Episode 174: Sewing As A Part of Slow Fashion with Zoe of Check Your Thread (part 2)

Welcome to Clotheshorse, the podcast that loves an apple cider doughnut, but isn’t a big fan of Cider (the shopping website, not the beverage).

I’m you host Amanda and this is episode 174! This week, Zoe Edwards, the host of Check Your Thread, is back to talk to us about how we can sew more sustainably.  We’ll be talking about patterns, upcycling fabrics, #MeMadeMay, and so much more!  

But, before we get to that conversation, we have a little bit of light housekeeping:

• As a reminder, it is now officially Secondhand September and you can submit an audio essay about it.  I talked about it in last week’s episode and I’ll share the details in the show notes.  Audio essays are due by September, 10 (that’s this Sunday) and I’m going to being sharing them next week! I’ve already received some really good ones, but keep them coming!
• Please check out the all new, super fabulous clotheshorsepodcast.com!
• This is also a great time to remind you of Small Biz Big Pic, the small business classes that I teach with Courtney of Sonic Wave Vintage.  We launched a new model last month in an effort to make our expertise and education more financially accessible to more people: now for $25/month, you get three sessions of education and coaching with the rest of the members. If you sign up now at smallbizbigpic.com, you won’t miss anything in September because the first session is on 9/12. And you can pay an extra $10 to watch all of the videos from August.  All classes are recorded for you to watch again and again, and you get cool things like workbooks and spreadsheets from me! Go check it out!

Top five things in the world of fast fashion and conversations about fast fashion that really grind my gears…and these are in no particular order of annoyingness:

1. The fact that the only brands in the “sustainable fashion” space that have the money to support slow fashion and sustainability creators are…the brands that do the most greenwashing and aren’t really “sustainable” in the first place. I’m looking at you, Allbirds…
2. The way that so many so-called “sustainable” brands like Parade bombard us with so much advertising, so many deals, so many emails and capsule collections that…of course they aren’t sustainable! But they tell us so often that they ARE sustainable, that we start to believe them.
3. So many people forget that Amazon is a massive player in the world of fast fashion, especially now that it is the biggest clothing retailer in the United States. The platform is full of flagrant knockoffs, photos stolen from the original brands, messed up sizing, bad fabrics, low quality, and super disappointing products that do not look like the photos…and somehow people don’t care.
4. The way so many fast fashion brands kinda fly below the radar because they aren’t as big as H&M, Zara, or Shein, yet they are still part of billion dollar companies doing all the same shady, unethical, wasteful things: Anthropologie, Free People, Urban Outfitters, American Eagle, Victoria’s Secret, Old Navy, Express, etc.
5. When companies create a massive brand presence that intentionally disguises the true nature of their business.  Anthropologie and Free People are great examples of fast fashion brands that wear an incredible disguise of “artisanal,” “creative,” “premium,” and even “eco-friendly.” But those brands are none of those things.  They use the same fast fashion factories as everyone else. They steal designs from small brands just like the other fast fashion players. And yet customers place them so far above the traditional fast fashion brands like Zara, H&M, Boohoo, etc…that they got away without ever paying for the orders they canceled in the early days of the pandemic.  They ignored the entire #payup campaign and their customers didn’t care. 

Nike is constantly voted as a brand most trusted by millennials and zoomers…yet it’s infamous for exploiting workers around the world, links with forced labor in China (yes, it even opposed legislation preventing the import of items made with Uyghur forced labor into the United States)…its shoes and apparel are primarily plastic, completely unrecyclable, shedding microplastics every day until they end up in the landfill for centuries, it does everything it can to avoid paying taxes in its home state of Oregon…yet people love, admire, and trust Nike. 

We see a similar branding effort with so-called “vegan leather.” Once completely unappealing to customers when it was called “man made leather,” “artificial leather,” or even “pleather.” But when it was rebranded as “vegan leather,” suddenly it was a “sustainable” option (spoiler: it’s not), an eco-friendly option (spoiler: it’s plastic and its production involves a lot of fossil fuels and dangerous processes), or even a “socially responsible” option (spoiler again: it’s horrible for the planet and the people making it, and certainly the animals of the world). But the name vegan leather makes it sound so good, right?

