dress smart

Once again a report from the major charity Oxfam reminds fashion consumers that their purchasing decisions matter when it comes to the exploitation of 3rd world workers in the clothing industry

Sydney Morning Herald

Oxfam Made in Poverty report

Why do I care?
The globalisation of the clothing manufacturing industry affected my work and income in the 1990s. I was a sewing outworker working from home supporting my son and I from that work. As an immigrant from New Zealand I wasn't able to claim any social security benefits from the Australian govt for 10 years so if I wasn't able to work there was no falling back on any hardship pensions from the govt.

Here is a paragraph excerpt from something I'm writing about my life

I emigrated to live in Australia in 1986 with my 6 year old son and worked from home doing sewing outwork with an occasional contract for patternmaking. This work supported us for almost the next decade. Regrettably the 1990s was the beginning of the end of the home sewist contractor. The clothing industry was going global as protectionist regulations that had existed for decades were removed and local manufacturers moved their work overseas where they could employ workers in 3^rd world countries for a tiny percentage of what local workers were paid. By the mid 1990s I had to throw my hands up in despair as I could no longer make a living wage. I’d been working 10-12 hours on piecework and only earning $40-50 a day. At one stage I was getting paid $5.50 per dress for a designer dress that was retailing for $195. This dress took 1 ½ hours to sew and each one had to be returned steam pressed and bagged to the factory. It was the end of being my own sweatshop slave as the future for home sewing outwork became unsustainable economically. I was only one of tens of thousands of home based workers and small workshops that had to shutter up as we competed for less and less work.

I'm not suggesting you should stop buying clothes at the stores that source their products from overseas. I'm just urging you to cultivate awareness of how your buying power can directly affect the lives of the real people (mostly women) who labour full time with their hands to make an income not sufficient for dignity or their needs. Investigate where the clothes are being made and find out what that stores/companies policies are to support their overseas workers. Make decisions not to buy the products if you feel uncomfortable about the situations of their production.

What you buy is an ethical decision because:
1) your purchase helps that company make a profit and encourages them to maintain their manufacturing source
2) the reason some clothes are "cheap" is due to the workers who actually make them with their hands and sweat only getting a tiny proportion of the making cost.
3) the "real" costs of production have been obscured up until the present day because it has been politically unpalatable to factor in the costs to the environment, such as water, the chemicals applied to keep the soil artificially productive, the costs of mechanisation and the polluting side effects of the fuel used to cultivate and move the product sometimes tens of thousands of miles from its site....The world is in the beginning stages of experiencing what the real cost has been as our climate changes irrevocably.

Choose and buy wisely. Don't clothe yourself with the Emperors duds...

Dressing up part 3

Today I'm getting very close to finishing the upcycled jacket. It needs a name rather than that broad description so it's going to be referred to as the Murra Coat from now on. Here's a picture of where I finished up by the end of yesterday. Saturday, it was a super busy day in the studio with a half dozen visitors stopping by for a chat (hello Yoni! Inga!) so I only ended up doing about 3 hours work on it.

Murra coat, day 2 after about 8 hours work

As you can see the pockets have been added and the sleeves attached. The side seams will stay open for a while yet as I need to work on it flat. This way it goes under the machine foot plus hand stitched details can be added with ease. Only the bands need be added to the fronts and around the neck.

Right sleeve, folded with underarm seams meeting. The cuff is turned back

the right sleeve flattened out

Above are some close ups of one of the sleeves. The cuff is intended to turn back so I sewed a fabulous wide piece of vintage Indian embroidered edging with elephants on the inside of the sleeve. Look closer to notice some more details like the bit of running stitch embellishment in between the zigzag stencil prints and along the bottom of that stenciled piece is a twisted strip cut from a knit teeshirt. That was 2 narrow strips twisted into a thick cord and sewed on with 6 strands of DMC embroidery thread. I'll add a lot more of that particular very textured detail to other areas of the coat before its finished.

These kind of applied details maketh the art....

I'll be showing where things are at with the Murra Coat later on today or tomorrow morning.

Dressing up part 2

Part 2

The doona cover was cut apart to separate the front and back. I had to cut the seams because they were overlocked. Sometimes they aren't and then the bag can be torn apart very quickly.

Only 1.2m of the length of the doona fabric was needed to cut the Back, Fronts and sleeves of the jacket. That meant there is enough fabric left over to potentially make 2 more jackets!

