Our second street mending event was bigger than the first. Perfect!
So many people took part…
So many different kinds of mending and stitching.
Such a pleasure to see everyone who came!
Please do join us next time… and if you would like to see a great little video of this action, here is the place to look!
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I’m in a phase of Extinction Rebellion crafting. Folks have begun to ask me to make/repair/amend things, and I keep thinking up projects, too. It seems a good application of my skills. This banner went along to an event where it was confiscated by the police outside SANTOS. If you’re interested, you can see it in use here. It was torn so thoroughly and in so many places it seemed like there must have been a tug of war–but I was there and saw no such thing happen. On closer inspection, metal eyelets had been set into what looks like an old bed sheet. That was never going to end well!
I added massive patches onto the back in (relatively) sympathetic colours (more fabric saved from landfill); pinned and then machine stitched them into place, and then machine stitched the casing at the bottom in place so that the chain that has been threaded through it to hold the banner down a bit in wind, will stay put. Just as well I warmed up on making a quilt recently! This banner is absolutely huge.
Having mended it, I made it a nice sturdy bag from my stash of unloved upholstery fabrics.
I followed up this mending with some amending–adding these rather beautifully painted words onto three banners with flames painted on them, so that they can be put to future good use.
And… some more patches, referring to the recent statement by Antonio Guterres, Head of the UN, that the most recent IPCC report is ‘Code Red for Humanity’. Deep breath. I’m focusing on all we can save.
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We have begun participating in a research project on circular economy households, that will be a PhD thesis. It is such a lovely idea, and the research methodology relies, in part, on photography. These are some of the images I’ve sent the rather delightful, very smart and committed researcher.
Bread rising, full of candied peel I’ve made from citrus peels that would otherwise go straight to compost. Bread that doesn’t come in a plastic bag!
Some of the pre-loved bottles that have housed the ginger beer of last summer, waiting for warmer weather. They have been refilled many times at our house and travelled the neighbourhood going to other people’s homes, picnics and dinners.
Uh, oh! The pages of books that have come into our street library and haven’t made the cut. These are culled and used as sheet mulch. They will return to soil in our garden. I hate to say it, but sometimes even books have to go. Books that are so racist or sexist that they won’t be circulating through the support of our household. Proselytising materials. Ancient texts that are so out of date they are really being dumped. Sorry, but there it is. Even though I love books!
Jars that have come from Buy Nothing and will soon be filled with olives.
The crockery bank glasses drawer, ready to travel to events or parties. IT hasn’t travelled much during the pandemic.
My second hand iron on the iron board cover I made from a friend’s mother’s stashed ticking after her mother died. That ticking would have come off a mattress her very thrifty mother unpicked and saved.
The ever loving tea towel collection. Home made bread travelling to other folks’ homes often gets a nice, clean tea towel that isn’t a favourite (in case its journey is long or it enters the vast collection of travelling teatowels, never to return!) So that is a loaf of sourdough ready to be delivered to a friend.
Random beautiful wattle.
Scraps from vegetables ready to be made into stock.
Parsley, seedlings and aloe vera going from our household to other people via the Grow Free cart.
These are some of our stories about reducing waste. Feel free to share yours!
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To book a ticket, please go here. To see more about what is happening over the three days of the festival visit the programme.
Anyone will be welcome to attend any of the sessions running during the weekend regardless of whether they have registered. If a session is over-subscribed though due to Covid limitations for our “indoor” marquee spaces, preference will be given to those who have RSVP’ed.
This is a grass roots community event. Please support us by donating to our crowdfunding campaign:https://chuffed.org/project/festival-of-climate-action
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This quilt is quite some years old now, and it had sprung a hole.
A few hand stitches fixed it!
It took a lot more for my bike trailer to get repaired. I asked my Dad if he would be my advisor, but that I was happy to do the work. He said he would be happy to mentor me, but after the first discussion he decided it needed to be repaired at his house. I’d already done some of the work of taking it apart, but then–he just finished the job!
Here it is, before. I bought this trailer new from the chap who made it, in the 1980s. It has done a lot of kilometres. In the early years I used it to haul ingredients from Gaganis where it was cheapest to buy them, to the place I lived in, in Prospect in those days. I was making cakes for a living and I wasn’t making much! I would deliver the cakes in it as well–I had a cunning system involving some stout cardboard and a lot of cleaned empty tin cans, that let me transport them in several layers. These days, I am mostly hauling guerilla gardening supplies in it: plants, cardboard, scraps for composting and mulch.
This is a stepped through sequence of mending my jeans back pocket. I’ve decided what to cut out, then decided what shape and size of patch I need. I needed to rip part of the seam holding the pocket to the jeans, to get the patch in position and turn its edges under.
