The Economics of Clothing Part 3 (Something to think about)

Here's a little food for thought, we're throwing away clothes, lots of them.  And where are they ending up?  In our landfills.  Now the majority of clothing we wear is not natural fiber, in fact it's synthetic, and those kind of clothes don't biodegrade well.  It's such a shame really.  However, I'm not opposed to synthetics completely; they do have a place.  Where would we be without wash and wear that makes our clothes so wonderfully wrinkle free, or the fabrics that keep us dry from the rain that falls so prolifically in the Pacific Northwest, where I live?

There are so many things we can do with clothing once we are ready to discard it.  If it's in good condition, you can donate it a local thrift store.  In fact, some of those places arrange pick up so you can just put it out on your door step and let them take care of carting it off for you.

Another thing you can do with them is reuse them for rags.  If the clothes are really beaten up and have good absorbability, you can use them to dry floors after washing, create mops out of them, dust your house, wash your car.

As well, textile artists often use them in creating new clothing.  Old sweaters can be unraveled and used to make new, more fashionable items.  Buttons and zippers can be removed from old garments and used in the making of new clothing.  You can re-fashion old clothes into new ones with a little more flair or add your own style.  Rag rugs, whether you braid them or hook them can also be made.  I often use old scraps of fabric and up-cycle old items into new useful articles that can be worn, or used for other purposes.

So the next time you are thinking about clearing out your closet of old clothing, remember the garbage can should be your last resort, not the first stop. :D

I'm riding the Up-cycle

Today's project is an interesting use of what was once a pair of pants.  I love to up-cycle things.  That is take something that has lost the ability to be of any use in it's current state, and recreate it in another way.  I had a pair of pants, that got ripped in an unfortunate place.  I could have fixed them, but it would have been obvious, and made the garment look worse not better, so I cut of the legs and created a bag out of it, that I still use today.  It's great, and has pockets just where I want them and it's really sturdy.

Today's project is to make some small pouch bags out of the legs.  I kept them just in case.  I also have an old jacket, the zippers broken and it's misshapen in parts.  However most the pattern on it is beautiful and I'll be using it to embellish the bag.  As well I have an old velvet pillow case that someone had used as a table cloth.  There is candle-wax all over it, and taking it off the fabric is difficult at best because of the nap, however I can cut around the wax and have enough to line the little bags.  I'll be making each one differently, but there will be similar elements to all.

In the above photo you can see a little of the damage on the pillow slip where I tried to remove the wax.  There is still plenty of fabric.

This is a closeup of the pattern on my old jacket, it's got a lot of potential, and is dark black.  I lightened up the picture so the pattern would be clear.  

And as you can tell here, these are my old corduroy's.  They were lovely once and will be lovely again.

So this is my project over the next few days... I've got my sewing machine out and I'm ready to use  my threads... :D

The Economics of Clothing Part 2 (More reasons)

I keep thinking about clothing and how quickly we go through things, and it bothers me.  I look at the pajamas with the tears in the fabric that my son purchased less than a year ago... That should not be.  I look at where we get the majority of our clothing and our fabric from.  The affordable stuff, comes from India or China, and it leaves a huge carbon footprint on this old earth (and most likely is manufactured by children who are overworked and underpaid).  It just doesn't seem right when I know there is a forest full of fiber, as well as local sheep, alpaca and more.  It is not hard to spin, in fact, wouldn't it make more sense to spin something locally and dye it locally and weave it or knit it locally and wear it locally.  Wouldn't one logically assume that we grow what we need, and the warmth that we need to cover out bodies in is right here.  Everything we need.

For instance, I use a kick spindle when I spin.  What's a kick spindle.... below in that picture is my kick spindle.. you put it on the floor and kick the wheel and round it goes .  It was made from local cedar, by someone locally who crafted it so that I could spin.  It's a great little spindle and I love it.  Much faster than a drop spindle once you get used to it.  On there I spin wool so that I can make hats and mitts and things to keep you warm and dry.

You see, one of the great things about wool is it's ability to keep you both warm and dry, and should the wool get wet, you will still be warm.  It's amazing.  As long as the wool has some lanolin (sheep fat) it will keep things water proof.  It's rainy here where I live and wool  does well here.  As well wool breathes, which is better for your skin then clothes made out of synthetics, which don't breathe.  

