Happy Newvember!

I am really excited to be involved with so many resourceful events and initiatives this month helping us to make the most of what we already have, be less wasteful and prolong or breathe new life into our belongings (and mindsets!) I hope you can join Fabrications at one of the following events! 

Hackney Fixers proudly presents 'The BIG Fix' 

Hackney's first festival of fixing! At St Mark's Church, Dalston, Saturday 21st November, 11am - 4pm

There is an impressive line up of experienced fixers to help you and teach you how to repair all kinds of items: electrical goods, electronics, clothing, chairs, bikes and more! Start getting ready with your stuff! 

Fabrications: Bring along an item of clothing to refresh. Learn patching, darning, sewing and alterations.

The Restart Project: Their fixers work with you to repair your gardgets (including mobile phones, laptops, printers, kitchen appliances and more!)

Hackney Bike Workshop: Fix your bicycle. Safety check, tyre check & pump up. Brake & gear adjustment & lubrication.

The School of Stuff: Chair repair surgery. Get sdvice and learn techniques for fixing your chair.

Traid: Protect your winter wardrobe, make a natural origami moth deterrent 

Eco Active: Make useful wallets, bags & beads from recycled materials.

Sugru: Demos and ideas on ways to use this amazing 'mouldable glue' or '21st Century duck tape!' which has become a globable fixing phenomenum - manufactured in Hackney!

Sustainable Hackney and Hackney Council's recycling team will also be on hand to provide information on recycling, waste prevention and re use.

 

 The Upcycling Academy is back! This time we will be at the Christmas Bust 'Craftacular' 

at York Hall, Bethnal Green, Sunday 22nd November, 11am - 5pm

'Craftacular' is one of London's largest and finest indie maker events. 'The Upcycling Academy' is an educational model created by Barley Massey (Fabrications) in conjunction with Traid, War on Want and The Craftivist Collectrive. Our aim is to start conversations and feel inspired to adjust our actions through hands on learning into textile waste, creative upcycling and better fashion industry practises.
 

Create a sweater bobble hat with Traid – 12-2pm – £5 – book here
Customise a Christmas jumper with Fabrications – 2-4pm – FREE* (bring your own jumper or Traid will have some to prchase before the workshop)
Fuse activism with craft and write a secret scroll with Craftivist Collective – 3- 5pm – FREE

Up next is TRAID's  #SecondHandFirst week which celebrates the power of second-hand to change the world by keeping the resources we already have in use for longer. It was launched by TRAID in 2014 and their key aim is to increase the number of people committing to wearing and sourcing more of their clothes (and other resources) second-hand, rather than new. The week will be packed full of events and actions, both in the UK and across the globe, to connect you to the huge environmental and social benefits of second-hand. Join Fabrications for our special #SecondHandFirst 'Darn it! Patch it! PARTY  at Fabrications,  Thursday 26th November, 6.30 - 9pm

Want to 'Refresh your Wardrobe' and unlock it's value? This is a regular class at Fabrications, because we love to pass on clothing care & repair techniques and inspiration all year round! Check out our CALENDAR for up and coming workshops and events! 

Meet the Maker - It's David A Mumford!

I've not posted up a 'Meet the Maker' interview in a while, so thought it time I did so! This month's featured maker is David A Mumford, who I have known for many years but have had the privilege of working directly with at Fabrications over the last year both selling a selection of his upcycled fashion accessories and developing a range of sewing classes with him. Formerly one of the designers at Junky Styling, well known for their pioneering and creative approach to garment reinventions.

David has 2 classes coming up at Fabrications:

'Introduction to using a sewing machine & upcycling" on Sunday 21st June and 'Transform a man's shirt into a summer bomber jacket" on Sunday 26th July.

BM: Tell me a little about your design background?

DAM: Since I was a teenager I have had a passion for making clothes. It all began from not being able to afford to buy the clothes that I wanted to wear, and being able to express my own individual identity. I highjacked my Mothers sewing machine and started altering garments that I purchased at jumble sales and charity shops. This has led to a career in fashion that spans four decades.

BM: What are your favourite textiles to upcycle and why?

