Tag: slow fashion

NaBloPoMo: Slow Stitching

I don’t know where I first saw Katrina Rodabaugh’s work, but I knew I wanted to take a workshop with her as soon as I saw her beautiful visible mending.

Last Sunday I woke early and wended my way to one of my favorite river towns, Hudson, to one of my favorite maker spaces, Drop Forge and Tool, where, at long last, I was able to stitch under Katrina’s tutelage.

The workshop began with an overview of resources, basic stitching lessons, and the loose instructions to stitch a tea quilt. Didn’t the class make some cool ones? Mine is the lower left corner one.

After a lunch break, we got into the nitty gritty of mending, and discussions about the slow fashion movement. I left the workshop feeling so inspired and excited, and super pleased with the mending I did and the new skills I acquired. If you have a chance to take a workshop with Katrina, don’t even hesitate!

P.S. I’m sure you can imagine all the things a person might say after neglecting her website since late January, so I’ll spare you my actually saying them.

Slow Fashion October: Week 1

p333

It is easy for me to trace the genesis of my interest in slow fashion: participating in Project 333. I started in October 2010 (this picture is from day 38 of my first round), and paring down my wardrobe changed my life. I’ve always been gaga for clothes-the texture, the drape, the fun of pairing odd things together.  In fact, some of my earliest memories are of petting my aunt’s fur coat and rubbing my fingers over a bit of velvet. You can read my Project 333 posts here.

After a few years of maintaining a minimalist wardrobe, I switched to 52 items for the entire year. Around the same time, I realized that my goal was to create an ethical and elegant wardrobe. I defined what I meant by ethical elegance, and slowly, slowly, I have worked, stitch by stitch, to build my skills in making my own clothes. I dream of a wardrobe made entirely by me and by indie makers whose practices resonate with me.

Slow fashion means timelessness. It means understanding my personal style and investing in the skills I need to make that ethical elegant wardrobe a reality. I have a long way to go, not only skill-wise (though I’m so proud of my improvements in the last year), but also in determining how far I will drill down into my ethics. I’m happiest using made-in-the-USA organically-grown fabrics, though I am using plenty of fabrics outside of that goal. I want to know where my clothes come from. I want to know who made them.  I want to strive for my fashion choices to have little impact on the world.

I will be teaching a themed Composition II class in the spring titled “TEXTiles: Writing About Slow Fashion” and this month I hope to not only build my skills just that much more, but also to find some excellent resources to inspire my students in their own slow fashion journeys. I am so grateful to Karen for organizing great post topics for the month, and I’m looking forward to digging deeper into slow fashion this month.

Ethical Elegance: Knit Good Stuff

Joan I don’t know how many years I’ve been eyeing Nanne Kennedy’s toothy, honest, gorgeously dyed yarn at fiber festivals. Last fall, with my best enabler at my side, I stopped petting the yarn and purchased. I have no regrets. Not one.

My original intention was to use this femme pink yarn for a certain sweater I’ve been lusting after (I’m looking at you, Lorna Suzanne). I decided to be as prissy as I want the sweater to be and swatched, swatched, swatched, only to find I couldn’t get a fabric I liked at a gauge I wanted. I think I’m going to need a bit of Starcroft Light to find the just-right match of honest yarn and pattern for my dreamy, prissy sweater.

So what’s a knitter to do when she’s got a bag full of pink wool this good and a hankering for one of Ellen’s sweaters? She copies her pal Kirsten, and uses the Seacolors yarn for a newish arrival at Chez Odacier: Joan Fuller.

Ellen’s pattern writing is terrific. It’s as though she’s sitting next to me on the porch (in my mind, it is summer, always, and on a porch of one sort or another, always), leaning over to remind me what I should do next.

Still, we all know what a pokey knitter I am. Every day, I stitch another few rows before I go to bed, and I confess: it’s hard to sleep when I’ve just had those plump cables in my hand. Even if I don’t finish the sweater to wear this long, long winter, I’ll be ready for a Maine evening in September!

Gale taught me something: match a good, honest yarn by someone you really like with a terrific pattern from a friend you admire, and you’re bound to be happy. And happiness of this sort is exactly what ethical elegance means to me!

How about you? What’s your favorite yarn-pattern match up?

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