Local & Bespoke

I mend so much that people ask me often enough: when is it time to stop? I’m currently trying to participate in #seasonofcareandrepair (which is #winterofcareandrepair in the other hemisphere). I’ve found that there are a lot of things in my wardrobe at almost every level, that are languishing in my wardrobe after, say, ten years. Or twenty. Most have already been repaired, sometimes many times. But really, it is time for me to let them go. So I am trying to work out the best possible way to responsibly deal with the end of their lives as garments. 

When I cut things up, the seams and hems usually end up in my ball of “string”. I use it to tie things up in the garden. Sometimes, I tie dye bundles with it (but it’s hard to pull tightly enough for that to be an ideal application). Sometimes I use it for bundles that don’t need special string. Here, I’ve tied bundles of a friend’s fabric that I gave away for her on Buy Nothing–with the recipient’s name written on a scrap of rag.

I have a bag in the room where I sew, which slowly fills up with small scraps (including small pieces of dead garment), that become stuffing for floor cushions when enough accumulates.

I salvage reusable parts of garments, like buttons and elastic, if in good enough condition for re-use.

With a 5 year old to sew for, quite a bit of quality elastic from garments that are tearing away from the waistband, has gone into little cotton pants she will wear. Buttons go from one garment to another. I stopped buying new buttons years ago, after reading about one place in China where most buttons in the world were made, and the way that dyes and such were poisoning the water there–and from the water, to people, land, fish and every other living thing. In my own country, I could see how many buttons were accumulating in op shops where they were clearly being cut from garments sent for rag. One place I used to go, volunteers would sew them onto pieces of card. What dedication! I give buttons away to new menders as I teach them how to sew on a button. And even so, I have an enormous collection as both sides of my family and my in laws have given their ancestral buttons to me. People in my family have too many clothes.

But these are applications only for parts of garments I can’t otherwise use. Here, I’ve teamed up dead t shirts (cotton knit) as one side of a cleaning cloth, with dead table cloth, or a patch made with old sheet on the other side. Smaller parts of t shirts and other dead knit garments become small round cleaning pads (double layer, overlocked together). These can be used in any place a person would use a folded tissue or a cotton pad–and washed and re used.

This is one of the garments I have set free. I made it years ago and have worn it most days through most winters, for many years. It is the kind of garment that drives your partner a bit nuts and causes friends and acquaintances to make jokes. Well, obviously it is my relationship with the garment and not the garment alone that is the butt of the joke! I made it from a piece of Harris Tweed I found in an op shop, complete with the cardboard with their logo on it, in the cellophane bag. It had apparently been purchased directly from Harris Tweed Shop and never sewn into anything. Moths had nibbled it, but it was so sturdy anyway, I didn’t ever repair those thinned places. It took years of washing and wear to become at all soft. Finally, it had become so threadbare… that I have soaked it in water and put it inside one of our worm farms so that it can rejoin the soil.

It looks to me as though I used polyester overlocking thread. In my experience worms and microbes will take the rest, and I will be able to pull the overlocking thread out and send it to landfill. Which is a reason not to use polyester overlocking thread, of course. But here we all are, still always learning and figuring out what not to do, and living with prior choices. Me included.

I have regretfully let this lovely hemp shirt go, too. I bought it in a country town in New South Wales many years ago, maybe twenty. It was green. I eventually overdyed it black, twice. Over time, it became clear there was a thinner place in the fabric at the upper back that might have been a flaw in the fabric when it was woven. Hemp is such tough stuff it never tore there. But it has now faded from dye job number 3; and worn through on all its edges and many seams. I cut it up, turned it into cleaning cloths where I could, saved the lovely buttons, and turned what remained into string or stuffing. As you can see, I turned a holey tea towel to cleaning cloths the same day.

As things disintegrate, I’m trying to rigorously cut them apart into reusable, salvageable and stuffing!

