Crafting Community

  • Purpose

    Crafting Community is a series of interventions that promotes creativity and social connection through collaborative making. In creating an open space where people can make together, we believe it can combat isolation and perfectionism, while honoring traditional methods of making. It also provides a way to empower people to create themselves rather than relying on exploitative systems. In this project we focused on ways to tackle textile waste through upcycling methods, regenerative fashion practices, and open sourced crafting tools.

  • Context

    With the rise of fast fashion and increase of synthetic textiles, the amount of fabric waste is growing at an alarming rate. Globally only 20% of textiles are collected and only a fraction of that can be reutilized. However, in a study from Greenpeace, extending the life of a clothing item from 1 year to 2 years can reduce the amount of carbon emissions by 24%. Extending the life of our clothing is one way to take action in the crucial need of changes towards a more sustainable future.

Amanda Jarvis & Samantha Piercy
MDEF (Masters in Design for Emergent Futures)

Initial Intervention: Visualizing Waste

rebuig: rejected, refused

After sorting donated clothing from what can be re-sold, fabrics that can be recycled, and items taken by small businesses, there is still a lot left over that has nowhere to go. Many of these items are discarded because the material is unknown (usually a blend of synthetic fibers) or they cannot be sold because of the quality.

In visiting a local recycling collection center who works hard to reutilize as much as they can, we decided to document each item that was to be discarded. In doing so we could visualize the immense amount of clothes from just one of the many bins that have to be discarded. By documenting each item it shows the detail and narrative behind what has now become waste. The photo shows 70kg of clothes (half of one bin).

Final Intervention: Our Blueprint

We hosted a workshop called Our Blueprint: Crafting Futures Together. As a community we transformed used clothing into vibrant new pieces through an indigo dyeing workshop.

Participants brought their own clothes, and we dyed items collected from the local clothing collection center. We also hosted a talk led by an industry expert and colleague, Kateryna, about fiber content and the importance of understanding what our clothing is made from. We discussed natural versus synthetic fibers and the issue in mixing the two which is increasing among the fashion industry.

Overall this event aimed to empower each other to transform our own clothes in a creative and engaging way, while discussing the pressing global issue around textile waste. We are interested to continue this work and find ways to shape a more sustainable future of fashion.

Crafts in the Lab: Fabric Dye Exploration

Throughout the year we explored traditional and new methods of craft. Besides indigo dye, we also experimented with bacteria dye. This process creates a similar blue color that is formed from incubating cloth set in broth, that is then inoculated with the bacteria. This is one way of creating dye without the need of excess water and is an alternative to synthetic dyes.

In furthering exploration of waste, we modified an existing open sourced loom using the CNC to create our own. After doing so, we deconstructed a sweater to turn back into yarn. Then reweaving the sweater yarn on the loom, along with a portion that was dyed with indigo.

Some other explorations we did were sewing new clothes from the collected textile waste as a form of upcycling.