Upycycling - The Undergarment Series, Part 1

 

Almost every piece of factory-made clothing I own fits me badly. I hate shopping for clothing. As I have been doing more sewing, I am realizing why that it is. Factory-made clothing is designed for some ideal or make-believe person that is definitely not me. I own a few tailor-made Indian outfits since India is one place people still do that and they, of course, fit me quite well.

I have been thinking about how I can gradually make a wardrobe that actually fits, is flattering and is comfortable. And that includes undergarments. Now, I am not too dissatisfied with the underwear I have purchased at Target (bras are another matter and I am going to write at least one post about that), but I have found that underwear that I make myself is more comfortable and than what I was purchasing at the store. 

Making underwear is also a good way to use up smaller pieces of fabric and all the underwear above was upcycled or scraps from previous projects.  Last winter I answered an ad on Facebook for someone giving away a few bags of fabric and sewing notions. I think this individual had just cleaned out an older parent's basement. 

The bags contained a huge jumble of stuff including some things that had been cut. I was never going to use the material for what the individual who had cut it had intended and I don't think I had all the pieces anyway. From the front and back of what been originally been destined to be a shirt, I was able to make two pairs of underwear from it. 

I used the Wonder Undies digital pattern from Waves and Wild (formerly Made by Jacks's Mum).  The pattern comes in a pdf file with multiple sizes. You print the pattern on standard paper and then tape it together to make the pieces (and of course I printed the pattern on the back of paper that had already been printed on!). This pattern comes with an instruction booklet containing pictures and helpful instructions. 

You can make the pattern using elastic waist/leg bands or simply by using jersey knit.  There are five pattern pieces, two of which you cut out two pieces. The first pair I made took me a couple hours. I simply used a zig-zag stitch with my regular and not very expensive sewing machine. I made the blue and black striped underwear more recently and I purchased a used serger several months ago and had it recently tuned up. I serged the two pairs and the edges were so much cleaner. There were a few places where I did not catch all the fabric layers and did some corrective work with my sewing machine. 

Now that I have repeated this pattern a few times, I can now make these in around an hour if I don't make any mistakes!  

I haven't modified the pattern much, though I will probably take in the band of the striped underwear a little bit. I could tweak it to fit my body, but I like this underwear more than what I buy at the store so I go with what is there. The jersey knit waist band is super comfortable and I have found it stays up better than I would have thought.   

All the underwear I have made so far has been from existing garments. For a few pairs of underwear I made, I had to piece together the waist and leg bands from two pieces of fabric because what I had was not long enough. It made very little difference to the final project.  

I think you should try to make underwear and other undergarments.  Stay tuned for more on this subject. 

Rethink - making upcycling economically viable

By now you all know that I don't believe our current rate of resource consumption is sustainable. 

I believe that money as a medium of exchange is useful, but I wonder how we can pivot to an economy that is more sustainable and more just.  It seems to me that we as humans have set up our whole economy - actually our whole society - on consumption.  As the pandemic just demonstrated, if I don't consume, someone else will not eat.  

In the previous blog post, I solicited a government perspective on reuse and asked about the economic incentives around reuse. In this one, I talked to Kristen McCoy, co-owner of Rethink Tailoring and Sewing Lounge, which helps people upcycle their current wardrobe. I talked to her about how you turn reuse into a successful business. 

Kristen has been upcycling for a long time. She grew up on a farm. There wasn't a fabric store nearby and not a lot of disposable income either. Kristen wanted to sew and she made purses and the like from hand-me-down clothes from her sisters. "This was what I had around. I didn't realize I was being an artist," she said. 

When Kristen started sewing clothes she found it harder than she imagined and she stuffed a number of unfinished projects in her closet.  That prompted her to enroll in an apparel technology program at Minneapolis Community Technical College.  

At MCTC, she realized that polyester and PETE 1 water bottles (the clear ones) were the same thing and we could recycle food containers, but we didn't recycle cheap blouses. Later years took her to Washington DC, where she says she "accidentally" started a tailoring business as a result of people wanting to alter clothes purchased in a vintage shop she worked at. 

Kristen has thought a lot about the environmental impacts of clothing and the working conditions of those making it.  "We are so far removed from our garments and how they are made,"  she said. "Twenty dollars is not a reasonable price for an article of clothing. To do that you have to sacrifice quality and fair labor."