Branding works on us in so many ways.  It impacts our trust in brands.  What we’ll allow from them…if they ship slowly or ship us the wrong thing, we’ll forgive and forget because the brand image makes it seem like a blip. It impacts how much we will pay for an item.  If the branding seems kinda non-existent and cheap (think Temu, Walmart, the dollar store), we expect to get hot deals, the lowest pricing.  If the branding is fancy, if social media content is really aesthetic, if the stores are elaborate and experiential, we are fine with higher prices (Anthropologie, & Other Stories, Aritzia).

Now when I’m teaching students at Small Biz Big Pic, I always get things started by working with them to define their brand.  And because these are small businesses, their brand and its values should be a reflection of them.  In a world of small businesses, that personal connection is imperative. And it’s what builds loyal customer bases.  And it has to be authentic, right? Customers demand that.

But strangely with big brands, we expect less in terms of authenticity and consistency.  In fact, we’ll take some word salad from the company website and run with it. That’s enough for us.  And maybe it’s because we want to believe that things can be cheap, convenient, AND ethical. But unfortunately, that’s just not the case.  If you’ve been listening to Clotheshorse long enough, you know that our entire concept of price and value has been completely turned upside down by fast fashion. We no longer understand the true value of an article of clothing because we’ve been sold stuff for so long that could only be that cheap if one disregards quality, longevity, fit, and ethics. And the level of convenience that has been offered to us in the era of free, fast shipping…well, that can’t be achieved without the same disregard for ethics.  It just doesn’t work.  And we have to dismantle those expectations if we’re ever going to save the planet and its people from the repercussions of ever-escalating overconsumption.

So let’s talk more about that idea of branding and how it makes people kinda overlook the unsavory elements of a business, and let’s look at it specifically through the lens of ultra fast fashion brands:

• A few weeks ago, I talked about Dolls Kill. 
  •  It positions itself as a brand for outsiders, bad girls, rule breakers, yadda yadda yadda. Interestingly enough, despite its “outsider status,” it still subscribes to all of the boring mainstream beliefs around beauty, including thinness, youth, etc.  But it carries a lot of things that you can’t find anywhere else, really handpicked for its customer base.  This–combined with marketing and social media–have given Dolls Kill a lot of brand loyalty and a pretty dialed in brand aesthetic. 
  • The prices are higher than say, Shein, but it’s not wildly expensive.  And it’s always having some kind of wild sale. As of today, it’s 30% off sitewide, which was once the kind of deal you would only find on say, Cyber Monday.  So that says something about either the state of retail right now (brands are struggling, deals have to be deeper to appeal to customers) or the state of Dolls Kill specifically. Maybe both.  
  • Here’s the thing about Dolls Kill: the internet is full of stories of the brand stealing designs, engaging in bad behavior, shitty customer service, low quality product, and now, preventing customers from reselling their Dolls Kill clothes on secondhand platforms. And as I discussed in my coverage of Dolls Kill a few weeks ago, former employees are saying that this bad behavior, the bad product, etc ARE perhaps creating some cracks in the brand’s image…only time will tell. 
  • One last thing about Dolls Kill: its business model is what I would refer to as “fast fashion 1.0.” The trends come nonstop, there is certainly a steady stream of new products, new collabs, new reasons to shop and it uses a constant array of sales and promos to keep the inventory moving out, making space for new stuff.  Dolls Kill orders its inventory from vendors, receives it at ` a warehouse, and then ships it out to customers.  That’s the primary difference between “fast fashion 1.0” and its new little (big scary) sibling, “fast fashion 3.0.” 
  • Dolls Kill has a lot of products on its site right now, including about 3 pages of new arrivals, but you could (if you really wanted to) see every item on the site in less than an hour of clicking and scrolling.

