More Ecofashion

I got some more shots of the SewGreen Green T Reuse Contest winners. My daughter's favorite fashions from the show included this vest, dragon shirt, and hat combo, all made from repurposed t-shirts, jeans, and other fabrics.

Amelia Rosenthal, the designer, sells her work on Etsy.

Green T Gallery Show--A Preview

All of the winning entries in SewGreen's Green T Reuse Contest will be presented at a gallery show this week. Today my kids and I snuck in and watched Wendy Skinner displaying all of the stunning designs. All of the entries used 100% cotton t-shirts, jeans, and/or recycled cotton fabric to create their designs.

Here's a preview of the show, in pictures taken by my daughter.

Learning a New Technique

My niece is my new design muse, and she is unfortunately the recipient of my sewing experiments. The latest experiment is a pinafore sewn from a pattern I got in the Spring 2008 edition of Ottobre Design, a Finnish sewing magazine.

Here's the pinafore I made:

I purchased the fabric from the Sew Green studio, which now has recycled fabrics and notions for sewing inspiration.

It took me a while to work up the courage to start the pinafore because it involved a new pattern method for me. I had to trace the pattern for the pinafore from a poster tucked in the middle of the magazine. I was very intimidated when I looked at the confusing mass of intersecting lines and colors for the patterns, but in the end it was a simple matter of tracing out three simple shapes, adding seam allowances all around, and cutting out the fabric.





*****CONTEST*******
The pinafore still needs a bottom to go with it. The first person to post a suggestion for a suitable matching fabric for a pair of shorts or pants will receive a handmade item in the mail. Special consideration goes to the person who suggests a vintage or reused fabric!

Another T-shirt Mashup

I attempted another t-shirt mashup, this time for myself. I went for something totally out of character for me--a very rock'n roll red T with a black racing stripe and a winged skull that spouts fire. As you can see, my toddler was a little scared of it at first, but as he discovered the fine craftsmanship, he warmed up to it.

This shirt took some crazy twists and turns, and I'm still not completely happy with it. I cut a men's XL t-shirt up the sides and sewed in black cashmere arms and side stripes from an old sweater of mine. The gray caps to the sleeves are from some leggings that didn't fit my daughter. Originally I intended the shirt to be long-sleeved, but I accidentally made the sleeves too tight (I wanted them fitted but not so fitted that they ripped when I put them on!). Also, the long gray on black sleeves looked surprisingly like armor and gave the shirt a very Medieval feel. I should have just gone with the look and made a cowl neck and declared myself a Medieval biker chick.

(Anybody out there remember--or ever see--the movie Knightriders (1981) by George Romero and starring Ed Harris? This was a late-night cable favorite of mine when I was in high school, and I'm still in love with that mix of bikes and Ren. Faire. Odd but unexpectedly appealing.)

The neckline is still a work in progress. I cut way too much t-shirt off the front neckline, so something needs to be added.

And then I'll need to figure out where to wear the darn thing. I don't think there are any biker Faires coming up soon, so I guess I should just go ahead and join a gym and wear it there. I think the fitness buffs would give me a wide berth so I'd have all the machines I wanted to myself.

Keep rippin!

Our Introduction to Franken Sewing

Take several t-shirts or other pieces of clothing in coordinating colors, cut them up, and then combine them to form a new wearable object. Those are the main steps involved in what the kids and I have been calling Franken Sewing, otherwise known as t-shirt mashups, refashioning, or ecofashion. The idea is to create something new and wearable from something that otherwise would have been thrown away. It's fun and it makes sense on a whole lot of levels. It extends the idea of reduce/reuse/recycle/rebuy to fashion, an industry that traditionally isn't a "green" one. And as an exercise in creativity, it fires up all those right-brain cylinders because it's like creating a wearable collage.

My introduction to refashioning came a few years ago when my daughter and I saw notices for a SewGreen contest to create a new design out of old articles of clothing. We were all heavily into Project Runway at the time, so the little instigator urged me to enter the contest. (She thinks I'm the Sewing Queen because I've made Halloween costumes for her off and on since she was 2.) This year we actually entered the contest. The challenge was to use old cotton t-shirts and/or denim to create a new item. My daughter and I conceived of and sewed (mostly I sewed) a hoodie, a shirt to layer under the hoodie, and a last-minute jean skirt. Inconceivably, the two shirts won first and second place in the teen category.

It was pretty much a fluke how the hoodie came together. While browsing the men's t-shirt section at the Salvation Army, my young ecofashionista and I found a strange orange t-shirt with "Ask A Bug" in bold black letters on the front and a huge stink bug screen printed on the back. We both thought it was funny, so into the cart it went.