DAM: I enjoy upcycling all materials/garments as its always a challenge to find the best way of re-creating them, bringing them up to date and giving them a new lease of life. Men's suits and shirts are great, because they have lots of pockets and fastenings that you can re use.

BM: How do you find upcycling differs to traditional methods of garment making?

DAM: Upcycling differs because you are working with materials that already have a 3D form, and to a certain extent less restricted by the rules of traditional garment construction, enabling you to find your own methods of making and designing by experimentation. 

BM: What are you working on at the moment?

DAM: I am currently designing and producing a ready to wear collection of upcycled clothing under my new label D.A.M I also accept private bespoke commissions.  I frequently run a series of workshops in schools, colleges, as well as Fabrications to share my knowledge and expertise in Upcycling. This, promotes creativity and extends the life expectancy of already manufactured clothing.

BM: Having worked within the fashion industry for over 20 yrs, do you think upcycling offers a creative solution to reducing the environmental and social impacts of 'fast' fashion?

You can keep recycling/upcycling pieces of clothing over and over again. Well loved garments can always become something new and fresh. With a little imagination, you can create something inspiring and beautiful that you or any one else would never want to part with and send off to a landfill.

Tips & Tricks on hosting your very own 'Fashion Hackathon'

On Saturday 25^th April I was fortunate to be involved alongside ‘Love your Clothes’ at  Clotho’s first ‘Fashion Hackathon’. Although I’ve been upcycling for many a year now the concept of a fashion hackathon was new to me. The Clotho girls informed us that they had drawn inspiration from computer ‘Hackathons’ they had attended , where computer wizards and hobbits gather in a large room and form teams that then build programmes, apps etc together in 24 hours! Their idea was to take all the clothes that they were unable to list on their clothing exchange website due to rips, broken zips, unravelling hems etc and for participants to turn them into new and beautiful items in a ‘sustainable sewing factory’. 
  
So I set up my machines and boxes of threads, scissors, haberdashery and we set design challenges – theme of festival fashion, labels to be worn on the outside (as to think about where and by whom the original garment was made) Working collectively, creating change / transformation and the teams set to work!
It was a lively day and participants fully embraced the challenges, coming up with really inventive ‘fashion hacks’ and working together to realise their designs.

So I thought I’d encourage you to have your own fashion hackathons at home!

  Here are my tips and tricks to consider when approaching your own ‘Fashion Hacks’:

- Make the most of existing fasteners

- Holes & wear are an opportunity for transformation!

- Mix & match and fuse different items together

- Create ‘multifunctional’ garments

- Play with pattern

Re working your old clothes is fun and personal. It’s important to tap into your own creativity and sense of style. Recognize the potential and look at your old clothes from a different perspective! Some basic sewing skills are necessary. If you have no experience or are new to sewing, I offer lots of accessible classes at my studio ‘Fabrications’ in Hackney, East London.

Thank you to Fabrications students for allowing me to share your creations!

Here are my tips and tricks to consider when approaching your own ‘Fashion Hacks’:

- Make the most of existing fasteners

- Holes & wear are an opportunity for transformation!

- Mix & match and fuse different items together

- Create ‘multifunctional’ garments

- Play with pattern

Re working your old clothes is fun and personal. It’s important to tap into your own creativity and sense of style. Recognize the potential and look at your old clothes from a different perspective! Some basic sewing skills are necessary. If you have no experience or are new to sewing, I offer lots of accessible classes at my studio ‘Fabrications’ in Hackney, East London.

Thank you to Fabrications students for allowing me to share your creations!

 

 

Making the most of existing fasteners……I love working with men’s shirts. Not only is the fabric stable and easy to work with they have lots of buttoning!  Often buttons on shirts are set to similar spacing, so you can button different shirts together to make a new garment or a bell tent if you keep going! Fortunately I reigned myself in to this ‘cut & paste’ collaged dress and stuck to 3 shirts! Cutting on this dress was minimal; the shaping is created through a belted gathered waist band and elastication half way down the sleeves. You could add darts on the top shirt for more fitting.

Holes and wear n tear are an opportunity for transformation…..Appliqué (or patching) is my friend. I have a number of favourite jeans that are works in progress, as another hole appears on goes a new patch! This can be done discreetly with similar fabric or show off - make your patching stand out in a crowd! I enjoy making patches from other old clothes or textiles to create motifs or ‘cheat embroideries’.

