Sweatpants Forever

Bring on the sweatpants. 

No dismay from me that the global north "fashion" industry is teetering and going broke. I'm wallowing in the delightful schadenfraude. Makes me want to light up a big cuban cigar and drag on it in deep satisfaction (I stopped smoking 20 years ago).

New York Times - Sweatpants Forever

What I hope happens now that the COVID19 pandemic has exposed the chronic unsustainability of the whole BS fast fashion model is that consumers will have to fall back on the previous way the world functioned. Clothes made locally by local people.

More textile fibre will have to be grown and produced close to where its processed. Due to reduced international shipping a much bigger portion of garments will have to be made inside countries instead of imported. Local production will benefit the local economy by keeping cash circulating in small circles instead of being hooked out by overseas based businesses to enrich a privileged group of shareholders.

First world consumers will go through a fright period of readjustment to reality when they have to pay the real costs of local production. 

The current industrial model of producing clothing in low wage countries with poor record of worker rights, fair pay and industrial regulation was always unsustainable. A temporary cloud cuckoo land for global north consumers to frolic around in until the band stopped playing.

Hopefully, the ignorant and addictive consumerism which has led to the natural biological systems sustaining our environment being abused to breaking point will have to at least slow down, if not stop. Human activities that have debased and overtaken vast tracts of land, altering the balance of ecological systems and destroying the habitat and ranges of wild animals, is part of the reason why the COVID19 infection jumped its host species to a human.

The world simply cannot go on shitting in it's own nest without consequences.Too many consumers are just too stupid/selfish/entitled/deluded to change their destructive consumerist behaviours. As a consequence of not being able to do it consciously and voluntarily nature is exposing just how naked our Empress is. 

I was first radicalised in 1973 reading this book at age 14.   

Small is Beautiful  by German economist E F Schumacher

Before that there was this seminal warning written a decade earlier in 1962, from scientist Rachel Carson

Silent Spring

The End of Nature     Bill McKibben, the news was just getting worse in 1989

From the 1960s to now I'm living it and seeing it. Things are truly much, much worse now than they were in 1973. The Baby Boomer generation were the first to recognise the implications of the scientific data that human behaviours were locking us into a fatal pattern of ecological change. Change that will render the natural environment that our species has adapted to live in over millennia into something we can't adapt fast enough to survive in. Despite this awareness, research and monitoring over 50 years the warnings have never significantly altered that course.

Some people think/hope theres still time to pull back fast enough to avert the catastrophe. I don't share that optimism. I believe the Earth has entered into the Anthropocene era, meaning that the pollution generated by humans is the most influential factor on altering the balance of the climate.

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We pollute the planet because of burning fossil fuels to make the energy needed to keep producing consumer goods. Extracting resources and making stuff to sell is the foundation of Capitalism; the system of organising wealth, labour and resources that is predominant. It is a hierarchical system that has an elite group at the top who commandeer the labour of others to do the work of extracting and producing.

Sometimes feel a sense of despair that every next generation since the Boomers thinks they're the first discoverers of capitalist exploitation and the damage it does to living beings and the environment....

I am also personally embarrassed and ashamed that the Baby Boomer generation have been so useless in bringing about the real political change needed to stop our descent into irreversible and catastrophic climate change.

hot stuff for Winter

The coldest part of Winter where I live is from now to the end of September. I hate the cold because poor circulation means my hands and feet are frozen like great blocks of ice and hurt a lot. I don't run any heating in my professional studio due to the enormous quantities of fabric stored there. The possibility of a thread or a little bit of fibre fluff falling into a heater and setting the whole place on fire is too real.

Oscar the maltese terrier appreciates a nice fire too

So with the cold weather and social distancing requirements of the pandemic I've been able to justify staying home for months huddling by the warmth of the wood heater in the lounge room and watching back to back Netflix. 

Just watched the whole 5 seasons of the "The Bureau" in the last couple of weeks and what a great series that was. Unfortunately it is made in France so was subtitled in english meaning I had to watch the screen almost all the time to keep up with the story. That was "unfortunate" in the sense that it was hard to do any small lap size craft projects because of needing to watch what to do. 