Back, Front and sides of jacket cut from the doona cover

The pattern I'm using for my jacket is the Wiksten Haori Jacket by Jenny Gordy in the largest size. There has been so much buzz about this jacket for a couple of years and I've seen so many great examples of it that I wanted to try it. I buy PDF patterns from other independent designers because I want to support the industry and sometimes I want to research how others are presenting their product and critique how the instructions are presented. However I've decided to draw an ethical line at publicly rating and writing up my opinions on how good I think the pattern is. My position as a competitor in the industry makes any opinion I express too fraught with the possibility of bias. So I'll just make some very broad observations that its a simple pattern that went together very easily. I chose not to line my version of the jacket. I did slightly alter the pattern by making the sleevehead 10cm wider. The maximum circumference of the bicep allowed for in the original pattern sleeve was 44cm. That was going to be a bit tight for me, especially with another sleeve underneath so I added 10cm to the width.

There is a lovely interview with Jenny Gordy in Seamwork magazine and I must say I was very impressed that she works in one of those huge airy white walled studios where there is not a thread on the floor or a scissor not hanging on its nominated peg on the wall.

Here's a picture of my studio workroom today...

I've cut the Jacket Back, Side Fronts and Sleeves but not the front bands or patch pockets as I want to get the surface created on those main pieces before deciding on the finishing touches of the bands and pockets.

When I make an "art" garment there are several techniques I like to incorporate. For the jacket in this series of blogs I don't want to add too much complexity. My object is to finish this garment in 2 days and not get engrossed in the more labour intensive finishes I often apply. Stenciling is one of the things I love to do the surface and it's quick and easy so I select the most plain of the upholstery brocades on hand to put some paint on.

beginning to stencil

finished piece of stenciled brocade fabric

The piece of stenciled textile will be cut into strips and patches and mixed up with the other fabrics.

I decide to start with appliquing a large, wide strip of tapestry sewed horizontally along the hem of the Back. It was a cotton table runner with a traditional floral design. The ends of the runner were pointed so I cut off an end to square it off. The pointy piece is later sewed on in the middle of the "runner" pointing downwards.

All of the surface embellishment will be sewed to the wrong side of the lining pieces. I'm using a wide 3-step zigzag stitch (commonly used a stretch stitch for lingerie) and sewing the patches close to the raw edges. There will be no turned under hemmed edges, I like to have some fraying.

The next piece appliqued is the square top of a cushion cover. It has been made in India and hand embroidered with shisha mirror. The top is separated from the back of the original cushion cover.

Around the sides of this large central piece I sew wide strips in a sort of crude "log cabin" format. You can see a patch of the stenciled fabric on the lower left side and a long piece along the shoulders.

back of the coat

When the Back was done to the stage shown in the picture above I started on the side fronts. The left front was covered entirely with the length of another table runner. The fringe was left along the bottom edge. On the right side I attached the other end of the table runner with the fringe on it. Above that a big square of the stenciled textile.

side fronts

I started embellishing one of the sleeves. Then it was about 5.30pm so I called it a day and went home. I took the jacket and did some sashiko stitching over various areas while watching TV last night.

1 sleeve almost finished

So this is where I was up to after about 5 hours work. I expect to have the jacket finished tomorrow and will show you how it was completed.

dressing up

Hi there everybody. I’ve been working a lot on patterns lately and long periods doing all that tech stuff leave me stir crazy. I'm hanging to be doing some hands on creative stuff. Before coming into the studio this morning I popped into Vinnies (our local thrift shop, from “St Vincent de Paul”) as I do all too often, and collected some more “resources”. Looking at the goodies strewn on the studio worktable I decided to take you on a creative journey with me for the next few days as I make a coat starting from scratch.

For months I’ve been collecting lots of “doona covers” (Australian name for a 2 sided bag that goes over a quilt and gets removed for laundering)and have gotten some really fabulous ones. I’ve already sold 3 of my upcycled transformed versions of these. 

second hand doona cover

I’ve always used 2^nd hand sheets and covers for testing my prototype versions of patterns and when collecting these have found some that are just too nice to use for experiments.