I have found upcycling time consuming. Some of the upcycled dresses I made last winter took two to three times longer than if I had purchased new fabric. So I asked Kristen how, given the labor involved, upcycling becomes economically viable for a business owner.   

Rethink Tailoring is a relatively new business that opened its physical doors right before the Covid 19 pandemic so Kristen is still waiting to see if the business is profitable. Her business model involves a variety of services she hopes will provide different sources of revenue.  For those who are interested in sewing their own projects, Kristen offers both classes and coaching sessions.  Because she has formally studied apparel construction, she knows things that a self-taught sewist may not and can teach them. 

For projects that she or her staff sew themselves, she is working from existing material so customers pay for labor.  Kristen employs people locally and pays a fair wage. Many of the items that people bring to her to refashion have sentimental value so people are willing to invest in them. 

When Kristen worked in Washington DC, she tailored new garments, but she know that her passion is upcycling and she has decided that is where she will spend her time. While doing that she has found that a community of people that are interested in reuse and sustainability and she believes that every garment that someone upcycles is a "step in the right direction."

Who wants to hang their laundry out to dry with me?

It's summer in Minnesota. I am outside and simply not sewing very much. I am still thinking about my carbon footprint. It's been a warm summer here.  And the temperatures that Portland Oregon just experienced are nightmarish. Climate change is here and we have to change our behavior.  

As you know, we have been making a concerted effort to reduce the amount of laundry we do.  When I wrote a blog post on that topic a few months ago, I said that I would probably continue to use our dryer.  But there was a day three or four weeks ago when we were running our air conditioner and we had a load of laundry in our washer. I looked at what our electricity generation and consumption was and I just couldn't turn on the dryer. 

I took the wooden rack we use inside outside and hung up the laundry. Earlier this week, I was hanging our laundry and my spouse came outside and said he had just been listening to Minnesota Public Radio and a speaker said we need to get of our *sses now and do something about climate change so it was a good thing we were hanging up our clothes. I have been hanging sheets inside on chairs since I don't want pollen on them. 

We have had to change our rhythm of laundry, often starting the washer at night so we could hang them in the morning and doing wash on warmer days, but since we are still working at home, it has worked out. 

There are a lot of benefits to washing clothes on cold and hang drying them from carbon savings to clothes lasting longer.  Who is going to join me in hang drying at least some of their clothes? 

Is an American middle class lifestyle sustainable environmentally speaking? Yes, no maybe so?

People have been feeling good as we move closer to a vaccinated society here in the United States. The ability to be out and about more has definitely been nice, but I am also filled with dread. It has been unusually hot here in the Twin Cities for an unusually long period of time at an unusually early time of year. Saint Paul Schools just cancelled school for half of the week - I can't remember this happening because if was too hot, too cold yes, but not too hot. Lake Mead, a man made lake, is at its lowest levels in history. The tundra is melting. Bird populations in the United States continue to decline dramatically. And over the past year or two, I have become more aware of how much my own American middle class lifestyle consumes. 

You probably know from my post on laundry from a few months ago, that we purchased solar panels last year and the real time updates on energy consumption have been eye opening. It takes a lot of energy to run a clothes dryer. It takes a lot of energy to take a hot shower. Microwaves use a lot of load for a short period of time. When this hot spell started, we went without without AC for a couple days, but we broke down and it has now been on for several days. 

Our solar panels are largely covering our electricity use this week because hot and sunny means good solar production. But we are a long ways from carbon neutral. We heat our home with natural gas and while our electric provider has made progress in using renewables (and operates a nuclear plant), our gas provider has not. We have shored up insulation and we do keep our temperatures in the moderate range (I could go lower than my housemates, but that is a separate post). Even though we try to walk or bike many places, we still drive the majority of the time. Even our decade-old Prius uses fossil fuels and we are due for a new one soon. Although arguments still continue in our family on the tags we are putting on towels and napkins and where they are and who they are still continue, we have actually become more disciplined about laundry and how many loads we do in a week. I even hung of load outside to dry this week. 