Nevertheless, I persevered to make cloth beads for this necklace.

The round beads are formed by scrunching a tuft of fibre fill (salvaged from an old pillow) and winding yarn around it. When its the desired size I either embroider directly onto the surface with stranded embroidery thread - as in the black and white bead at top left, or wind fragments of cloth onto the bead, sew them place and then embroider the details - as with second and third beads down on the left side.

The tube beads are made with a length of the stick from an earbud in the centre. If you pull the cotton buds off the end they are usually a rigid plastic tube with a tiny 2mm hole down the middle (sometimes they are cardboard or solid plastic). I wind thick quilt batting around that, then the outer cloth and embroider onto that. The hole in the middle of the earbud stick may or may not be useful when you come to string the beads. Its main purpose is to simply keep the bead straight and rigid. The beads tend to be too soft and bendy without the support otherwise.

When the beads were strung I liked the juxtaposition of using them with some brass metal beads and some bone. The white beads with black streaks on them and the smaller ones with spots on them are carved from horn. I bought these from an Etsy shop along with some other amazing beads made by people in the country of Mali. I only use them for special projects. 

Above is a close up of earrings I made on the same day. I bought the superbly detailed glass parrot beads from another Etsy shop. I love parrots because there are real ones in my backyard that come in for a feed every day. Some of them have become so tame they come in the windows and walk around the house! Below is an Australian King Parrot sitting on my lounge room window sill.

To finish off today heres a picture of another cloth and embroidered necklace and earrings made last year. I still really like the shape of the earrings so plan to make another in colours.

The coat is finished

Chilly Botty cardi, part 4

Today is part 4 and the last guidelines for how to finish the long line cardigan. The diagram below shows how the skirt was patched together.

 The picture below shows how I laid up the patch pieces on my worktable, deciding how to arrange them, before sewing together. Note how the diagram above specified to cut the patches in a slightly trapezoid shape – narrow at top and wider at the bottom. This will cause the skirt to take up a curved shape so that when its attached to the upper part the coat it will have what is described in dressmaking as an “A” line shape. This silhouette is fitting at the shoulders and wider at the hem.

patches laid up on work table while deciding how to arrange them

When the skirt was long enough to match the length of the top it was overlaid and sewed on 3ZZ.
The front edges were finished with long placket strips extending from the hem to the collar.
I like to add an edging along the hem line. This does several things - a) adds weight, so that the hem swings better b) it provides an aesthetically pleasing horizontal line differentiating the edge c) it stabilises the hem edge to prevent stretching d) it adds more durability. Usually I sew a woven cotton tape 15mm - 20mm wide along the hem, sewing with zigzag or 3ZZ along each side of the tape. But I had in the studio a neat decorative braid bought from Darn Cheap Fabrics in Melbourne a couple of years ago. The picture shows the tape laid on the hem before it was sewed on.

Here is the finished coat. I sewed four upcycled buttons onto the placket so it can be buttoned up.

Front of upcycled coat

back of upcycled coat

On each side of the collar I sewed some little motifs. On the right is a small applique flower and on the left a crotcheted flower.

Top of coat, showing plackets along the collar edge, buttons and motifs on collar

Oscar the maltese terrier knows what this coat is good for

And heres me modelling the coat

Part 3 of cardigan reconstruction

Chilly Botty cardi, part 3

Sleeves

step 1, I cut 2 sleeve templates from a light voile like fabric that had originally been a lining in a skirt that had been cut out when I upcycled the outer layer a while back.

step 2, scraps and various bits and pieces were laid over the top of each lining template as I decided how to lay up the applique. When happy with the lay out, it was pinned and stitched down with the 3ZZ technique.