Today I’ve busted out one of those covers, as shown in the picture above. I’ll cut the inner lining of the coat from this and still have lots of fabric left over. Unusually this doona has patterned fabric on both sides so the amount of fabric that can be potentially recycled is huge...thats about 5m of 3m wide fabric. More often doonas are found with the pretty fabric on the outside and lighter weight plain fabric on the inside.

The next picture shows a stack of upholstery fabric offcuts I’ve bought from thrift shops in the last 3 months. I picked out the colour coordinated pieces I want to patch together for the coat project.

pieces of vintage upholstery fabric offcuts collected from thrift shops

The next step is to stencil on some of these pieces and in the next blog I’ll show what was done.

more heat

short sleeve Tyrelle in rayon

3/4 sleeve Tyrelle in stonewash denim

back of 3/4 sleeve Tyrelle

Tyrelle cover page for pattern

The "Tyrelle  Dress" my new PDF pattern has been published and is for sale in my Etsy and Shopify shops.


From my diary today:

4.45am, and I've been up since 2am because the heat is so oppressive I can't sleep. It’s 23 degrees celsius.

The remnants of my dessicated garden are also dry baking in the dark outside the walls of this house. I don't typically suffer from insomnia but disjointed and anxious thoughts keep swirling around my old grey noggin so with the heat adding physical discomfort it hasn't been possible to drift into relaxed sleep. While insomnia is unusual, anxiety is a familiar life long companion. I know theres something I want to say - other than tahdah, heres my latest clothes pattern publication - but the thoughts are roiling around oleaginously and refuse to be captured.

So at 5.30 am I went back to bed and fell into a disturbed slumber. Hubby and I turn the bedside radio on the early morning hours (drowns out the rooster…) and snatches of very scary stuff from news bulletins kept getting blended into my dreams….

At 8am I have to get out of bed…I need to expel pee and imbibe caffeine (god help me the day is coming soon when I’ll get that order mixed up…) It’s 28 degrees Celsius.

Because our town has run out of dam water the water tanker trucks are already lumbering up and down our street. No point in railing about this, Murrurundi is only one of 100s of small rural towns (and some cities) in Australia whose creeks and rivers stopped running a couple of years ago and the free precipitation from the skies has become as rare as an honest politician.

The caffeine (yes, it’s the right colour and smell) is helping collect the discombobulated buzzing in my head. The dread is sinking downwards from the head to settle as a shivery fizzing frothing pain in my belly. Its not a panic attack, but I know I’m afraid.  For half a day I’ve been locked into a deep sense of foreboding, an ululating silent brain scream is resounding around the brainium…there is an environmental collapse happening in my back yard, in my town, in my valley, in this country.  I’m looking into a cataclysm and there’s no way back.

The trigger happened last night as I followed up on a garment that appeared in my Pinterest stream. It took me to a very successful Etsy shop (over 28,000 sales since 2016!) run by some peeps in Byron Bay. I hate BB for its population of would be if they could be hippie/alternative lifestyle pretenders. This shop featured “pixie” style clothing for those young ladies with firm slender bods who want to cultivate their will-o-the wisp boho image. It was a bit depressing realising I’m old enough to have lived through an earlier iteration of this “look” around in the 1980s….the lace up backs and side seams, overlaid layers with shredded edges, etc, etc (the pain is fizzing in my gut, I’m feeling too sick to be bothered hashing up all the particular features of this ”look”)…Read the usual drivel blurb about the business owners living an ethical and environmentally sustainable lifestyle. These ones don’t bother claiming a percentage of their profits goes to supporting the orphans of India/Guatemala/Somalia/insert currently trendy 3^rd world needy nation….Its apparent they cannot be sewing all this poxie pixie garb themselves…oh yeah, there it is….we’re in a caring ”partnership” with a family of “artisan sewers” in India and pay them a real living wage. My gut is churning. In the last 5 years I’ve come across quite a few of these shining examples of hogshit at markets and selling on the internet. Their story is a load of virtue signalling claptrap of course. I hate that it makes me feel bitter and angry. To ground myself and remind me that I’m no glowing (heh, glowering?...yes) saint I have to trot out a list of all my own shortcomings, batshit and pretensions. I have no right to judge and criticise others….but that shriek that has been banging on my skull is trying to escape by levering my jaws open…so, filled with disgust at what I experience as a “poor me” sob story I’m letting that silent scream activate my tongue to say what I think shouldn’t be said aloud.