Finally, I restitched the pocket seam into position. And there you have it.
Here is the second knee mend on these same jeans. I love wearing them but they were second hand when I started wearing them and they are not such sturdy quality that they will last forever. Meanwhile…
Then, there was a pile of reusable nappies. They needed new velcro. I used some of Joyce’s stash and replaced it. These are going to a family expecting their first child. I’d keep going, but maybe that’s enough for one post? Because the mending rolls on 🙂
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Dear Readers, If you are local (Adelaide) and would like to hang out with menders and stitchers (or learn to mend and how to thread a needle), we will be hanging out at the Festival of Climate Action this Sunday 17 October 2021, 1-3 pm. We will be in Tarntanyangga (Victoria Square). Look for us on the hay bales, and bring whatever you would like to mend, or join a collaborative stitching project. Full programme here!
You can find the full programme for the Festival here.
Here is what the Festival has to say about where we are at:
Join us for a family-focused weekend where we can connect, learn and prepare to take action to tackle the climate crisis together. If you’re new to the world of climate activism or already deeply involved then this is the space for you.The festival begins on Friday 15th October after the next School Strike 4 Climate rally. Throughout the 3 days there will be talks, workshops, music, food trucks, art activities and more.
The scale and pace of change to our climate has almost no precedent.
The last time CO2 was this high in our atmosphere was 2 million years ago when rich forests covered the Antarctic.
Immediate, deep and sustained change is needed.
To do this, we need everyone: old and young, people of faith, parents, business leaders, politicians, artists, you.
The latest report from the world’s leading climate scientists is clear: there is still hope.
There is still a narrow path to avoid a climate catastrophe.
But only if we act fast.
From now on every fraction of a degree matters.
Every tonne of carbon matters.
Every day matters.
Every choice matters.
The decisions we take and the actions we make today will resonate for centuries. The next few years will be the most consequential in human history.
What we do with it is up to each of us.
In the lead up to the COP 26 Climate Conference in Glasgow, come along to learn what you can do, be inspired and connect with others who want to make a difference.We choose to come together because we can – on behalf of all those in isolation throughout the country and the world.And we choose to come together because we must.
This festival is a collaboration between many partners. Come and join in!
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I screenprinted some more patches. This time, the endangered spotted quoll. This is artwork that has been given to Extinction Rebellion by the artist.
These are printed onto fabric that is otherwise on its way to landfill, from op shops and the local Buy Nothing group. Then I made some patches specifically for one of our local Extinction Rebellion actions focused on SANTOS.
This is my classic hand cut stencil. I start with unloved wallpaper from the Adelaide Remakery and the XR font, and then move to using it with a screen. This is the way I learned to screen print in the 1980s. Basic, but it does the job!
And here is the Greenwash Cleanup Crew, preparing to clean the windows at SANTOS HQ!
If you would like more of the story, check it out here–and see the cleanup crew hard at work!
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This planting in a culvert has been going pretty well. It used to be just weeds and trash and smashed glass! The way to keep it getting poisoned or attracting unwanted attention is to keep it looking good and keep it weeded. I can’t keep up weeding on all the patches, but I do what I can. On the left: what I took going out. On the right: what I brought home.
This is a short sedge planting mission (with a stop to collect glass jars from a Buy Nothing neighbour!) that is the jars in a pannier while I’m hauling sedges and mulch in the trailer… and rubbish back home again. There was a spot by the railway line that became a pool when the winter rains really came down. Eucalypt seedlings had wet feet too long and all but one died. I went and planted sedge there instead. So far it’s going well.
Here is a picture of the same spot after rain, a bit later!!!
This is the local park where we have planted so many sedges in the creek bank, when the creek is really running and quite high. And the sedges are submerged, holding the creek bank, we hope!
This winter there was so much rain, there was an actual waterfall at Morialta falls, where often I have seen it dry.
Meanwhile, back home, sedge propagating using starts from the Mother, growing well in the culvert at the top of the post.
Another mission to the sedge planting by the railway line, this time, mulching. My sister gave me the bamboo she wanted to cut from her place. I saved the bamboo and took the leaves and such (plus cardboard) over to this spot for mulch. Then home with rubbish. The cardboard isn’t visible under the layer of mulch (except when dogs or people lift it up). But it is there, helping suppress weeds.
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A friend has been propagating kangaroo apples and investigating how they were used by First Nations people in our locations as well as what science has revealed about them. I offered to take some of them and somehow ended up with, oh… thirty! So we loaded up and went to plant.
Some went in by the railway line. Then we went to the park, where some fine birds were sighted!
By the end, the usual empty pots, and collected rubbish.
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