Heres a pic of my two sleeves

The stitched down pieces were trimmed back and neatened to make sure they matched the sleeve  pattern piece.

step 3, sew the sleeve underarm seams, 3ZZ. Its a bit tricky sewing down the sleeve tube, easier to start from the wider shoulder end.

step 4, cut 2 rectangular pieces for cuffs. Sew short ends to form into loops, fold in half and sew the raw ends to the sleeves at wrist.

step 5, I wanted the bottom of the cardigan to be wider than what it would have been if sections kept being added as straight sided rectangles, so cut 2 long triangular gores to add the sides below where the sleeves fit.

step 6, match and sew the side seams.

step 7, insert, match and sew the sleeves in.

front of cardigan with sleeves added. I don't mind the left side front being longer than the other side, though this hadn't been intentional.

back of cardigan with sleeves added

 
The cardigan could be finished at this stage but my plan is to make it knee length.

In part 4 I'll describe how to add extra length to the bottom of the cardigan then finish off the front edges with plackets and add some buttons.

Hot botty 2

Pay the Rent

This is an organisation I make a recurring payment to.

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Chill Botty cardi, part 2

Following on from my last blog post....

Cut off lower parts of the side fronts and the back. Cut them all different lengths. I hacked off that left sleeve unevenly, leaving an indent where a long sleeve is yet to be attached. It needs to be straight so I'll fix that by sewing a little patch in there.

This long cardigan will be unlined. Once the bottom sections are cut off we move from
de-constructing to putting it all back together. I'll be adding strips and squares of other fabrics using my quick overlay technique. For this the I use the widest 3 step zigzag stitch on my sewing machine (Janome 6600) which is 7mm. This stitch is commonly used for lingerie making as its a stretch stretch. Its necessary for this project because I'll be combining knits and woven fabrics and the 3 step stitch is going to prevent the stretch fabrics from distorting when sewed. It also facilitates not needing to line the garment as there won't be any seams on the underside.

In the instructions from now on I refer to the 3 step zigzag as 3ZZ

step 1, prepare the shoulders for where the sleeves will eventually be attached - cut 2 strips of  fabric 55cm long by 8cm wide. Centre middle of the strip over the shoulder seams and overlaying the fabrics sew with 3ZZ.

Above you can see where the strips are sewed to the shoulders.

step 2, on the left front I sewed a patch pocket. At the bottom I sewed 2 strips of fabric. All these just had the raw edges overlaid less than 1cm and sewed 3ZZ. On the right front I sewed a little triangle patch and at the bottom a large section I'd cut off another cardigan I'm upcycling. That section is flared wider at the bottom. To get the left and right side fronts matching I sewed a long narrow triangle of fabric to the front edge of the left front so it flares wider and matches the measurements of the other side.

step 3, above is a picture of the back. On the top part I've sewed more purely decorative patches, picked from my scrap bag. The lower part of the back has a long wide strip sewed to it, the full length. The side fronts are hanging lower because I need to add more stuff to the back to equal the same length.

Not counting the time I'm putting into documenting this project, the whole alteration has taken about 1.5 hours.

So at this stage the garment could potentially be a nice little sleeveless vest. To do that it would need a bit more length on the back so the side seams can be sewed up. Then I'd add plackets to the raw edges of the side fronts, so it can button up. The cap sleeves could be bound or hemmed.
Voila! a sweet button up vest.

However, in the next blog, Part 3, I'll show how to make and attach long sleeves.
Part 4 will show how to add about 50cm to the lower part to make it a knee length cardigan.

I intend to use up all the pieces that were cut off the original jumper in this reconstruction process so that 100% of it is upcycled. Because the jumper is polyester/acrylic when I adopted it into my wardrobe I pledged to take responsibility for it for the rest of its life. It needs to be worn at least 100 times or used in another form for at least 20 years before the resources that were invested in its creation can be environmentally justified.

Project to warm the chill botty

Malpa Project

The Malpa Project mentors Aboriginal kids to become strong leaders in their communities & beyond. Can you help us employ a full-time Indigenous mentor to nurture & inspire the kids in our program?

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Today I'm going to start a step by step project showing how I alter a jumper into a cardigan coat.

