Arts Thread

‘Connecting Collections’ reimagines textile waste with imagery inspired by my consumerist behaviour. It explores the potential of existing textiles I have accumulated during the experimentation process in past projects, textile waste bins and unwanted clothing to save them from landfill to create fun and colourful textiles for fashion. It showcases how often these materials are forgotten or seen as unusable and how altering the surface or embracing a clashing style can breath new life into them to design new and relevant textile collections or garments. Within this project, I did not buy anything new therefore, this project aims to prove that we do not need to buy virgin fabrics but put time and thought into how we can use what is already available to us as textile designers and consumers. Furthermore, it demonstrates how we can add personal elements to enhance the emotional connection to our clothing with slow traditional techniques such as sashiko stitch and use imagery from our personal spaces; with my own spaces and clothing becoming the inspiration for this project, I used digital embroidery and screen printing to depict piles of clothes in my room to redesign more dull textiles and make them clash with and sit against other existing cloths. I see this as the future of patchwork as the possibilities of these techniques push far beyond what this project has achieved; the ribbon design is created from all the small textile remnants that couldn’t otherwise be used, stitched together into long stripes then stitched down to form an abstracted section of my bedroom illustration. I feel this in particular has potential for many colour ways, scales and patterns to save more and more from landfill and reach a wide range of people to spread the importance of changing our behaviours. Categories: Sustainability and Ethical Practice, Innovation and Creativity