July enews summary of Textile Beat recent activity, changes and opportunities.
And a link to Finn Buckle’s video on Slow Clothing as lived practice.
Memories in cloth
Do you carry an old-fashioned cloth handkerchief in your pocket or purse? Tissues and packaged wipes might be more convenient but we are becoming aware of their cumulative waste and moving back to reusable products.
There are memories in cloth. Favourite pieces may be mended and patched to extend their lifetime. Special garments may hang in wardrobes, even if they no longer fit, because they hold moments in time. The glimpse of an old favourite floral shirt, down-cycled to cleaning rag, evocatively sparks remembered joy of wearing. I am thrilled with my fabric-painted hanky squares that once were my little kids t-shirts (they’re now aged 24, 29 and 30) now upcycled as all-purpose cloths in my handbag.
These words first published in QCWA’s Ruth Magazine Winter edition 2019
Composting clothes into nutrients
There is simply no precedent for the volume of clothes in society today and we need to experiment with other ways of keeping material in circulation locally. When you’ve exhausted options for swapping/reselling clothes or donating them to charities, recycling in your backyard is a valid option. When something is biodegradable, it is capable of decomposing into raw materials and cycling back through the ecosystem without pollution. All natural-fibre clothing is in this category and therefore biodegradable, although the time taken will vary.
Composting your natural-fibre clothing works in exactly the same way as putting vegetable scraps and spoilt food into the compost. They decompose and becomes food for new plants. The composting process cycles four of life’s building blocks – carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen – back into the soil so that it can support new growth. The clothing fibres need to be moistened to encourage and speed the decomposition process. The fibre becomes food for microbes, bacteria, fungi, moulds, worms, beetles, snails, mites, cockroaches and other critters, which are all part of the process.
I confirmed this in my backyard science experiment when I buried synthetic and natural fibre swatches in my garden during 2018. Almost all the natural fibres decayed while the synthetic remained untouched. Synthetics are derived from petroleum, do not absorb water, and are effectively plastic. In May 2019, we set up a compost experiment at Bulimba Creek Catchment Sustainability Centre at Carindale with which we will revisit at the end of August.
Jane Milburn and nursery manager Leigh Weakley at Bulimba Creek Catchment Sustainability Centre.
Wear change, do clothing slow
One million species are at risk and we humans are largely to blame, according to the latest UN biodiversity report. Governments, business and individuals need to act because we are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide, said Sir Robert Watson, chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
We can agitate for governments and business to take action – AND take action ourselves through the everyday choices in what we eat and what we wear. I wrote this Slow Clothing Manifesto back in 2015 to summarise the actions and choices we can take to reduce our material footprint: think, natural, local, quality, few, care, make, revive, adapt, salvage.
It becomes more relevant each year, with each new report on the need for transformative change. The power is in everyone, through everyday choices, to change the culture of consumption to one of conservation. Use what already exists, don’t feel pressured to buy more new, think bigger than yourself.
Sewing outside the lines
What part are you playing in the Fashion Revolution? I am proud to have been on the Fashion Revolution Australia committee from the early days when the world awoke following the devastating Rana Plaza factory collapse in April 2013. Thousands killed, injured and orphaned in pursuit of profits and cheap clothes in distant comfortable countries like ours.
Jane Milburn wears upcycled silk. Photo by Robin McConchie at Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens.
I created Textile Beat in 2013 based on a lifetime of making my own clothes so I could influence change by focusing on natural fibres (not plastic), upcycling (less waste) and making in your own style (storyful clothes). I often make my clothes from natural fibres reclaimed from garments that might otherwise become landfill. This one, above, (photographed by Robin McConchie at Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens) is silk from five garments that I recreated into two squares and a rectangle, with two small rectangles for sleeves. I used subtraction-cutting techniques pioneered by Julian Roberts to transform these pieces into a dress. The wooden beads were reclaimed from what was a family fruit bowl, silk head scarf from opshop and crochet earrings made at a recent workshop with Jenny King at Braiding in the Wildwood. Creative, disruptive, natural, indie style. That is how I choose to make a difference in the world and I explained why in my book Slow Clothing: finding meaning in what we wear.