It took me a while to work up the courage to actually attack it with scissors, but I finally did so. Two things were a given: my daughter wanted a hoodie, and we knew we wanted the bug to be on the front rather than the back. With no other plan in mind, we cut the sides open, took a big chunk off the bottom, cut off the neck ribbing, and then trimmed the sides for a closer fit. My model patiently stood there while I draped the very sorry remnants of the once robust t-shirt around her. We played around with some color combinations of the t-shirts we had, but nothing seemed to work well. We were a little discouraged by our initial experiment.

A week or so later I had to drop off my mom at the airport in the city, and on the way home my toddler and I headed over to the Salvation Army to check out their supply of wool sweaters for a felting project.

Just as I was heading to the cash register because my son was ready to melt down--a combination of fatigue, hunger, general terrible-twoness, and his failure to appreciate the valuable life lesson I was teaching him by exposing him early on to sustainable fashion--we walked down the women's shirt aisle, and a black-and-white striped t-shirt caught my eye. I grabbed it and two other orange shirts nearby.

That incredibly fortuitous last-minute purchase became the hoodie's side stripe (a solution for having trimmed too much off the sides!), sleeves, hood, and bottom edge (a solution for having trimmed too much off the bottom!) So, it all came together from some happy accidents.

My daughter also wanted a fitted tank-style shirt to layer under the hoodie. We took a men's XL shirt and cut off the sleeves and neck and cut the side seams open. This time I was a little more strategic and cut a little less off the sides than I thought was necessary. I sewed up the side seams, and the shirt was initially too loose, but luckily that's an easier problem to fix than having it too tight. The sleeve openings were too big and gappy, so I took sleeves off an old t-shirt of mine and they became the sleeves for her new shirt. The whole process felt like two steps forward, three steps back and was very discouraging, but eventually it came together nicely.

The jean skirt that completed the ensemble was a very last-minute project. I started it the morning of the contest deadline. Having never made a skirt before, I had no idea what I was doing. I ended up cutting the legs off two pairs of jeans, opening them up at the seams, and then sewing them together into a tube. I made a waistband and, after studying a pair of old jeans, attached it the same way. The thick denim was really hard to sew, especially when four layers came together at the waistband. So my stitching was really rough looking, and my zipper was shoddily attached. But I made a skirt with no pattern, out of almost nothing, and in almost no time (OK, wait, that doesn't sound like something to be proud of).

While my daughter was keeping me company down in the basement when I was sewing away on the denim skirt, she told me that she would never have the courage to just jump in without a pattern and start cutting and sewing as I had done. She made it sound as if I was awfully brave. In fact, I think I was pretty foolhardy to attempt the project with almost no skills, and I was unsure of myself at each step and made many mistakes. But what I was proud of was that I kept at it and found solutions for the problems that I created from inexperience. It was very frustrating thinking of an idea, implementing it, and then having the three-dimensional structure not translate into what I intended. But figuring things out as I go along and making lots of mistakes seems to be my creative path right now, though I hope that will change as I get more experienced and adept at sewing techniques.

And surely all of this sewing will eventually rewire the parts of my brain dealing with spatial relationships so that the translation of flat fabric to wearable design comes more easily. Please?

There are lots of web sites related to ecofashion, and my co-designer and I consulted a few of them before we attempted to create the hoodie. The SewGreen site has a page with a few sites that are great introductions to creating t-shirt mashups. This site in particular provided lots of inspiration.

And thank you to my friend and fellow blogaholic Maya, who was the well-deserving SewGreen contest grand-prize winner for her denim baby kimono set with booties and stuffed elephant (see photo at right) (and whose kids' tea table and chairs set was a top 20 semifinalist in the Design Sponge DIY contest), for telling me about the following cool ecofashion links:

http://www.alabamachanin.com/Home/Home.htm

Organic cotton, sustainable style, fair labor, and civil rights, what a great combo! And the reverse applique tutorial would be fun to try: http://www.alabamachanin.com/Journal/Projects/ProjectsBlock6.htm

http://hautenature.blogspot.com/search/label/eco%20fashion

Green fashions to buy, and for inspiration

http://dollyrocker.de/

*THE MOST* adorable refashioned kids' clothes. I must make ALL of these!!

And, just for fun:

T-shirts into undies, anyone?

make your own menstrual pads (woohoo!)

(I know, I shouldn't make fun, and the good4girls project is very much worth supporting.)

Keep creating!