I tend to machine on my patches using a ‘3 step zig zag’ (this is stronger than a regular zig zag) or a ‘Free motion’ / quilting foot so I can sketch / squiggle around and over the patch. If using a lightweight fabric as your patch, tack some other fabric on the back to reinforce.  Take off the removable front part of the machine to give you a narrower working area. Trouser legs can get tricky and on skinny jeans you may have to open up the seam for access and then stitch back together!

Mix & match and fuse different items together…..Sometimes you might have 2 garments that just aren’t working for you or they are a bit tired and worn out! Think about combining them! Louise took an old jumper and cut it down the front and cut off the cuffs and border from an old cardigan and over locked the components together to make a new 2 tone cardigan! If you don’t have an over locker use the ‘overcast’ or stretch stitch on your machine or slip one over the other (for a thicker cardigan!)

It is possible to mix different fabric textures and weights but it does require more care and preparation tacking etc to help prevent movements!

Create ‘multifunctional’ garments….My friend and colleague David Mumford is a very clever garment upcyclist. (He also mentored at Clotho’s Fashion Hackathon)

Here he is at Fabrications teaching students the marvels of sewing and upcycling (using men’s shirts)  He used to design with the fashion brand ‘Junky Styling’ who were well known for their clever garment reinventions. Garments that can be worn in different ways are likely to be used more often over a longer period of time. 

   

Play with pattern……is also a lot of fun! Sometimes the most unexpected combination of pattern designs harmonises and works!

Here is an idea from another friend and colleague – Tree from ‘Stitchless TV’. Take 2 vintage tourist scarves to make a raglan Prada style top. (pictures taken from summer workshops at Fabrications) Tree has a unique talent in taking high fashion ideas and simplifying them down into accessible ‘speed stitching’, free style cutting projects for beginners and other home sewers. Many of the projects on her TV channel use old clothes – well worth checking her out!

I hope you are feeling inspired to host your own ‘Fashion Hackathon’ at home. Please share your creations with us,we’d love to see what you re-make! 

It's Traid's #Secondhandfirst week!

I was invited to guest write on Traid’s blog this week, so thought I'd post up a copy with a few more pictures on my own blog as well! This week Traid has initiated the first hopefully of many  #Secondhandfirst week, jam packed with interesting activities encouraging us to take the #Secondhandfirst Pledge. It is a great great initiative which also highlights the ways we buy our clothes and a reminder of all the environmental and social problems in the textile and garment supply chain. We all have the capacity to affect these problems in positive ways as conscious consumers and citizens.

The volume of textile and clothing waste in the UK is quite staggering (Source WRAP: 350,000 tonnes of used clothing goes to landfill every year. 30% of our unwanted clothes goes to landfill. 60% of UK households have unwanted clothes & textiles at home) We are throwing away or just hoarding valuable resources!!

In the ‘Hierarchy of waste’; reduce and reuse are at the top of the pyramid. For me this way of thinking and being is very easy. I was brought up on a diet of second hand being careful. Hand me downs (or hand me ups!) was the norm without any shame or stigmas that today’s youngsters seem to feel. As a teenager (and continues to be so!) sourcing clothes from charity shops was fun, a great source of individuality, re styling possibilities and affordable! I still take advantage of Traid’s famous £2 sales!! As I enter my mid years I also appreciate the emotional durability of second hand, especially items from older relatives which hold memories, stories and history. Many vintage clothes were made to last too.

Care and repair is an important part of making our old clothes go further and re connecting with the joy in fixing and looking after items. Tired old clothes gives us an opportunity for re styling an item giving that buzz of wearing something completely different and you had a hand in making it happen! I have observed a skill shortage and lack of confidence in being able to do this. Back in the day these skills would have been passed on through the family or taught in school. This has motivated me to run regular classes in learning to sew and refreshing your wardrobe through simple alterations, mending, darning & embellishing and these classes are popular which is heartening!

Upcycling adds value through creativity and design. Items too damaged for re use present an opportunity for transformation. A few years ago I iinitiated ‘The Upcycling Academy’ to give young people the opportunity to experience a ‘Productive Line’ to re imagine a different approach to fashion, to create rather than consume. Partnering with Traid, War on Want & the Craftivist Collective, we each added ‘Values’ along the line.