The poxy, pixie pretenders of Byron Bay and their ilk aren’t any more caring and sustainable with the product they are putting into the world than Kmart. Nor is that lady at the market just down from me who was selling beautiful handwoven rugs from Guatemala and had the same 3^rd world artisan story. A few marquees further away was a bloke with handmade leather shoes from Mexico, same story, next to him a lady with fabulously hand embroidered blouses from the Phillipines was also virtuously propping up the 3^rd world….

Phew…

Nobody wants to be their own sweatshop slave.

Hear THIS….if they’re not making every item themselves with materials sourced locally then their “ethical, sustainable, fair wage, blahhedy blah….” is a fabrication covering a stinking crock of shit.

10am, its 33 degrees Celsius. My computer desk overlooks the yard where an 18 year old Mountain Ash tree about 6 metres away from the back steps is dying from the drought.

This is the second rant I’ve had on my blog in the last couple of months. More and more days I feel like I’m sliding down the edge of a cataclysm. My outrage at the lying pretenders seems to be so diffuse that on the many days when its over 40 degrees I wonder if its my own inchoate rage that is burning up all existence.

This is dedicated to local lady Lucy. Lucy doesn’t have air conditioning in her house so late last year she half filled a childs paddling pool in her back yard with water so her and her little dog could soak themselves from time to time during the day to keep cool. A neighbour observed this and because the town is on severe water restrictions (3 minute showers, 2 loads of washing a week, no car washing, etc) they reported her to the shire council and an inspector duly turned up at her door to reprimand her. Suggested there could be a $$$ fine if there was another infringement (water tanker thundering down the street as I write this) Obviously she needs to be a whole lot more furtive and do this in the bathtub, in the house, like us more cunning ones do.

As our town dries out the crazy is expanding exponentially.

Finish writing this at 10.15am. Its 33 degrees. Shall I turn on the air con (do you get the irony that this will be powered from the electricity produced from the coal burning power stations about 100km away at Muswellbrook) or shall I have a 3 minute cold shower with the plug in the bath so I can return to splash in the water later on when it gets over 40?

new pattern Tyrelle

The heat has been atrocious for the last couple of months in the area where I live. We've just been through a couple of weeks where the daily temperature was over 40C (103 fahrenheit) every day and the overnight temp didn't fall below 25C. A couple of those days we came close to cracking 45C (113fah). To get through this my husband I hunkered down in the loungeroom with the air con running 24/7 and slept on a mattress in the same room. Needless to say I wasn't able to work in my studio most of this period as the 2 small rooms have only 1 window and no air con. The fan alone just couldn't make it comfortable enough to be in the space. However, designing PDF patterns requires a lot of technical work in computer programs so I got on with that at home in the sanctuary of coolness.

Today I'm showing some preview pictures of the "Tyrelle Dress" which will be ready to publish in a couple of days.

front of Tyrelle Dress

technical diagrams for the Tyrelle Dress, short sleeve and 3/4 sleeve options

I had some fun with this next sample version. I use sheets and doona covers bought from thrift shops to make my first samples when working on new patterns and this Tyrelle was made from lovely soft cream cotton sheet. All that blank whiteness led me to crave the opportunity to break out the paints and stencils. I did a lot of free painting directly onto it with big brushes then added some stencils. Lastly some appliques and sashiko stitching. I also made the beaded, tasselled brooch shown in some of the pictures and the cloth necklace.

the unpainted Tyrelle sample dress made from a used cotton sheet

The upper front with my beaded tasselled eye brooch

back of the hand painted version of Tyrelle

another necklace I made

I've had several email enquiries lately from people outside of Australia asking if the clothes and other items I show on the blog are for sale. Everything shown on the blog is for sale and I welcome all enquiries. The items I show here go into the retail area of my studio in Murrurundi where the door is open for anybody to call in on the days I'm working (please note I don't keep regular retail opening hours). If you're unable to call in and try things on because you're very far away or overseas but are interested in buying anything I show here please don't hesitate to ask me by private email. I'll give you a price, information about the fit and dimensions of the garment and work out the postage cost.

One day I'll have to figure out how to use Instagram so I can advertise there.....

Lastly, when I was taking pictures of Tyrelle this morning I also took this picture of my favourite room in my home, the conservatory....isn't it inviting! That white fluff ball on the further away chair is Oscar, the maltese terrier, in one of his favourite spots.