 We need to all be working toward carbon neutrality. Although there are technologies that can help like the solar panels we already own, but I don't know if we can truly "build" or way out of this. I still wonder, can we as a society continue to take a shower every day? Should we be hang drying our clothes. Should we be driving anywhere? If we don't have solar panels, should we really be running air conditioning even if we have solar panels?

What are your thoughts?  Should we be doing the things we take for granted?

Back yard foraging

Nowadays when we think of food, we think about going to the grocery store and buying something in a package or plastic bag. We don't think about what might be growing in our own backyard (that we didn't intentionally plant) as something to eat

The grocery store will remain the primary source of food for my family and me, but I can also look outside my door and see healthy things to eat even in my not terribly large city yard.  Harvesting enables me to deal with several plants that are invasive or that I don't particularly want in my flower garden. I don't have to just send them to the county yard waste site. I can eat them. These plants can also harvested before many of the other things that I intentionally plant are ready to harvest.  These edibles are often super nutritious and  I don't accumulate any clamshell packaging.  

Many people know that dandelions are edible and they were originally brought to the United States for food purposes. 

I have been sautéing greens from dandelions, hostas, wild violets and lamb quarters with olive oil, salt and lemon. Dandelions have a strong flavor and aren't actually my favorite. I don't eat dandelion greens raw, but I will make salads with the lambs quarter, which is milder and softer.  Wood sorrel also makes for a lemony addition to salad, but turns goopy when cooked. 

Edible flowers such as violets, nasturtium and marigolds make good garnishes for cakes and salads.  Last year I boiled several bunches of lilacs in a sugar syrup to make my own lilac soda (add carbonated water from a soda stream).

If you are going to forage in the back yard, you will need to ensure the area you are harvesting is not contaminated.  You also must correctly identify plants you did not cultivate so you do not poison yourself  The internet is handy and I particularly like this article for Minnesota edible weeds.  Otherwise put your weeds and garden plants that grow a little too robustly to good use. 

Making reuse "normal"

In a previous post, I shared a story in which my child tried to nudge me away from some free items on the curb I was eyeing because he knew I was violating social norms. Even with  my willingness to go against the grain, I know that my projects only make a small dent in materials that could be reused. In making my garden apron, I reused two whole pairs of jeans. True shifts toward sustainability are going to require much bigger shifts in societal thinking and behavior. 

To explore how to enable these shifts, I spoke with Emily Barker about the role of government in promoting more sustainable behavior. Emily is a solid waste specialist with the City of Saint Louis Park in Minnesota.   

Emily said that she came from a family of "fixers" and that influenced her. We also talked about how mending and reusing items had been a necessity in the past. Emily remarked that it has only taken two generations for us to lose the skills that allowed us to repair things. 

Emily described the complexities of promoting reuse. "People can get frustrated about being told what to do," she said.  We can't implement a reuse plan like sending a recycling truck down the street. It's hard to message." 

To address these complexities, she began organizing city-wide swaps in 2017.  "It's about making reuse culturally normal. There are people willing to go to a swap over a thrift store.  There seems to a lower barrier."  

She added that clothing swaps keep things cycling and also show people how much clothing there is out there. The swaps Emily has organized have grown in attendance over the years.  The next swap that Emily is organizing is on May 20 and is a gardening swap. 

These swaps also promote neighborhood connections. Emily recounted a story about an older city resident who was downsizing  and who arrived at a gardening swap with an array of tools, eager to give them so someone who could use them.  A young couple who had just purchased a house and did not have money to purchase new items were able to fully equip themselves with what they needed. Emily talked about how satisfying it was to witness a connection like that. 

I have been thinking a lot about the incentives in our society that keep us consuming and I was curious to know more about the incentives for government to promote consumption.  I asked Emily point blank about how reducing consumption affects a government entity that is reliant on tax revenue. She pointed out there are ways to promote economic activity without promoting the needless consumption of resources. St. Louis Park has compiled a directory and she was surprised by how many repair and reuse businesses she was able to find in a town of 50,000.

Emily also acknowledged that reuse could be difficult for people. You might have to wait to get something. For those who don't find reuse practical for their lives, she recommended really thinking about what you need and buying high quality items that will last. 

Emily also provided some hope for the future by sharing a story about her six-year-old.  The child had received a gift with a number of items that were wrapped and commented how wasteful it was.  "If kids can learn, then it will only be time," she said. 