Taking inspiration from ‘Cradle to Cradle’ thinking, imagine a garment circulating through many owners in its lifetime? (Truthfully many garments never reach their full potential in relation to resources, energy used to make and distribute the item)

I love the recent trend for Clothes Swapping or its older sister ‘Swishing’. Jo of Mrs Bears Clothes Swap tells me that that she has regulars who use her swaps to ‘rotate their wardrobe’ – brilliant!

Wonderfully TV programmes such as ‘The great British sewing Bee’ which added an upcycling / alteration challenge to the second series and ‘This old Thing’ (the vintage clothes show) have inspired the nation to look at old clothes and lost textile skills with a fresh passion. Even Coronation Street discussed the possibility of an ‘upcycled wedding’! It’s all good!

So now over to you dear reader! Get involved and feel inspired! There are a range of fun activities taking place during #Secondhandfirst week.

My next Fabrications craft club on Thursday 20^th November is a #Secondhandfirst themed evening with a clothes swap upstairs in the shop and revamp / mending session downstairs in the workshop. More information and Booking info.

P.S: All the featured projects in this post use clothing sourced from Traid!

Meet the Maker- it s Rosie Martin of DIY Couture!

I'm enjoying the opportunity to carry out mini interviews with the different makers I am fortunate to be able to work with at Fabrications. In this post I present the wonderful Rosie Martin.

I first met Rosie approx 4 years ago, when she visited the shop to show me her self published 'DIY Couture' garment instruction books. I was really impressed with her well illustrated, clear cut, step by step guides to making your own stylish clothes, without the complications of highly technical patterns. Wow! Really empowering for new stitchers, I thought. I instantly wanted to stock the books and have Rosie teaching her approach at Fabrications.

So subsequently, students have enjoyed learning how to make their own capes, trousers, scater skirts, waistcoats with Rosie s gentle guidance and this month she will be showing how to make a very simple gathered dress (suitable for beginners) or 'Grecian' dress for those of you that have seen Rosie's bumper DIY Couture book, published by Lawrence King (and on sale at Fabrications, of course!)

Barley : What inspired you to first start creating your DIY Couture instruction garment making books?

Rosie : I was a gung ho clothing maker as a teenager and experimented in making clothes without really using sewing patterns. I went through years of trial and error until I started to make clothing that looked socially acceptable – even pleasant – and when people started to comment positively on my clothing my reaction was to preach about the joys of sewing. I often found people were afraid of sewing, thinking it was out of their grasp, and I really wanted people to see that making clothes was in fact an accessible activity, not something you needed a degree to do. That’s how my picture based instructions were born.

Barley : Do you have a favorite garment or item you enjoy making?

Rosie : I love a good colourful bomber jacket and I do own a few too many homemade versions. I’ve designed a really simple jacket without set-in sleeves (instructions in my Laurence Kong book!) so it’s actually quite a fast project, meaning great satisfaction can be reached without too much toil!

Barley : What is your best and worst fabric to stitch with and why?

Rosie : I actually love sewing with sheer (transparent) fabrics as it presents challenges but is really satisfying. I hate sewing velvet. It has a mind of it’s own and mystical power over the sewing machine. I have recently got into applying interfacing and spray starch to fabric to change its essential properties. This means you can transform an unruly fabric into a fabric that does exactly what you tell it to. Ha! No fabric gets one over on me (apart from velvet!)

Barley : A little birdy told me you've been working behind the seams of  the 'Great British Sewing Bee' TV programme...what did you get up to?

Rosie : Ah yes, I have and it has been a lot of fun! I have the great pleasure of working with sewing guru Claire-Louise Hardy, the sewing producer of the ‘Bee. Amongst other things, I do the technical illustrations on the instructions the contestants follow when they are given the first challenge, so if they look confused you can probably blame me.

Barley : What words of advice can you offer new stitchers, who want to make their own clothes but perhaps are not sure about how to go about it?

Rosie : I’ve got a very hands-on approach so I would say pick something you really want to make and make it! There is an amazing world of sewing-support on the internet, so whenever you get stuck just Google your problem and someone out there will have already posted some advice about it on the internet!