If you’re wondering what Fast Fashion 2.0 is, I would say it’s Boohoo and Fashion Nova, these fast fashion brands that were able to churn out product even faster and cheaper than the original fast fashion brands, while leveraging social media in a way that Forever 21 and Zara never could. But these brands still brought product into their warehouses before shipping to customers, which slowed down the process a bit, but Boohoo and all of its sister brands (Pretty Little Thing, the new Nasty Gal, coast, MissPap) owned their own factories, which made stuff faster and cheaper than its competitors. 

• Okay, next let’s talk about Temu, which I discussed in last week’s episode.  
  • Temu is straight up fast fashion 3.0 (even though it sells more than just clothing: rather than receiving items in a warehouse and then shipping it off to customers, all items ship directly from the factory to the customer. So depending on the size of a customer’s order, they might receive 3, 5, 10 or more different packages. And Temu doesn’t actually buy or make anything, it’s merely the marketplace for these factories to reach customers directly.  And it seems unlikely that Temu does much in the way of product curation.  They aren’t trying to sell product stories or an aesthetic experience or anything like that.  Their point of differentiation: the lowest prices and the widest offering of products. I scrolled their new arrivals page for five minutes and never hit the end of it.
  • Here’s the thing: that virtually infinite assortment, the lowest prices, the constant deals…that IS the core of Temu’s branding.  And much like how Nike’s branding of good intentions, athletics and what I call “woke washing” make people forgive it for the bad things it does, the low prices and infinite assortment of Temu allow customers to forgive the company when something doesn’t arrive or is super disappointing. Temu’s branding actually moves customers to LOWER their expectations. Interesting, right? But not dissimilar to say, shopping at the dollar store or Walmart or even from Amazon.  You kinda expect that there is a trade off for the super low prices.  Fast fashion actually made us rethink a lot of our own expectations around the life span of the things we buy, and it made us more comfortable with things being not that great.
• Now let’s talk about Shein.  Shein is obviously fast fashion 3.0. It has all of the hallmarks of 3.0: virtually infinite assortment, constant newness (about 6,000 new styles EVERY SINGLE DAY), low, low prices and…it ships factory direct to customers. So once again, Shein is not receiving products from factories in their warehouse, then sending them out to customers. All items ship directly from the factories to the customers with Shein never taking possession of anything.  
  • Shein’s business model lands somewhere between Temu and Dolls Kill: Yes, it ships factory direct, but it does seem to be dictating what will sell on its platform.  It’s not just acting as a place where factories hawk their wares to overseas customers.  It does seem to be doing some level of curation, ostensibly by using data and customer behavior to make those decisions.  So it’s not an “anything goes” situation like Temu. But if you need to come up with 6000 new items every day, well it does get perilously close to “anything goes,” which includes a lot of stolen designs and art, disappointing quality, and repetition.
  • But Shein has proven to be just as profitable as it is nefarious.  Think about it: there are no expenses of warehouses, shipping, designers, production coordinators, buyers, QA checks, factory audits. And it never has to make an investment in inventory.  Because it doesn’t buy anything. It just sort of…facilitates shopping?
  • And Shein’s branding revolves around being the first and fastest with trends, the lowest prices, and nearly infinite assortment.  And once again, this trifecta makes customers kinda forgive it when something doesn’t fit or falls apart.  That’s sort of to be expected with it, right?

So we all know by now that Shein is huge, experiencing exponential growth every year (especially since 2020). Shein wasn’t really do anything that we hadn’t already seen from Wish, AliExpress, all of the rando brands on Amazon, and many other small factory direct platforms over the past few years, but it was succeeding in a bigger way, primarily because it was leveraging influencers and social media (especially TikTok). Yes, its brand was built on low prices but it was also built on pandering to every single micro trend that popped up on social media, no matter how short lived.  Cottagecore, dark academia, coquettecore, Barbiecore, perhaps some day a corecore, which will just be a chef’s salad of every trend that has appeared over the last few years.  But it had it all, while even the biggest fast fashion brands weren’t able to react fast enough to offer product for these trends.  Or maybe they were too big and too distanced from their customers to even know that this was what their customers really wanted.

