Any of you who have read this blog for a while (thank you!) will know that I am interested in sustainability. Fast fashion with its quick turnover of cheap clothes which are worn for a short time then thrown away is decidedly not good for the environment and we are currently hearing the message load and clear that the earth is groaning under the weight of pollution of all kinds (see my post on ‘plastic soup’ here).
Early in the life of this blog, was a piece about making dresses from recycled materials. You can find it here.
I’ve also made my own clothes from fabrics I designed, like my ‘Summer Butterflies on Orange’ (see more about this here)
There are also the quilt tops and sewn items I have designed to be made of recycled materials:
One way of slowing the fashion cycle down is to repair clothes when necessary, rather than throwing them away. Once again, you will find several posts about creative mending on this very website here, here and here.
To mend your own clothes, it is very useful to be able to use a sewing machine competently. Did you know that I have a handy You Tube video showing you how to thread up a Bernina Sewing Machine? More than 47,500 people have watched it so far.
Click here to go to my channel ‘Amanda Jane Textiles’ and check out the video on how to use a Bernina machine as well as thread one. There are also some basic tips on threading a sewing needle and knotting a thread and some demonstrations of cutting blocks for fabric for absolute beginners.
It’s good to see that the University of British Columbia, Canada is taking seriously the issue of slow fashion (the antidote to fast fashion) during their Sustainable Fashion Week.
At a recent event reported on television, individuals were given the opportunity to mend garments and to do a clothes swop, amongst other activities as you can see if you click onto the link to the Global News report here.
The ‘man sewing’ at the start of the piece is no stranger to a sewing machine, by the way. He is my son Nick Ogden, who has recently re-located to Vancouver!
Next week the post will the the eleventh in the series ‘Make a Quilt in 2019’, with instructions to make November’s block.
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The winners of the free tickets to the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show 2019 have been notified. Thanks to all who took part.
Thank you for reading my blog. Quilt patterns are here, Fabrics are here, Classes are here.