To book your place on Rosie's dress making class on Sunday 30th March, visit Fabrications workshop Calendar

Knitting - a space for creation and destruction

This month Fabrications' blog has a special contribution from Jonathan Faiers, reader in fashion and textile theory at Winchester School of Art. Part of this text has been previously published in the essay by Jonathan ‘From Rei Kawakubo to Mark Fast: The Void in Knitting, Or How Formlessness Shaped Up’, in Unravel: Knitwear in Fashion, MOMU, Antwerp, 2011
Jonathan has also published a few books and last month launched his latest book "Dressing Dangerously" - Dysfynctional Fashion in Film (published by Yale University Press ) at Hackney's 'Trampery'.

'Dressing Dangerously' book cover Yale University Press

Since 1982 when Rei Kawakubo instructed her knitting machine operators to loosen some of the screws on their machines so that random holes would be knitted into her sweaters, the distressed or 'unravelled' has taken centre stage on the knitting runway. The radical approach adopted by Kawakubo and her contemporaries was simultaneously indebted to punk’s rejection of conventional formulations of body aesthetics as well as a philosophical exploration of the potential of the void or the 'formless'. Holes in knitting imply chaos and order, destruction and creation, and Kawakubo’s apparent random deployment of them suggested the limitlessness of space. This text will utilise Georges Bataille’s investigation of the term informe (formless), to consider Kawakubo’s ‘lace’ sweater as an operation or process that encourages a dialogue regarding notions of craft (knitting and lace), the complete and the partial, and the dysfunctional as an alternative way of understanding clothing and its relationship to the body.

Image sourced from KnitGrandeur

In the early 1980s the appearance on the European fashion stage of Rei Kawakubo’s work, including garments such as the ‘lace’ sweater, has been well documented. The confusion caused by her work as well as Yohji Yamamoto’s is succinctly expressed by Colin McDowell who notes that: “within one season, they gave French fashion an inferiority complex verging on a communal nervous breakdown; excited hopes and dreams in young British designers and students; panicked the Italians and totally bewildered the Americans.”[i] However, whilst the assessment of the so called Japanese revolution in fashion has naturally centred on the most spectacular/difficult/aesthetic/nihilistic collections (any number of adjectives have been deployed to describe their work according to the prevailing perspective of the commentator), it is perhaps a garment such as the ‘lace’ sweater which most effectively conveys Kawakubo’s approach to making clothes.

Knitting at its most fundamental level is an operation that makes something from nothing. The act of enclosing spaces or more precisely setting up temporary enclosures is after all what the practice of knitting consists of. The exploration of tension, both literally as in the tension of the particular knitting stitch and emotionally when conscious of knitting’s potential to unravel, seems in Kawakubo’s ‘lace’ sweater to be its primary function. Furthermore it can be argued that the demonstration of this tension and other states (which will be discussed shortly), takes precedence over its function as a garment. As a dysfunctional garment, however, the ‘lace’ sweater presents a number of opportunities to explore how knitting relates to other crafts, how it oscillates between fashion and non-fashion and how it intersects with the body. 
                               

Image from 'Unravel - knitwear in fashion' exhibition MOMU, Antwerp 2011

On examining the sweater in more detail it becomes apparent that it is a ‘formless’ garment structurally - it is full of holes that position it as a piece of clothing on the verge of imminent dispersal or collapse, and it is also formless in relation to how it might be worn – there is a superfluous ‘peplum’ hanging below the ribbing, the sleeves cover the hands if not folded back and the larger holes offer the possibility of multiple points of entry for the head and arms. Its holes also undermine one of the most commonly prized attributes of knitting, which is to provide warmth. As is well known mesh, or net-like fabrics (such as knitting) consisting of regular enclosures have an ability to trap air and therefore provide a layer of warmth when worn on the body (the string vest effect), Kawakubo’s sweater with its random larger holes disrupts this, negating its thermal properties and transforms it into a dysfunctional sweater. Of course as can be seen in the illustration the sweater was originally designed to be worn over another garment, which would go some way to restoring its heat generating properties; however it could also be argued that this transforms the sweater into a purely decorative garment divested of its chief function.