As I go, I’m also mending things that are really well past their years of looking decent. This shirt, for instance, I still love wearing to garden and for filthy jobs. But it must have encountered a caustic chemical (that created many holes in otherwise intact cloth) and has some brutal mends, and a lot of them, on it! I mended it more rather than give up on it because the fabric is still (mostly) sturdy and it still makes a great gardening shirt. And I still enjoy it. And I had three days of rubbish collection to do and wanted a comforting companion. I reckon I acquired this second hand at least 25 years ago.

But the feeling has been growing in me, that I have a lot of clothes that are made of linen, that need to go. Shirts that have rubbed right through in places that do not seem like obvious wear spots, like sleeves. Two so threadbare they are pretty much see through these days. Maybe I should try to take a pattern from one of them, and make another. Pants that have been patched and worn and patched and worn… and that I now feel worried about wearing out of the house because one day the seat will rip right through!!

These, for instance. I wore them last week and realised that the reason they have been in the drawer and not on my body this summer is because I don’t trust them to hold up for the bike ride in and out of town. Their days of being best are far behind them. The patches on the inside are not keeping up with the wear on the inner thighs any more. So tonight, I’m going to cut them up with great sadness. This fabric was found, not bought. I loved facing that waistband with that fun floral print. The zipper was once yellow. Now only the plastic and metal parts are yellow, the rest is white. The fabric is a completely different shade than when I made them. I see I used an old favourite shirt I’d finally pensioned off for interfacing. And what fun to have that home made bias binding at the cuffs, made from an op shop tie! I have sewn up that hem more than once. Anyway. I think I have an idea for how these much worn, much laundered and much loved linen garments can live on in a different form in my life. So I’m going to admit that it is time, start the process of deconstruction, and move them to another stage. The final trigger was having a creative idea for re-use but also, wearing another pair to teach mending today. I took extra pants just in case.  Which made clear to me that I can’t trust this other pair of trousers anymore! And after the workshop was over, I got into the car with my phone in my pocket, and there was an almighty RIP!!!

This is the view from the waistband, with the side seam ripped apart and my fingers poking through. I have laundered them and they are drying, ready for the big SNIP. It may be time to make more summer pants, or make better friends with the ones I’ve been wearing less. Thanks, dear reader, for keeping me company as I let go of these trousers. They have been my companions in settings where I tried very hard to put across an image of myself as a professional woman, no matter how scared or inadequate I felt at times. Someone who could be trusted to wear pale pants and not spill beetroot juice on them. Someone who was cool as a cucumber and trustworthy, in cream linen. This last pair, I bought out of necessity for an appropriate summer garment when I had just been “promoted” to the highest point in my life in day job. I thank them for their service. We have both moved on. Let’s see what comes next for us both!

And because metaphors … this is a ladybird larva. Nymph? Anyway. I hope by now this little creature that landed on my ear in the garden one day, has grown wings and emerged as a ladybird and has lived or is living their best ladybird life. Let’s see what becomes of my pants and the associated shirts!

We use pot holders (or “pot grabbers”) a lot in this household, which eventually means that they wear out or become impossible to clean (those stains are scorched in)! I usually make them with a few layers of old towel in the middle but these have a couple of layers of “dog blanket”; known to you and me as a woollen blanket that has been washed inappropriately and turned to felt.

I just found this post in my drafts folder–the pot holders have been in use a long while already! Two are made from a piece of wonderful 100% hemp fabric dyed with leaves. The binding is leftover from making a quilt. The yellow one is made from an op shop teatowel that had a stain I just could not remove and did not like. Binding cut from scrap after making my granddaughter a hat. And the red and white is a beautiful fabric bought from the designer at Bowerbird markets years ago. I intended it for a sleeveless shirt but it has been turned into many precious small projects instead. And there you have it! Pot holders. Now that I have hand sewed binding down on entire bed sized quilts, I don’t feel as intimidated by sewing binding to a pot holder, or trying very hard indeed to find another design solution!

I deal with waste. Quite a bit of it. I do litter pick, and because of where I live there is quite a bit of it to pick up.

I also pick up things that I think I could salvage. This is two folding chairs from someone’s hard rubbish. And here they are in parts rescued for re use or recycling.

