on) and also my "worn but beloved" basket and tried to come up with something inspiring!
Two identical green lambswool jumpers caught my eye. They never fitted flatteringly so I had felted them in the washing machine and saved them to making into something as I love the colour.

Time to get the scissors out!
I think if I combine the two I can make them into a tunic top/dress. Watch this space for the next steps!
I am also working on mending my favourite jumper, a lovely natural brown homespun that was my very first big knitting project. The elbows wore out because the yarn was too thin on that section of it. So I undid a throw I crocheted that had some of the same wool in it, and am re-knitting both arms from the elbow down. I can't wait to be able to wear that lovely jumper again! I am finding that I actually quite like knitting too, I used to find it such a drag, it took toooooo looooooooong………. But now I find it a good way to wind down at the end of a busy day. I hope to finish one sleeve today or tomorrow, and if I do some every day I may have my jumper back up and running by next week. Something to wear that is fresh and "new"!
Maybe I will find some time to piece the green jumpers into something new this weekend too! Two times "something new" in one week! That should keep me happy for another six months ;)

Musing

Sorting through my fabric stash I re-found a bag labeled 'cleaning rags' in my Nanna's handwriting. Several of the pieces have holes worn right through, some have obviously been recycled several times prior to being consigned to the cleaning rags bag - I found pillow slips mended round the edge with a slightly different fabric; ironing board covers hand made, presumably from old sheets; lengths of fabric with a 'sides to middle' seam up the centre. Many of the pieces of fabric are fragile with places worn right through and many other places that are almost see-through.

I am touched by both the fragility of these fragments and by the careful frugality of my Nanna who used every little thing to it's full potential.

I tried darning the white piece above and later printed on it with my walnut ink. However, I felt my stitches were large and clumsy (just for scale - the black thread is sewing cotton). When grumping about this to one of my class mates, she suggested that it was my way of looking at the world that made me see my stitches as large clumsy - she reckoned they were TINY and tidy! So as an experiment I took a fragment of torn fabric from my old quilt and darned it onto a bit of calico. At first as I worked my stitches looked tiny to me, but as I went on they looked bigger and bigger…. It's an optical illusion caused by my state of focus. When I go back and look at this wee bitty scrap the stitches look like fairy work!

I am off to do more fairy stitching….

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