Image from StitchDiva's tutorial on how to purposefully drop stitches!

The apparent devaluing of the process of following a pattern, of not ‘dropping a stitch’ and finishing off the garment sought after in hand and machine knitting alike, coupled with the ‘betrayal’ of knitting’s function to keep us warm positions the sweater firmly as fashion rather than knitting. The bewilderment, and in some quarters, anger that garments such as the ‘lace’ sweater generated when first produced suggest that it presented a threat to accepted vestimentary codes, and in addition it exposed the intrinsic formlessness and impermanence that resides at the heart of the craft of knitting. But, as Bataille proposed when discussing Manet’s painting: “To break up the subject and re-establish it on a different basis is not to neglect the subject; so it is in a sacrifice, which takes liberties with the victim and even kills it, but cannot be said to neglect it” [ii] These “liberties” are presumably what the fashion establishment felt could not be taken, but as we have seen Kawakubo’s desire for the imperfect and the accidental that is found in the operation of formlessness has since become part of the language of fashion.

Image from 'Unravel - knitwear in fashion' exhibition MOMU, Antwerp 2011. Thanks to Shady Chronicles Blog

It is perhaps on the level of economy that Kawakubo’s ‘lace’ sweater diverges most significantly from Bataille’s notion of the informe, and provides new insight into the sweater’s titular reference to lace making. Lace, like knitting is a fabric that is constructed from the enclosure of small spaces, but this structural relationship aside, the two crafts differ significantly. Of course both are labour intensive activities, but hand-made lace far outstrips hand knitting in terms of the amount of time taken to produce an equal amount of fabric. This fundamental difference of course results in lace’s most commonly understood quality – its rarity and therefore value. As a result of its costliness the history of lace is both violent and strangely corporeal, littered with murders, and other more bizarre bodily contacts between fabric and flesh. The stories of lengths of lace bound around the body, of being secreted amongst corpses and even inserted underneath the skinned pelts of dogs, all in order to escape the heavy tax duties imposed on lace during the height of its popularity, suggest a discourse that juxtaposes the prized with the worthless similar to Bataille’s consideration of the “movement from refuse to ideal.”[iii]

But Kawakubo’s ‘lace’ sweater is far from refuse, even if it could be argued it is masquerading as such. Its classification as ‘fashion’ elevates it from its contingent knitting groups of the second-hand, the moth-eaten, and the thread-bare and passes from formless knitting to fully formed fashion. As Bataille warns: “In this way formless is not only an adjective having such and such a meaning, but a term serving to declassify, requiring in general that every thing should have a form. What it designates does not, in any sense whatever, possess rights, and everywhere gets crushed like a spider or an earthworm.”[iv] The economy of fashion is such that Kawakubo’s sweater can only survive fleetingly as ‘formless’, its larval stage as an indeterminate form somewhere between knitting and sculpture cannot be allowed and therefore lasts no longer than its initial showing and then is swiftly transformed into its mature form – fashion.                

 Image by Twisted Twee 'Moth patches'

So it would seem that within the fashion industry at least formlessness is never allowed to remain so for long. Rei Kawakubo's 'lace' sweater momentarily seemed to fulfill Bataille's promise of the informe being not only an adjective but also an operation, however her work was swiftly categorised as conceptual fashion, and has become fossilised as such. 'Formless' fashion it seems is not permissible and as Bataille declared: "…does not, in any sense whatever, possess rights, and everywhere gets crushed like a spider or an earthworm."[v] So perhaps it is fitting that the only true architect or designer of the formless in fashion knitting: "… is something akin to a spider of a gob of spittle." – the moth.[vi]

Jonathan's paper "Knitting and Catastrophe" will be published in Issue 12:1 of the Textile Journal of Cloth and Culture alongside a selection of paper from the 'In the Loop' conference. 

[i] Colin McDowell (2000) Fashion Today, p.134.

[ii] Bois & Krauss, p. 21.

[iii] A concept detailed in ‘The Big Toe’ in Allan Stoekl (ed.) (1985) Georges Bataille: Visions of Excess Selected Writings 1927-1939 , pp.20-3.

[iv] Georges Bataille ‘Formless’ in (1995) Encyclopaedia Acephalica, p.51.