And these are the tools I used for the job! I will use that canvas (which was once black!!) and the wood will become stakes. The metal and hard plastic will be recycled. And finally, a small ode to my tools. I didn’t realise I’d need to use the hacksaw quite so much for this job!

This is a bag that appeared in a shopping trolley full of all kinds of things. Some were taken or thrown on the ground almost immediately. I sorted some into rubbish and recycling. This, I took apart.

The webbing and zippers and such (top right) can’t be saved, but a lot of the component canvas parts I can use. Next stop, the laundry.

I also look for specific kinds of waste I think I can use. I pulled this enormous billboard sized vinyl banner (it was a chemist advertising billboard) out of a dumpster because I thought I could use it for a climate action banner. Then I got a request for a game of Twister (do you remember Twister?) on a climate action theme. So here I am sewing screen printed patches onto it for its next life as a game. There is a LOT of it left for other uses.

Our household participated in some PhD research about waste reduction and the circular economy. The researcher conceptualised these kinds of activities as “waste work” and had a lot of very interesting questions about who does it and how it is shared. I have questions of my own about the fact that I feel drawn to bring home old folding chairs and deconstruct them! However–on a global level, most waste work is done by people in the global South, and by people of colour living in poverty. I don’t think I’m too special to shoulder some of what can be done in my corner of town.

It’s a good time of year to be out planting still… Here I am setting out with some plants and some soil to help them in tough patches along the railway.

This is my trusty steed. I’ve grown to really appreciate what this retro cargo bike can do!

In with the plants, including these Old Man Saltbush (Atriplex Nummularia) I was generously given by a great propagator.

In with creeping boobialla (Myoporum Parvifolium)–this is the narrow- “red”- leafed form.

Then I stopped off at the local cafe for coffee grounds on my way home and just piled the rest in on top of them!

Then here is another trip–this time mulching an established spot I planted many years ago. It has become weedy lately. So I did a little sheet mulching and cleared leaves from the culvert to use as the mulch layer.

I did some hand weeding too. It’s a start!

And on the way home, with that nice big bucket (and gardening gloves), I cleared up some rubbish someone in dire straits had left behind, and a cupboard door dumped nearby as well. I have realised that I always feel like I’m making a positive contribution doing these things. Sometimes people say things to me as they pass, most often “that’s not your job, the council should do that”. Maybe it should, but the council is collecting the recycling and the waste that will go to landfill. I would rather deal with the weeds I can without poison (as the council will poison every so often) and keep the area near where I love free of rubbish as much as I can… and not treat these things as always for someone else to do. Care for the land and living things around us is everyone’s business, I think.

Just across the way from one patch that is thriving, is a patch that is under a completely different regime of care. I would guess this is because it is managed by the railways and not the showgrounds. It gets a lot of poisoning. A few things, including kangaroo apples (the shrubs in the distance) have made it. They die back when poisoned but they haven’t died so far, having been planted in, perhaps, 2021.

I have planted this area out twice, once with a bunch of friends and once by myself. It looks to me as though the poison comes from the railway corridor side (hence the survivors being over close to the kerb). The extent of the poisoning is such that my current strategy is to plant a few more hardy plants up close against the ones that are surviving. One of those is a grevillea winpara gem (I think) that has planted itself in an entirely unsuitable spot, close to the bike path. I’m leaving it there since it is alive and nowhere near its potential final size–and may just be a small relative of the 2 metre sized shrub/tree I have in mind, looking at those leaves.

Here is the same patch after some planting, mulching and cutting back of branches overhanging the path. The grevillea is in the foreground, its foliage a sad yellow, but growing anyway.

Here is the sophisticated mulch collecting system. I also chop up the material that I prune off, and add it to the mulch layer. This area looks so alkaline and has so little soil, every addition is worth having to help it build some soil. I’m hoping that the poisoner will start to see that this area is no longer weedy and actually populated with native plants, one day. I am still pondering whether a sign would help or hurt. Sometimes plant guards and stakes create trouble for little plants, and this area is a strong case, where I have had trees pulled out along with their stakes on several occasions, and a sign attached with cable ties removed. So hard to know!

And here, I’ve added some ruby saltbush into another patch further along in an attempt to create an understorey.