Up the Zambeesie

Today I've finally finished and published the Zambeesie Jacket PDF pattern. It was almost finished 5 months ago when I discovered I was developing cataracts in both eyes. 2 weeks ago I had my second eye fixed and I'm now able to work on the computer screen again without going cross eyed.

Here's some more pictures to remind you of what it looks like. And if you love it heaps here is a 15% discount code for my Shopify Store. It's only good for one use for a week, until Nov 28 and will discount only the Zambeesie Jacket. Full price is $18.00 so the discount will leave you paying a mere $15.30.

ZAMBEE15OFF

second make for November

I've just finished this jacket literally a few minutes ago. It started off as a black polyester waist length waterfall front jacket bought from the local charity shop for $5. I turned it inside out and with a combination of hand and machine sewing appliqued fabric pieces all over the outside, now become the surface. The sleeves were cut open along the underarm seams to facilitate working flat on them.

For the appliques I raided my big collection of indian textiles and chose lots of lavish silk fabric and embroidered braids. A lot of the embroidered pieces are embellished with metallic embroidered thread along with glass beads and shisha mirror details. Most of the fabrics I collected myself in India in 2001 when I spent 8 weeks travelling all over on a solo backpacking tour.

The original light polyester fabric of the jacket has become the inside lining and the finished jacket has become heavy with the amount of metallic thread embellishment and glass beading that has gone onto the surface. I added a lot of sashiko hand stitching to "integrate" the various multi coloured pieces and the jacket took 3 days, or approximately 24 hours of labour intensive work to complete.

November Kimono Coat

Monday I was at Muswellbrook Hospital again getting my right eye poked by the fabulous Dr Eugene Hollenbach. His deft prodding with the scalpel has restored 20/20 vision to it, so it's acuity now matches the left side and I'm no longer the visually challenged artist....Cataract surgery is a modern, everyday miracle being achieved for thousands of us that I'm so grateful for. 50 years ago I would have endured a fairly rapid decline into blindness and lived several decades in sorrow for my lost ability to be a VISUAL artist.

I went back to work in the studio on Friday and this lovely full length kimono is my first make for November. It's completely made from upcycled fabrics, many which I've stenciled. There are also some elaborate patches with reverse applique motifs.

a little help from my friends....

My dear friends! I woke up this morning to an inbox full of messages of caring and support! Thank you, I love that so many of you took time to share my pain and then send lovely words expressing your admiration for my art and encouraging me to keep going. I have tears pouring down my face at the moment. There are so many of you whom I know are "out there" but I haven't heard from for perhaps years....thankyou for letting me know you understand and care about my despondency.

Do not worry - I'm not clinically depressed or anything terrible like that! - just going through a spell when I feel the world is either indifferent or negative to my art. Because so many of you are creatives yourselves, I imagine many are nodding sagely and have experienced being in this place yourselves - which seems to me like just treading water with one nostril above it and feeling like the life raft is too full to bother picking me up....!

Honestly, I'm just too emotionally exhausted after taking that blow in the guts after being rejected by the Hunt and Gather Markets (they took 2 hours to assess and reject my emailed application) to go into the 10 year travail of how I've tried to get into a good Newcastle based monthly market. Except to make these brief comments that over 10 years the 6 applications I made to the Olive Tree Market, the other quality curated event, have also been rejected on the nebulous basis that I "don't fit". This can only be because my "product" is the wrong look, as on every other basis of being hand made and artist designed I exceed the criteria. Somebody once intimated that my stall set-up looked a bit messy and uncoordinated....but sheeeesh! everything I make is one-of-a-kind! I don't manufacture 25 beige skirts,18 brown jackets and 20 white shirts that hang on rails with their hems matching in beautiful minimalist perfection....

Dear friends, I will be fine, and I've truly had much worse disappointments!...and in reality, its hard to stay in the shit for more than 48 hours in a row, unless you really work on keeping yourself in the toilet bowl....heh. But the lovely heartfelt support and reach out so many of you have given is helping me understand I can put this minor set back behind me quickly and keep moving forward doing the work I love and that gives my life purpose and meaning.

Meantime - has anyone got any suggestions for an urban based gallery/shop/market in the Newcastle/Maitland area that would be happy to take some of my "product" on commission....?