By mid 2021, every investor out there wanted to know “what is the next Shein? And how can I get on this train?”  Matthew Brennan, a China-based tech expert who has spent a lot of time researching and writing about Shein, told Business of Fashion in 2021, “Everyone in China has been looking at Shein and trying to dig out things to copy. All of the pieces of the puzzle to the business have already been out there, but no one has executed them as well as Shein.”

• The parent company of Princess Polly (another ultra fast fashion brand) was looking for new brands to invest in that could be as fast and profitable as Shein.
• Cupshe–the Shein of swimwear, selling primarily on Amazon–received $15.4 million in investment from Vision Knight Capital.
• And in September of 2021, shopcider.com, known as “Cider,” received $130 million in funding, after surpassing a $1 billion valuation.

Cider checks a few boxes on my “things that annoy me in the world of fast fashion” list:

• For one, it’s not as big as Shein, so it tends to be forgotten in conversations about ultra fast fashion.  It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry! But Cider IS the same model as Shein, but with much better branding. In fact, Cider is fast fashion 3.0: it ships factory direct just like Shein, it works with the same factories and suppliers as all of the other factory direct websites like Shein, Temu, AliExpress, Taobao, and Amazon. It’s the same product (and you shouldn’t be surprised if you see the same items on all of these websites).  In fact, these brands aren’t copying products from one another; they are just working with the same factories.  If you encounter something on say, Etsy, and you wonder if it’s really just another dropshipping item, do a reverse google image search.  If you see it on Amazon or AliExpress or Temu…it is. Because these factories are selling on every platform they can find. As I mentioned in last week’s episode, Shein has been trying to prevent factories from also selling on Temu, which has started a legal battle between the two companies.
• Remember how I said that Shein has actual curation, unlike Temu? Well, Cider has even more curation and it doesn’t have quite the massive offering.  In fact, it kinda paints itself as a small business.   On its About Us page it says, “Cider was founded in 2020 by four friends who wanted to build a fashion brand that celebrates happiness in the mundane. Like the drink we’re named after, Cider is bubbly, sweet, and has just the right amount of sass.” And it promises “No gatekeeping here. We make clothes from XXS to 4XL (US Size 0-24) at an everyday price point available in more than 130 countries.”  That’s a pretty appealing brand story, right?
• The About Us page goes on to tell us about the two founders (who have great style and seem cool), how the company is based in LA (there isn’t a ton of media coverage of Cider but the little bit of writing I have found seems to call bullshit on the “based in LA” story).  Continue scrolling, and you find out about the #cidergang of influencers, followed by very appealing blog posts about zodiac stuff and finding inspo from your local librarian’s wardrobe (with a shout out to 1995’s iconic film Party Girl). 
• The Sustainability page is so much greenwashing nonsense that I can’t even talk about it. Lots of hot air about recycled fabric and recycled packaging.  It also trots out the same claim of sustainability that Shein likes to make, that it makes very little of each item (unless it is successful), minimizing over production and waste. But it’s still selling (like Shein) millions of garments every year, so…is that sustainable?! No.
• Cider curates its assortment by mood (grunge, elegant, nostalgic, sexy, cozy..you get the picture) and it has some really cute product photography on instagram. Like it feels fancier than Shein. It feels more “premium” as we say in the biz. And that means…customers will pay a little bit more, but not so much that they can’t forgive quality or fit issues.  And Cider’s prices are a little higher, but still alarmingly low…like $30 for an embellished knit cardigan? Nope, that seems a little too cheap to be true, right?
• Because that’s the thing: Shein, Temu, AliExpress, Wish, Cider…they are all the same thing, just with different branding, different customer experiences, different Instagram feeds.  
• In fact, I have this great quote from Connie Chan, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, who lead that big round of funding for Cider. She told Business of Fashion, “What sets Cider apart is that it looks like a direct-to-consumer brand on the outside but operates like Shein on the inside. It uses software to have a tighter supply chain … its technology is the secret sauce.” And it’s true that it watches sales closely, and removes something from the site after a few days if it doesn’t sell. If it does sell? Then it makes a lot more.  The thing is…that’s nothing new. It’s  retail 101: make more if it works, expand into a million different iterations until it stops working. 
• Shein equals Temu = AliExpress = Taobao = Wish = rando brands on Amazon = Cider. The stuff is made by the same factories and it is in fact, the same stuff, with different branding wrapped around it. So we think it’s different, but it’s not! And yeah, that’s frustrating, right?