My sweetheart is the kind of human who loves to wear overalls, and loves to be in the shed. I made a lot of pairs of overalls for other people in recent years, but none for her. Eventually, she was keen for her own pair. These are The Harlene, from Merchant and Mills. I have to say that the pattern is beautifully written. I enjoyed the level of care in the instructions and the amount of care that they invited me to take in construction. I had some serious trouble with the top stitching and have since had my machine serviced! But the Harlenes have gone into the shed now and their deficits (from my point of view) are not a problem for the the recipient, as is so often the case!

I’m hoping that this very sturdy cotton drill will last a good, long time. And next time, I promise I will accept the reality that sliders (the hardware on the straps) do NOT come in a range of sizes, and modify the width of the straps to fit the sliders available! I did not go for fancy hardware on these, I sent my sweetheart to Adelaide Leather and Saddlery, where resources for mending and making all manner of things are to be found for reasonable prices and in an amazing assortment. They do not pay me to advertise for them, and they do not know that I am writing about them–but for local-to-me folks, this place is a fabulous resource I hope will stay in business.

The spoon carving project seems to have a lot of fits and starts. Perhaps this is just the way that beginning a new skill can be. The jump from no skills at all, to learning how to keep yourself safe, find the materials and tools you need, learn how to get and keep your tools sharp, how to shape and carve, how to manage the way the new activity impacts your body and where the time and patience come from for going up the steep side of the learning curve–well, it takes a bit! Earlier in the year, I recognised that the main barrier to learning spoon carving is my lack of mastery of the art of sharpening my tools. If I could sharpen my carving tools, that would mean I could sharpen kitchen knives and gardening tools like secateurs a lot better, in addition to making spoon carving better and safer. So I committed myself to treating learning to sharpen tools as a key skill set. Sometimes I’d sit down to sharpen my main two knives and treat that as the work of the day (spoon wise), then carve next day.

We also decided to declare the last of the birch trees dead, and begin to cut it down, with some help from friends. So I had a good bit of birch wood to work with. And I could see that the axe work needed to create a billet (a rectangle of wood without bark and such on it) and then a spoon blank (where the blunt shape of the spoon emerges ready to be refined with a knife) was a separate thing I needed to get a lot better at. I even decided to buy a second hand mallet when I was in Warrnambool and got one that has been home made and well used, and will be much easier to use than the chunk of tree branch I had been using to tap my axe.

All this thought and then sitting down pretty much every day for a few weeks, resulted in some spoons!

I realised after spending a lot of time and thought carving a series of three, that I was getting better at the side profile of the spoon (rather than it being flat, having the kind of shape that makes a spoon easier and lovelier to use) but that I was tilting the bowl of the spoon in precisely the wrong direction. My friends, that is what learning consists in, at some stages of the journey!

I also learned that I like carving a dessert spoon kind of size and do not like creating a teaspoon kind of size, and I slowed down a lot when I had side branches to work with, not big enough for my preferred size. And I did some work to research sharpening, practised a lot, and then stopped for no apparent reason! It might be time to get back to it. Because it was rather delightful, and I have been gifted some cherry wood and it is waiting for me!

Oh dear. Not only does this post have photos taken indoors at night, it has toes that have crept into the photo, poorly focused photos and plain old bad photos! I offer it as proof that I do throw things out!! This pair of pyjamas, known to some as Thai fishing pants, came to me second hand, from my daughter. Many years ago. They were once black with some kind of subtle print intended to suggest a more complex weave than they actually have. But, they were always loose and 100% cotton, and that’s enough for a good bit of nightwear.

At the time I took this photo, they had 7 patches on them, and a new tear. I’d patched them in red, yellow, a print, red, and plum. On the inside and the outside, by hand and by machine. And this was the day I decided to cut them up. They made nice, soft rag and some cushion stuffing. They had no more to give! And that, my friends, is why the photo cannot be remedied. The garment is gone. In its place, I made a pattern from this pair and turned a glorious piece of fabric from my friend’s stash (thank you Mace!) into a lovely new pair of pyjamas… and here is a fairly awful photo of them!