Umbrella Upcycle

As I mentioned in my post about sourcing fabric, there is so much material to work with.  And it is all around. 

I had a broken umbrella. Don't we all? 

I tried fixing it, but a couple of the metal pieces were broken. While I sew, I don't weld. I liked this umbrella quite a bit and it had actually lasted a long time. The fabric was pretty and it seemed like it was the same type of fabric used for shoe bags we have purchased  I thought I could use the broken umbrella to make shoe bags. Then the pandemic hit and we didn't have anywhere to go so I put the umbrella aside. 

About a year later a friend of mine posted on Facebook asking if people used shoe bags and whether they had recommendations. I said, I can make you a couple!  I made two and then I put out a call on Facebook for people's broken umbrellas and I made some more. 

Here is a description of what I did. 

First locate broken umbrellas. If you put out a call to your friends and you don't live in the desert, you will probably get more than you need. If you have multiple umbrellas you can coordinate colors. Using a seam ripper, detach the umbrella from the metal frame. Then use a pair of scissors to cut the fabric from the center piece.  

The fabric you take off the umbrella frame will be, well umbrella shaped, so if you are going to make it into something else like a shoe bag, then you will need to use a seam ripper to take apart the sections. The umbrellas I have deconstructed have had between 8 and 10 sections and they have all been pretty easy to pull apart. 

Take two of the triangle sections and lay them on top of each other The narrow points of the triangles will need to be on opposite ends.  It probably won't matter which is the right side and which is the wrong one. From there sew a seam. I have used both French seams and a serger for these shoe bags. You will find that your seams are likely curved a little which you can trim by hand or while you serge.

Open up your seam and cut your now larger piece into a rectangle. I made a pattern that was about 12X16 and I didn't worry too much about lining up the pattern with the grain. Repeat with another two sections of umbrella to make another rectangle. If you are using an umbrella with narrower sections, you may need to layout multiple triangles in alternating directions and cut your rectangles from bigger pieces.  

To make a drawstring bag, make a 1/4 inch fold at the top and along the very top, fold over another inch and top stich down. That will be the channel for your string. 

Take your two rectangles and pin or clip. If you are making a French seam, you will start wrong sides together, then start stitching under the string channel and go around the rectangle to the bottom of the other side of the channel.  If you are going to serge or finish the seam with a zig zag, then you can put it right sides together sew then turn inside out. 

Cut two cords that are a few more inches than needed to go around the bag start with one of the open ends and using a safety pin, feed the cord through the channels on both pieces of fabric. Tie the two ends together. Start the other cord on the opposite end and do the same.

And there you have a shoe bag!  Here is another example using fabric from two different umbrellas. 

Home repairs

I have a sewing project that is languishing. I made a set of curtains for our office closet and I plan to make matching curtains for the office windows, but I can't make myself take the next step, which is to cut the fabric. 

However, I have been keeping up with my sustainability kick by taking on small repair projects around the house.  Shortly after I started visibly mending, I also became motivated to repair other things. Clear Gorilla Tape became one of my best friends on this quest. However, the tape did not work for everything.  Somehow I came across a product called Sugru on the internet. I then saw a package at my local Target store, which I picked up and looked at, but didn't purchase.  Then finally I decided it was time to try it out on these repairs that were piling up.  By that time, the local Target no longer carried it and I had to order it from Amazon and it arrived two days later, with too much packaging. 

On the day I received the Sugru, I took out a few things that needed repair. This included a broken tea strainer and a set of swim goggles that I now use when chopping onions. In addition, I had a sugar bowl that had no place to conveniently stow the sugar spoon. I also had a set of headphones that were in two pieces suspended by a wire. 

Sugru is a moldable silicone glue. The box I purchased had several packets of various colors.  Once you open a packet, the instructions say you have 30 minutes to mold the Sugru (I found I actually had more).  Then you have to let it cure for 12 to 24 hours.

 

The first I thing I did was to create a little holder for the sugar spoon. That worked out just as envisioned and now I have a place for the sugar spoon. 

Then I worked on the tea strainer. I left it on the counter to cure and my spouse moved it, which meant it ended up  back in two pieces again. I opened a second packet to redo the strainer. After it cured, I realized it was still not stable enough so I added more.  I haven't really put it to the test, but it looks like it will work for a while. 