So what does this mean?

• Well, it means for one that Cider has the same issues with exploitation and forced labor within its supply chains as Shein and Temu, because they are working with the same factories and they aren’t auditing them. As I explained last week, the US House is very concerned about forced labor involved in Shein and Temu’s products.  It’s not mentioning Cider because it isn’t as big (and who knows if they are even aware of it).
• And of course, you barely have to google “Cider stolen designs” to encounter example after example of designs and art being stolen from small brands, artists, and makers.  It’s the same old story.  Fast fashion 1.0 copied a lot but fast fashion 3.0 ramped it up even more.
• This also means that Cider is just as “sustainable” as Shein and Temu. It’s the same model. It’s the same thing.  You know that meme format featuring Pam from The Office, and it says in the first panel “Corporate needs you to find the differences in this picture and this picture” and she says in the bottom panel “They’re the same picture?” That’s all of these fast fashion 3.0 brands.  It’s the same model, the same factory, the same materials, the same bad things.

Here’s the thing: I read an interesting article from the Chinese blog Jing Daily called “Don’t Bother Looking for the Next Shein.” And it gave me some hope that maybe–despite all of the investors looking for the next Shein–that maybe the end of fast fashion 3.0 could be sooner than we expect.  The writer, Avery Booker, seems to think that we are finding ourselves (and this includes Gen Z) on polarizing ends of fashion consumption: those who prefer the ultra fast/ultra cheap offerings of fast fashion 3.0, and those on the other end who are thinking about ethics, sustainability, and secondhand. He thinks that this will eventually lead to the end of fast fashion 3.0 as Gen Z makes more money (although I can’t hold my breath on that as wages continue to stagnate and cost of living increases).  He writes, “As their incomes rise, so will Gen Z’s demand for higher-end, higher-quality products, meaning the current love affair with ultra-fast-fashion may very well be outpaced by their rising interest in less environmentally damaging forms of apparel and accessories, whether that comes in the form of demand for vintage and archive pieces, sustainable and plant-based materials, or simply greater transparency on a brand’s environmental impact. If the likes of Shein or Boohoo don’t think ahead, their current boom may turn to a bust before the decade is up.”

That would be great, right? I would love to see that happen, but once again, I don’t know.  Ten years ago…even five years ago, we couldn’t imagine clothing being cheaper and faster…and more plentiful.  And if you had told me that shopping directly from factories in China would be easy and convenient, and entirely mainstream…I would have had a hard time believing you.  So I do worry what fast fashion 4.0 could like… and how it could impact our world!

Next week’s episode of Clotheshorse will be all about fast fashion 3.0 (and the other brands thriving on this landscape): how it grew to be so big since 2020, its impact, and what we should know (and tell others). So please stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, I would love to hear from you as I write that episode.  Tell me your thoughts and experiences with fast fashion 3.0.  Do you buy it? Why or why not? What is the product like? Do you wear it for a long time? Does it fit well? Are you happy with it? Or if you used to shop from Shein and its peers but you stopped, tell me why! 

You can send me an email at [email protected]. Or you can record a voice memo on your phone or computer and email it to me. No instagram, DMs please!  I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

Okay, with all of that, let’s talk about something way more fun: sustainable sewing with Zoe! Let’s jump right in!

Amanda:

Let’s talk about this somewhat misconception. I’ll say it’s not a full misconception, but it’s partial. that sewing your clothing is always the most sustainable option.

Zoe:

Hmm, yes, we do have to unpack this. Okay, so we could argue 30 tears in some ways and not in others. Where do you wanna go first?

Amanda:

Well, that’s okay. Let’s start with the easy part. Why can it be?