Reading one of my favourite sewist blogs this morning

THORNBERRY

I fell in love with Lara's coat. At this coldest part of Winter here in Australia cardigans of all lengths are incredibly practical. It's a layering piece that can be put on or off as required. I especially like a calf length cardi because it's such an elegant length and keeps my chill bottom warm.

...do you like my foot artfully posed in the picture? I'm wearing my new home made boots.

On the left above is a picture of a jumper I've worn a lot. I bought it at Vinnies 2 years ago and its 100% polyester/acrylic. Unlike some wealthy and snobby women I don't have a problem upcycling synthetic fabrics. In fact, I think its a highly ethical and sustainable thing to do. If you still buy new clothes and fabrics and want to do the right thing - don't buy synthetics. Buy cotton, linen, hemp, bamboo and silk.

This garment had already been discarded by its original buyer. If I, or somebody else, hadn't bought it it probably would have gone into a huge bale of used clothes to get shipped off to the global south. Sending our reject clothes to poorer countries isn't a virtuous thing to do. Receivers of our first world discards buy the bales by weight and sell the individual garments for pennies.

This model has disrupted the businesses of their own local based clothing makers. Most local makers had been women working from home. The exported garments are sold cheaper than the clothes produced by local workers and this competition drives down the income of the cottage workers. 

The western style clothes often seem more desirable to local people too. Many of the cottage workers would have made clothes based on long term popular regional or traditional styles. They may have used locally woven fabrics, ribbons, embroideries and decorative features and these become supplanted by the clothes made in western fabrics, prints and styling.

Back to why I don't turn up my nose at recycling synthetic fabrics. These clothes already exist in the world. If we don't take responsibility for them they could end up in somebody elses country doing damage to their local economy. Alternatively if it goes to landfill it won't biodegrade for a 1000 years. If it gets incinerated then horrible chemicals get released into the atmosphere.

So if you see and love a garment that is synthetic in a thrift shop don't feel you must refuse it because its made from bad, evil plastic stuff. The condition is - before you adopt it you have to pledge yourself to take responsibility for it forevermore. That means wearing it to death and never putting it back into the waste stream again. If you stop wearing it in 5 years time then make a cushion out it or cut it up into cleaning rags. A million other possibilities....

Step number one, I've cut the jumper down the middle front, from hem through the cowl neck. I knew this would make the collar open out beautifully.

Step number two, cut both the sleeves off, straight up and down in line with side seams, not worrying about the half disc of the sleeve cap that is still there. The original sleeves won't be left in because they're too narrow.

Step number three, undo or cut open the side seams.


Get yourself an old jumper and follow along if you like. I'll be back in a couple of days explaining what to do next.

still got mileage

I'm back. New set of tyres on the old jalopy.

This picture made me laugh. The first car I owned was a Fiat 500 Bambina that I bought for $450 in 1983. It had to be push started by rolling it down a slope. I'd put my shoulder into the door frame, hang onto the steering wheel with my left hand and push to get it rolling down the slope. When it got sufficient momentum I'd jump into the driver seat, pedal the accelerator like crazy and start the engine.

Another old jalopy I got crash started yesterday was to revive my "Get Stitched" online newsletter and publish a new one. That had been out in the weather rusting on the street for a few years too. I'll be writing a new one monthly.

The subscription button is on the right side bar if you'd like to check it out.

A couple of nights ago I was on local Newcastle NBN TV. Talking about how I use fabrics and clothes sourced from thrift shops to alter and remake into my unique art to wear clothes.

Pearl on NBN TV

Now talk about clapped out....you can clearly see my days of running downhill pushing a Bambina are well and truly behind me.

Cyber trolls slashing my tyres

I know people have been trying to communicate with me for 3 days.

My laptop has crashed again under cyber attack. Same as a few months ago when I said some unkind things about China. I have a techy person working hard to pump the tires up again.

I'll be back soon as I can....

new version of cloth boots I'm working on

Can I say this...?

