After reading my sister Sarah Elizabeth's blog post a few weeks ago and watching the 'story of stuff' videos she linked to I've been thinking more and more about where stuff comes from and have been making a real effort to recycle old stuff instead of buying new. I'm a bit of a hoarder as it is (much to my parent's exasperation) collecting everything from wine corks to old jumpers that I've had in my mind to reuse in that magical utopia of 'someday' so I've certainly no shortage of materials.
As a designer in training I realised that I have the potential to use my creativity to promote sustainability by using recycled or upcycled materials in my work. This semester I'm designing a woven interior fabric with trees being my initial point of research. Here are a few pages from my sketchbook.....
I began pulling apart an old pair of jeans and a scrap of fabric (bought from the Borders scrap store) thread by thread and re-wove the wiggly little threads onto a tiny basic loom which I made from cardboard and cotton yarn. This created a lovely irregular effect but the lengths of yarn were just a little too short to create anything very big so I called in the boys.....
Ronnie & Kev from Hawick Upholstery Services very kindly let me raid their workshop for off-cuts and scraps, of which they have plenty, for these gorgeous fabrics. I particularly like the honeycomb weave and think it would lend itself to my theme perfectly. I then set about weaving a little circle with the new yarns on another small handmade loom which has turned out beautifully....
The plan is to incorporate this technique in my basic weave structure for my interiors fabric adding a contrasting texture as well as creating little circles and shapes like this one to add on as embellishment.
....in the spirit of sustainability my Jones knitting machine kindly donated to me by the lovely Katherine through Freegle and the Jones sewing machine rescued from the dump!