Zoe:

Okay, I would argue that it could be more sustainable if, so there’s lots of ifs, this is the thing. If you’re making a garment that, more sustainably is if you’re making things that fit your personal taste, fit your lifestyle and fit your body so well that you get lots and lots of wear from it, like. clothes don’t last forever, it’s not gonna last forever ever, but to get years worth of use, I think is just the kind of like the goal if you want to sew more sustainably.

So yeah, so if you get to a point where you, so I think like, I mean you can. Automatically, I think we were talking before, you have to make lots of personal decisions to get that garment into the world.

Amanda:

Yeah.

Zoe:

You have to choose the colour, the fabric, the buttons, what have you. So putting your own personal style into a garment can help. Sorry, isn’t necessarily too tricky. However, you can really make sure that you are making something. by developing your own kind of personal knowledge about yourself and your style, you know? So I think that, it’s one way that I think is a really good way to do it. If you kind of, you kind of know what you like, but you can’t really put your finger on it, you know? Is like, I quite like using Pinterest for that, you know?

And… collating like you know just collecting lots of things that appeal to me and then looking or I really like those kind of poofy sleeves or I really like kind of culottes and you know then you can really kind of literally translate your own style into making clothes that you’re going to be like yes I love that I can’t wait to wear that again and then your own personal lifestyle is something that definitely needs to be considered you know like what do you actually spend most of your day doing you know like you if you have young kids or you work outside or you know or you work from home like you don’t want a lot of you probably don’t want a lot of tight fitting dresses or you know like kind of fit and flare dresses necessarily you know if you’re a gardener I mean but

Amanda:

Right.

Zoe:

and then if you’ve If you’ve got the kind of lifestyle where you then go out, maybe you do want a couple, but you don’t need a wardrobe full. So it’s just being a bit more aware of what you need in your lifestyle. Also what kind of climate you live in as well, you know?

Amanda:

Mm-hmm.

Zoe:

Are you the kind of person that always feels cold, always feels hot? There’s often ways that you can interpret certain elements of a garment to make it more adaptable for your lifestyle. For example, like if you like… dresses or blouses with big poofy sleeves, but you work in childcare or something, you know, maybe you could make like a sweatshirt with big poofy sleeves or a, do you know what I mean? There’s ways that you can adapt certain trends or certain styles or certain elements.

Amanda:

Right, right.

Zoe:

So I think that’s really important. And they’re probably the trickiest, but something that is really worth trying to do is fitting your own body and getting to know your body, what changes you need to make to a pattern or a garment to actually get it to fit you well. Because when garments don’t fit you well, you don’t wear them. You know, you just, you pass over them when you’re getting dressed, you know.

Amanda:

Yeah.

Zoe:

So I think that is a super important one. And that is a big challenge. I just did a couple of episodes with a lovely woman called Kate Roberts actually about kind of refining the fit of our clothes, because it is something that a lot of sewers kind of probably don’t spend as much time considering and as much time actually doing as they should. So that’s another element. Also, so yeah, so that’s how I would argue if you’re able to make clothing that fits all those criteria and then you wear it lots. lots for a number of years than that, you could argue is more sustainable than shop or clothing. Because also you’ve got your own, yeah, you’ve got a connection with it that’s probably deeper than shop or clothing, I’d say, probably, unless it was given to you by somebody.

Amanda:

Okay, so let’s talk about how it cannot be, right?

Because I think, you know, like one thing I see, and I do think this is, you know, content creators gotta create content. I get it. But I see people out there who are sewing multiple new garments every week and posting about it. And I think it does plant this little seed in our brains that makes us think we should have once again, new clothes every week. And if we sew them ourselves, it’s fine. It’s like it never happened. You know?

Zoe:

You put… Yeah, well, I mean, it’s still fabric, you know, it’s still fabric that has been produced in the same way as the fabric that is in a shop bought garment. You know, it’s still that the fibres have been derived from the same way. It’s been processed in the same way. It’s probably travelled around the world, you know, multiple times just because you’re doing the bit where you kind of cut it out and stitch it yourself. You’re still responsible, you know, for the resources

that went into that fabric and the waste. wasteful and damaging industry in and of itself. No matter what fibre we’re talking about, it has a negative environmental impact. Even fabrics that are like organic cotton or linen, we’re told that they are a sustainable fabric. There’s no such thing as a sustainable fabric that is a virgin fabric in my opinion. Everything has had to be processed, everything has used energy, everything has used labour and time.