Now that I’ve reverted to addressing Aja Barber by her name on my blog I hope she’ll do the same and let her 150,000 followers know my name is Pearl Red Moon. I hope she didn’t delete the comment I made on her Patreon so they can make up their own minds whether it deserved the half hour tirade I got served up on Instagram video. If my comment was deleted and they want to know what bought on such outrage, I’ll publish it here.

This was my comment….

Sometimes I wonder why we need to have "work clothes" and "home clothes". This expectation works well for capitalism because we feel compelled to spend more money maintaining 2 separate wardrobe styles. Do all cultures operate like that? Plus I think more costs are put on women to maintain a professional wardrobe compared to what males spend. Men seem to have cleverly worked out that they can limit their professional work clothing choices within a small range of conventionally styled suits, shirts, trousers, coats, that don't change annually with each "season". This allows them to present at work garbed in acceptable choices rotating the same clothes for years for significantly less expenditure than what most women are enticed to spend.

                                    

(In that video she makes a little self deprecating observation referring to people making fun of her name. Boy, do I get that, same here! I legally changed my name in 1987 when I lived in Sydney. Over decades I’ve had people insinuate it might be a cultural appropriation from American Indian or Asian cultures. For a really long time I was completely baffled why they would think that. Perhaps the reality that I’m old, fat, white and greyhaired doesn’t quite match what they were assuming?)

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That done, I move on with a heavy heart to react to another thing Ms Barber accused me of.

She said I use my neuro-diversity (Aspergers) as a free pass to get out being held accountable for saying offensive things to people or for holding offensive views.

I feel sick and shaky just writing that. It’s not only a slur on me personally but to all neurodivergent people. I could only bear watching the video once but somehow the way I use that free pass also got described as “manipulative”

.

This is a bit of background to my story.

I was born with non typical neurons in my brain. Being autistic didn’t happen because I got a brain injury, nor is it something medical I can take a pill to cure, nor is it aberrant behaviours I can be trained out of. Bit like being born with blue eyes or melanin bleached skin.

 I had so many problem behaviours as a child my parents took me to psychiatrist who said I was “hyperactive” – that was the early 1960s word that later morphed into ADHD. I was strongly aware from starting school that I needed to watch and model the behaviours of other girls or I lived in a world of perpetual trouble. My first school report says I need to learn how to get on nicely with the other kids. I was born the eldest in my family but fortunately I had a neuro typical sister 2 years younger whom I could model. As a teenager I worked out how to negotiate the world minimising trouble.

Things got considerably trickier after leaving school because I don’t like being around people, I’m super sensitive to sound and I struggle to interpret verbal and physical communications. Keeping jobs didn’t work well at all. I’m so super pedantic about rules and regulations, seldom make friends and never joined the workplace cliques. In many jobs I was bullied to the point of having breakdowns and doing self destructive behaviour like taking overdoses.

Making art had always been a thing I loved to do so in my early 40s I enrolled to do a Visual Art degree at an Australian University. This became incredibly challenging because of the huge throngs of people, over full auditoriums, canteens where the noise level was probably 90 decibels. I was obsessing over not being able to get a car parking space, all sorts of things like that were leading to me having crazy shite emotional melt downs. I went to a campus psychologist to work out what was wrong with me and how could I fix it. He told me I was probably still suffering from PTSD from the 1987 rape and the equally traumatic events of the criminal trial that resulted from that over most of 1992, plus I was probably also on the autistic spectrum.

I didn’t get the official test until about 6 years ago. A psychologist and a clinical psychologist saw me regularly over a few months and that was their diagnosis.

So what does Aja mean when she says I use my neuro diversity not be accountable? Firstly I want to clarify that I don’t have an intellectual disability. It doesn’t necessarily follow for all on the spectrum – think Einstein and Greta Thunberg. Though I sometimes have fun with people who know in advance, but when they meet me for the first time they speak loud, slow and use simple words.

By saying that Aja implies I don’t have integrity. She thinks I just like to say stuff (stupid and wrong stuff by her estimation) to intentionally hurt and harm people. She says that is what I’ve done to her and her friends. Maliciously and spitefully sought to harm them and then run back to my padded cell and say I’m too nuts to be held responsible.