As part of our recent fabulous three-day Fashion Revolution Brisbane event, one of several activities I ran was an upcycling masterclass with designer Darin Rose and 15 fabulous participants in the Fabrication Lab at The Edge, where we were sewing outside the lines. Here’s a video which Robin McConchie produced from the workshop.
On the Textile Beat April enews
Here’s the link to our On the Textile Beat April enews. Big shifts are happening as we have lived experience of climate change. Businesses and communities are responding by adapting approaches and behaviours. We are part of the Fashion Revolution and excited about our upcoming three-day event in Brisbane. See below for profiles of my colleagues Julie Hillier and Elizabeth Kingston who will be joining the discussion about localism on Sunday April 28. Also at bottom is the overall program – come join the conversation, workshops and markets from April 26-28.
Upcycling is on trend
Who wants our waste, our rubbish and our cast-offs? Last year’s news was China rejecting our recycled materials, this year’s news is charity shops being so overwhelmed they called a temporary halt to donations. It is time for a serious rethink on stuff.
When we go camping or on holidays we realise how little stuff we really need. At home we may have wardrobes full of garments while studies show we only actively wear about 20 percent of them.
Marie Kondo, The Minimalists and others have turned stuff management into a profession as everyday people become overwhelmed with possessions that are ultimately of little value.
Melissa Iland and Jenny Donaldson upcycling at CWA Tambo, reviving existing natural-fibre resources for fun, creativity and as a hands-on local response to sustainability and climate change.
Synthetic fibres do not break down
An Australian backyard science experiment confirms synthetic clothing fibres do not breakdown in soil whereas within a year most natural fibres are returning to organic matter.
On 26 January, 2018, Textile Beat buried synthetic and natural fibre material swatches glued to cardboard by digging a shallow hole in relatively poor soil near a mango tree in a suburban garden in Brisbane. These were covered them with dirt and leaf litter, and occasionally watered (twice a month) until January 2019 when they were retrieved.
Range of synthetic and natural fibre swatches as buried in a Brisbane garden January 2018.
The material swatches were mostly remnants from Jane Milburn’s studio or from discarded clothing.
We were curious to confirm that synthetics are plastic-like and remain forever, while natural fibres return to nutrients and organic matter when broken down by microbes and insects in the soil.
We dug them up on January 15, 2019, and this is what we found.
Swatches of synthetic clothing materials before, left, and after being buried for one year in 2018.
Slow Clothing in libraries
I found my book Slow Clothing on the shelf at @brisbanelibraries Kenmore this week. I was curious to know how it is categorised and pleased to find it under Social Science, Economics.
Economist Richard Denniss, author of Curing Affluenza, and the ABC’s War on Waste warrior Craig Reucassel earlier launched the book in Canberra and Sydney respectively, which affirms this library classification.
I have been doing values-based action research since 2013 as a response to fast fashion culture, textile waste and pollution. My goal was to make a difference, to influence and inspire change. Slow Clothing was self-published in late 2017. It is a holistic narrative around dressing for health and wellbeing, living lightly through the everyday practice of how we choose, wear and care for clothes.
There’s a lot more awareness and talk about sustainability in fashion now than when I started this work. That’s a good thing. It may, or may not, translate into substantial and sustained change. Keeping a watching brief on that and charting my next body of work.
#slowclothing #libraries #economics #culture #bethechange #livelightly #sustainableliving #climatechange #curingaffluenza #waronwasteau #sustainablefashion #fashionrevolution #leadership #naturalfibres #nomicroplastic
Peak stuff is here
Consumer culture is overwhelming us. New stuff arrives with Christmas gift traditions and Boxing Day sales, then we seek to shed old stuff and declutter for the New Year ahead. We take wisdom from the Minimalists and Marie Kondo and aim to move on stuff that isn’t bringing us joy. But there’s nowhere for it to go because almost everyone’s got too much stuff.
ABC News revealed shocking images of stuff dumped outside charity shops which are so overwhelmed by offerings that many have called time on donations for now. On top of that, there’s nowhere for our recycled stuff either.