So even the most sustainable of fabrics, I would say is not sustainable in and of itself. I think there’s very few things that could argue are in and of itself sustainable, only more sustainable. But yeah, so there’s that. And also you could argue that home sewing is less resource, you know, it actually uses more resources in that when garments are made, you know, mass production, obviously they want to waste as little as possible of the fabric because it costs them money. I think the average is generally in a lay plan, you lose 15%, I believe, on average in a lay plan. And that is like people whose whole jobs is specifically to create the tightest, cleverest, least wasteful lay plan. Like that’s, you know, as you know, that sums whole jobs. So those of us who are then making our own clothes at home, there’s no way we can, I mean, when you scale anything up, it, you know, it… generally like you would use less per unit. And so when you’re making one single garment at home, you’re probably gonna be wasting, I’d say more than 15%. I keep meaning to do the thing where like you weigh your fabric before and then cut out a garment and then weigh it after and see what you’ve got left.

Amanda:

Oh, that’s such a good idea.

it might like put it in perspective more for people because I

do think like, I mean, you nailed it. Like there’s software that literally helps people ensure, like in mass production, how to get waste the least amount of fabric. Because if you are making 10,000 units of something and 15% of that fabric is wasted being cut out, whoo! That is

a lot of money, right? We’re talking like bolts of fabric that have to be delivered by a truck because they’re so huge. And now you’re wasting 15% of that. I think that we tend to forget that. if we’re sewing new clothes every week, we’re getting close to that truck full of fabric way faster than you might think.

 It’s hard to envision that way. It’s because you look at it after you cut something out and you’re like, oh, it’s just all these random pieces. It’s not much, right? It’s just some craps. But it adds up over time the more you sew.

Zoe:

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, so there’s that.

Amanda:

yeah, definitely. And I think that’s a really good call. Also. We’re not going to go into it now, but I went down a very depressing rabbit hole this weekend just reading more about fabrics and fabric treatments and dyes and the mpact, the environmental impact. And I would say that for every garment that we wear, whether we bought it like at a store or we made it ourselves out of new fabric we bought, the fabric is definitely by far. the part of the garment that has the most environmental impact, uses the most water, and creates the most waste.

Zoe:

and there’s that new book that’s just come out, isn’t there, about the toxic chemicals

and coatings, which is utterly shocking, and it’s terrifying. And I mean, there was, oh, I was reading an article on the Guardian about it, about how a lot of the airlines have got these new uniforms, haven’t they, that are so covered in fire retardant, crease-resistant, stain-resistant coatings, that they’re actually making their employees sick because of the constant contact with these chemicals, isn’t there?

Amanda:

Yeah, I mean, I have gotten rashes from clothing I’ve worn in the past and laughed it off as like, oh, it must be that my skin’s too dry or I used the wrong soap.

Zoe:

Oh, blaming your body, isn’t that a typical thing to do?

Amanda:

right, so typical. I’m just too sensitive, right?

Zoe:

Yeah, it’s my skin that’s the problem, not this evil fabric.

Amanda:

exactly. And I’m sure anybody, so many people have had similar experiences and just was like, oh, I’m the problem and the… The bad news is that you’re not the problem. I guess that’s the good news. The bad news is that there’s this much larger problem. But yeah,

I think like the fabric is, we can’t take it for granted. And

that’s the big piece of all of this when it comes to home sewing, I think.