At this point I've been thinking, with so many people out of work, why aren't we creating a cottage industry where you have home spinners who create textiles, and designers who make things from the fabric or wool,or textile creators who design and create clothing themselves.  Locally without that carbon footprint that is going to get bigger as gas prices keep going up.  

This is just a little food for thought, but I'm going to go back to spinning now and figuring out how to make a working textile industry in a stuck economy :D... 

The Economics of Clothing Part 1 (The reason)

I watched this film today  Sacred Economics and it explains a lot about my belief in economics and life.  I have been on a journey to discover myself and during that journey, I found myself back to learning and embracing my childhood teachings and loves.  I have been to local wool shops and the cost of buying a ready made skein of wool, enough for a hat, is $18.00 for natural fibers (that's wool, nothing nearly so exotic as silk or angora).  Now add onto that the cost of time to create that hat, I'll set it at $10.00 an hour (my time is really worth way more than $10.00, but I'm learning to let go of that it's more about explaining what is going on in the world) and it would take me an evening to create it, so times that $10.00 by 6 and add that to the cost of the fibers.  Now you are looking at $78.00 for a basic hat, that you can buy at Walmart for about $10.00.  I know it's not wool, but hey, it's $10.00 and it's cheap, it is also perfect (because it's made by a machine) and it will last me the season and that's all I want it for, besides, I can get another one next year; and this is the thought that allows us to continue to fill our landfills with fibers that cannot biodegrade easily if at all.

I have a wool toque my mother made me about 15 years ago.  It still holds it shape, and is a timeless classic.  I also have the sweater I made in my teens.  It had a hole in it where I snagged it on a tree branch when I was walking in the woods, but it has been repaired, because it was worth it... Wool lasts you see I've had that sweater 35 years and aside from the little hole, it's still in good condition.

Now, I also have a pair of pants that I purchased just before Christmas, they were $20.00, and were what I could afford at the time.  I've been wearing them a lot, but not every day, and they are almost ready for the rag bin.  They are thin and are starting to get holes  in some places.  I don't use bleach when I wash and I've had to start babying them and washing them by hand because it would seem the pants don't do so well in our washer and dryer (none of my other clothes have this issue).  Ouch... this is the harsh reality of many of the clothes today.  They last until the fad of them is over.

In reality, with today's standards for earning a living, by applying regular wage practices to Textiles, clothing becomes unaffordable, unless you shop at Walmart and smack down the $20 bucks for the pants, which you will have to keep replacing every few months, because there is no integrity in the fiber or the quality of the goods.  I know if I can get a good pair of wool pants, they will last me for years, and years and are worth repairing.  The issue becomes, in this economy how do you get clothes you need to rarely repair.  How do you afford to dress yourself in clothes that will actually keep you warm and comfortable.  Shoes fall into the same boat.

So here it is in a nutshell.  I want to start making a difference.  My desire is that when I have free time, and I am not working on my business, I am going to  make my own clothing from scratch.  I will spin it, weave it, knit and crochet it.  I will figure out how to make my own shoes (ones worth fixing).  I will only wear what I have made.  I will replace all my cheap, crappy old pieces with new more exciting, original pieces that will keep me warm and classically fashionable and have lasting sustainability.

We need to start wearing natural fibers again, and learning to purchase clothes that will last, making that investment in ourselves, because we are worth it.  It is not just the high cost of textiles that are a problem for us.  In our society, prices keep going up on basic necessities, such as food, rent, gasoline, electiricity, but our worth, has gone down, we are downsizing, lowering paychecks, loosing hours, and our reward for all this is that prices skyrocket.  I was reading an article the other day and it mentioned that food prices have gone up 5% in the last year and how hard that was.  I bought milk the other day, 2 liters for just under $4.00 ($3.99) last year it was just over $2.00 ($2.19 at the beginning and then it rose rapidly).  That is a lot more than a 5% increase, that is almost doubling the cost of the same product.  Look around your grocery store and double check those prices for yourself and remember when last year you paid $3.00 less a kilogram for beef.

This all looks pretty grim, but I'm working on some solutions, one is to offer lessons on creating your own clothing out of fiber that you create yourself, how to dye it and process it.  How to Make a few luxury items (that should not be luxuries, but staples) that last.

Finally, when all is said and done, how long do these clothes take to break down, these clothes made from synthetics.  How long do they sit on our landfills, completely useless.  Natural fibers do not have that issue.