Garment 11: Opportunity

http://www.zoetrope.me/afterword/iammia-seamlessness-pilgrimage

First off, I will disclose that I had no part in the design or making of this lovely, so-light-it-could-almost-float-away raglan-sleeved top. That credit is all due to a talented friend, Zoe Welch: "slow fashion" creator, writer, photographer, movie-maker - amongst other gifts - and first-rate source of encouragement, whom I met through OSF.

It doesn't belong to me, either, though it's adorable and I think I could totally rock it. It is owned by another friend and fellow OSF board member, Kat Siddle, who bought it from Zoe one night when we were picking up a donation of fabric from her home.

So why are you looking at pictures of it, you're wondering? Enter Kat's teal winter coat. It's a really cute coat, with a really badly-behaved zipper. One evening Kat's beautiful Zoe top became so completely stuck in the zipper of her coat, that after a 2-hour struggle, she had to have her fiance finally cut her out of it. Aw man. Was it ruined forever? Hmm. That might require a little side-ways thinking. That's where I came in.

I love a good side-ways think, especially when it involves giving purpose to useless, potentially ruined stuff. The hole itself was nicely placed, and nicely shaped - kind of heart-like, I thought. I happened to have, sitting on my sewing table, the left-overs from a recently finished piece - scraps from a twice-abandoned cashmere sweater, pink and deliciously soft, which I had originally lifted from Zoe's Sally Ann donations bag. What's not to love about cashmere? Or pink. It seemed a fitting material for a heart-shaped patch.

The running stitches were done with yarns from those hopeful little packets that hang on better-quality new clothes and may contain one or more of the following: a spare button that will almost certainly never know a buttonhole, a neatly-coiled length of yarn with even less hope of ever darning a hole, a symbolic sprinkling of loose beads or sequins. In rare cases - and a sure sign of the purchaser's elevated taste level - one might find two metal or plastic collar stays: remedy for the even less likely event of that uncommon, though annoying, affliction: Unequal Collar Point Orientation.

I've been saving the packets since I can remember, and most "estate" donations at OSF contain an assortment of them. I expect most of us hang on to them out of obligation, at least until their original garment has passed from our lives, when we are finally released from the responsibility of keeping them around. But by then, they've found a semi-permanent - though never entirely satisfactory - home in the junk drawer, or, more likely, the button box, mixed in with a thimble or two, a couple of dome fasteners, a corroded penny, and a few random nuts or screws, quietly living out their tasteful, but pointless existence. It was very, very satisfying to put some of them to use.

I usually bring along with me a bag of hand sewing (or un-sewing, more often than not!) whenever I have to ride the bus, wait for the doctor, sit through the kids' extra-curricular activities, or spend more than 20 minutes in a passenger seat. Two neuroplasticity sessions later, and voila! Survey says, definitely not ruined!

Considering the higher quality of garments that generally merit spare parts hang tags, I suspect the yarns used for the stitching are likely mostly real wool. I'm hoping the patch might felt up a little with washing, in a jaunty smocking-esque sort of way. We shall see.

Enquiries at enoughstuffblog@gmail.com

Photography by Jeff Minuk www.lostinkits.com

Garment 3: Exploration #1: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Answer quite slowly

My record player!

I discovered Elvis playing hot potato at Teresa Armstrong's 8th birthday party in 1973, her mother dropping the needle randomly onto that thrilling record to signal us to GO! and doing her best to lift it up again without scratching the vinyl, to STOP! An exciting game for an 8 year-old, but not as exciting as the feeling inside my body when I heard that incredible voice.

I returned home to enthusiastically tell my mom about the new singer I'd just discovered. Turns out, she had been just as excited to discover him, years before. A few months ago I watched my 7 year-old daughter dance around the living room, clutching an old vinyl copy of Blue Hawaii, and squealing, "He's so sexy!" The apples didn't fall far from this fuzzy tree. She, too, was all shook up.

That Christmas I received three Elvis albums. I played them continuously on my plastic Sears Wish Book stereo, writing out the lyrics to the songs as fast as I could. Later, my first CD purchase was a box set of Elvis' complete '50s catalogue. I didn't even own a CD player yet.

The Beatles I discovered over the course of decades. The first of their songs to transfix me was "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". For a period of months in 1980, I repeatedly pencilled the opening line on the surface of my desk in Mr. Humphrey's Social Studies classroom. I was in grade 10. "Picture yourself in a boat on a river..." And she's gone.

Julian Lennon's drawing, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

John Lennon was inspired to write the song when his son returned home from preschool with a drawing he had made of his friend, Lucy. She was in the sky. With diamonds. I, myself, have a painting by my son entitled Vase of Crud and Stuff. There could be a song in there, I suppose, or certainly a garment made of abandoned materials.

Inspiration can come from anywhere. When it does, it is simply a matter of shutting up and letting it come, flowing from the universe through the mind and right down to the earth. I think this is what I responded to as I slouched in my seat, doodling Lucy. That pure, channelled song has been stuck in my head now for 35 years. So has "The Lonely Goatherd", though that one I'm not so sure about.

Back

This top is my homage to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". The first of two identical metallic blue/brown tunics made of hand-me-down fabric, it features extended shoulders, French darts, French seams, bias trimmed hems and a draped collar with a mind of its own. My very first felting project, I spent 8 blissful hours stuffing the roving fibres through from the front to the wrong side to anchor the loose, discarded threads and serger dregs that make up the lettering. When it was over I ran machine stitching along it once or twice, to make sure it wasn't going anywhere. Guess what I was listening to...

I hope the blue will become crumbly and faded-looking, and the brown will show through the cracks even more. Though the fabric is pre-shrunken, washing gently will preserve the felting.

Answer quite slowly. Or, shut up brain, I'm trying to listen!

Size M. For sale by appointment. Enquiries at enoughstuffblog@gmail.com

Good photography by Jeff Minuk www.lostinkits.com