That is completely untrue and makes me feel nauseous. I don’t want to hurt/harm her or her friends. As a textile artist, as a clothing pattern publisher, I wanted to take a stand over an assertion I didn’t agree with. I had no idea that quoting stuff they had written on public platforms was an insult and a personal attack. I honestly thought I was debating.

Well, I’m obviously more daft than I ever realised and creeping back into the padded cell is looking quite the sanctuary at the moment.

gut punch

“Stalker” is a provocative and terrifying word for women.

Aja Barber has publicly stated that I’m stalking her. Go see her Instagram video.

 Stalker is big trigger word for me.

I’m going to describe my own personal experience of stalking.

In 1987 I paid $500 to join a dating service. A year earlier I’d emigrated from New Zealand with my 5 year old son to live in Australia and was lonely. I was a 27 year old single mother in a new country working from home. I had no friends to socialise with which is why I’d gone to a reputable dating agency. The third date the agency arranged for me was with a man who took me to dinner. He picked me up from my home and we went out in his car for a meal and around 11pm I asked him to take me home. Instead he drove me to a squat house and raped me with his 2 friends who were waiting.

   

In the latter part of the assault, which involved having a knife put to my throat, I managed to jump out a window and ran down the street finding safety at the third house where I’d pounded on the door screaming for help while one of the rapists pursued me and tried to drag me back.

The next day was a nightmare of hospital examinations, rape crisis counsellors and making statements to the Police. It wasn’t hard to find the assailant as the dating agency had everything from coloured photos, to height, weight and home address.

The men who had assaulted me were Pacific Islanders, from Tonga. The Police couldn’t find them because their close knit Sydney community hid them. Within a day of coming home from hospital I started getting harassing phone calls. Over about 6 months I’d get 2-20 most days. Most of the time they would just hang up. Sometimes they would threaten to kill me or my son. I had to answer the phone because I did contract outwork sewing and that was how I organised getting and dropping off my work. In 1987 there were no mobile phones so there was no caller ID or ability to block numbers. The house I rented was broken into and burgled 3 times.

Eventually I was able to afford to move out of that house and changed my phone number. I legally changed my name as a way of hiding from the stalkers. Over thirty years later, despite changing my name, I still don’t register myself on public electoral lists because I’m afraid of being stalked.

That’s my experience of being stalked.

So when Aja Barber sits on her comfy lounge in London, England and calls me a terrifying stalker it leaves me aghast. Somehow or other she thinks only Black women know about violence and stalking. Only Black women know genuine suffering because my privilege as a “white” woman somehow makes me so not-human that I can’t relate to the humanity of other women. I’m an unfeeling white monster.

I find the “stalking” accusation deeply offensive, not just to myself, but for all women who’ve lived through the reality. To suggest my actions – a challenge issued on twitter (well sheesh, who knew twitter was a forum for kindly salutes!) has any parallel to the real anguish and literal physical danger that women are placed in daily from real life stalkers, is to demean and degrade the real gravity of what that word describes.

I have not stalked Aja. Shes not in the slightest danger from me unless she feels people who express differing opinions as a punch in the face. A year ago I tried to engage her and 2 other women to query their assertion that describing a modern garment as a kimono was a cultural appropriation. All the things I questioned referred to comments they had made on open public forums. I had a naïve assumption that if you make claims like that in public then you should be available to defend the proposition.

Ms Barbers suggestion that by joining her platform as a paying contributor I was somehow insulting her is absurd. As an advocate for numerous social justice issues she supposedly welcomes patronage. I submitted a comment to a discussion thread she had started that was in no way personal, it was 100% entirely addressing only the topic. Her unnecessary reaction was to make it very personal.

Regrettably I think I’m too much of an inquisitive and curious person for Aja to tolerate. Her mode of educating is by edict and anyone with the temerity to question will be ruthlessly thrown out the room.