I also was able to serviceably fix the headphones. I am going to add a little more Sugru to this project, but they are in much better shape than they were before I did the repair.

The goggle rims had a little tear on them. I wasn't able to get the Sugru to mold as I wanted on there, but since I am not using them in water it is ok.  

In addition to these items, I also repaired a broken umbrella. I also started to repair a cracked plastic chair. I will need to open another packet to finish that.  While my blog is generally not about buying more stuff, I did find Sugru to be useful to extending the life of several things. 

Repair again (and again)

Using patches and darning stiches to fix clothing has extended the life of several of my items.  But I get frustrated because these fixes do not last forever.  Sometimes they don't last long at all.

About a year ago, I patched the knees of my son's pants. I used material from old socks, ironed them onto lightweight interfacing and sewed them on the pants using a whip stitch around the outside and a series of running stitches down the length of the patch. 

This fix lasted a year. Last week my son fell and scraped up the knees of the pants and his own knees. Now there are new holes. I am not going to do anything further with this article of clothing because he is growing quickly and has nearly outgrown the pants.  

What happens to my own clothes has been somewhat more bothersome. Mending, especially by hand, takes time. Last summer I patched a pair of  comfortable pants using a home made patch and a series of running stitches. Just four or five months ago, I darned these socks.

When you are patching or darning, you create a strong series of fibers and stitches. The fabric you are mending may not be as strong as it used to be and often you will get more tearing along your outer stiches. 

Several weeks ago, I checked out the book Mending Life: A Handbook for Repairing Clothes and Hearts by Nina and Sonya Montenegro from the library.

Nina describes her first time mending a pair of pants. Within a month a new hole appeared.  As she sat down to mend again, she had all sorts of thoughts about whether it was worth the time and whether a new hole would appear, but she sewed on the second patch anyway. She writes:

A while late, another hole did appear, but this time I didn't hesitate to get out my mending tools and choose a new patch to add. I breathed deeply and thought of how similar the work was to collage - intuitively adding layers of color and shape to make a composition I would be wearing on my knee. In time, mending became a ritual for me, something I tucked into my backpack and took along everywhere to work on whenever I had a free moment.  Just like our grandma, I came to understand that there is always time to mend.

After reading that passage, I realized that I should not be annoyed if I had to continue to mend an item over time. I took the pants that had a second tear
and added another patch in a contrasting color. I will be able to wear them at least a little bit longer.   

Then as I was writing this, I took a break to redarn those socks. Again, they will last just a little bit longer.

 

Going back to the old fashioned handkerchief

Whenever I see giant packages of disposable products, I can't help but think of the John Muir quote: 

This is creation. All this is going on today, only men are blind to see it. They think only of food. They are not content to provide three meals a day; they must have enough for a thousand meals. And so they build ships to carry the food that they call commerce, and they build houses to store food in, and other houses to buy and sell it in, and houses to eat it in, and load themselves down with the care of it so that they cannot get away. They can not pause long enough to go out into the wilderness where God has provided every sparrow enough to eat and to spare, and contemplate for even an hour the wonderful world that they live in.

Over the past 70 years, the size of the American house has doubled.  While more serious thinkers may have other theories about why this is, one of mine is that we need more space to store giant packages of stuff that we are going to use once and throw away. Then, bigger houses lead to more land use, more energy use and more driving because of the lower density of neighborhoods.

One of the most important reasons for reuse and repurposing is to use resources in a sustainable way. However, it does also have the advantage of taking less space (as long as you don't hang on to things you truly don't use).  Because we cut up old clothes and fabric scraps into rags that can be washed, we only store one extra roll of paper towel at at time.  We use cloth napkins so we don't store a lot of those either. 

Last year, I also started using old fashioned handkerchiefs for use at home (we are in the  middle of a pandemic so I get why we use paper products in public spaces). Tissue paper has been the mode of choice for blowing one's nose for most of my life, but we always brought handkerchiefs as gifts when we went to India in the 1970s and 1980s.   

I made some out of an old bed sheet.  Besides taking less space than boxes of tissue, one of biggest advantages of handkerchief is that they don't make a complete mess in the wash when you accidentally leave one in your pocket!