Zoe:

I would say I guess you could argue that home sewing is could be more sustainable in that I think that generally speaking I mean just thinking about the fabrics at the place that I work at there are a lot more natural fibres that you could choose so I mean there are a lot of fabrics obviously I mean I’m wearing right now I’m wearing a jumpsuit that is made of denim and it’s got some stretch in it because I wanted it to be comfortable but and I know that you know that elastane that’s in this is probably releasing microplastics every time that I wash it plus it’s one day not going to biodegrade so I am feeling a bit rubbish about that but um

Yeah, I think there’s a greater variety. I think pretty much, I mean, I don’t know what the percentage is actually. I did go to a future Fabrics Expo that had this information, but I forgot now. How many, what percentage of fabrics available in ready-to-wear are synthetic? I would be very surprised. Do you know the fact? Do you know the statistic?

Amanda:

It’s 65%,

Zoe:

That’s wild.

Amanda:

some people say that they actually, okay, by some people I mean someone on LinkedIn who works in that industry. So take it with a grain of salt…he was saying that he thinks it’s actually at this point in like 2023, it’s probably more like 75%. And that is because of all the blending.

So, you know, you might, I mean, if you sew a lot, You know a lot about fabric you’ve learned it over time But you know the average consumer thinks they’re buying a t-shirt and it’s probably cotton right? That’s what they think

But it’s probably a blend at this point to have like at least a little bit of polyester you know same thing with a lot of denim and really I like the technology for making synthetic fabrics has I mean, it’s just improved so much that, you know, unless you really, really look and think about what the label means, you might think it’s a natural fiber. Like they it’s they it wears a lot of disguises, right?

Zoe:

Yeah, it doesn’t feel the same as how it used to in like the 70s, does it?

Amanda:

Exactly, exactly. And, you know. When 2008 rolled around and suddenly everything we were selling at my job had to be even more profitable and we were in meetings saying like, oh, we’ll swap the fabric, swap the fabric. I don’t think I realized at that time that we were fully swapping into polyester or polyester blends at all because the fabric still was drapey and that’s 100% what we were doing. I just in my mind polyester was all the clothes I thrifted that were thick, that like double knit, super stiff, smelly, you know all of that. And this was,  like sexy and like a little sheer

Zoe:

Slinky

Amanda:

Yeah exactly but it is and I think I think at least if you’re a home sewer, you can have more autonomy over that. Although I’m sure you’ve heard of Joann Fabric, which is the big sewing supply chain here in the U.S.  And I’ll tell you when I go in there. I get really depressed about the fabric that they have because most of it is synthetic. They have aisles and aisles of this horrible fleece that I just wish would go away.

And really, for the most part, where most of the natural fibers are concentrated in the quilting section.

Zoe:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And they’re not necessarily suitable for many different garment projects.

Amanda:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Zoe:

Yeah. It’s a funny one, isn’t it? It’s taken me a long time to get a lot of knowledge on fabric. through working at a fabric place, you know. And I think that there is still a lot of, you know, a lot of knowledge that sewists don’t have. In fact, I literally just released, like last week, I made a document, like a downloadable resource called like Introduction to Garment Fabrics, because I really wanted to help people understand, you know, what, what fibres are, you know,

what your choices are, what the popular terms in, in a fabric shop and what they actually mean, you know? So, yeah, it’s something I think about a lot and I do think there’s a lot of education that needs to happen because also, it’s changing a lot as well. Like  the amount of fabric that’s available for garment sewing has just, you know, the variety has just gone wild in the last like decade or two, you know? So, it’s a lot to keep up, it’s a lot to learn about. AndI think we’ll get there. especially if they buy my downloadable resource.

Amanda:

There you go, buy the downloadable resource. Because every time I post about fabric, people are like, whoa, I had no idea. 

Zoe:

You don’t get told it do you? There should be like, it should be in science at school. You should literally spell out what all the different fabrics are, what, yeah, where they’re from, what the impact is.

Amanda:

You know, I mean, once again, people. don’t look at something like fabric or clothing and think there’s a lot of science involved. And actually, there’s so much science involved in innovating on these fabrics and dyes and printing and go on and on and on. When people don’t take clothing or textiles seriously and they kind of dismiss it as this vapid thing, I’m like, no, you have no idea what a massive industry it is with…

Zoe:

Yeah, but it’s a very opaque industry as well, isn’t it? Like it’s hard to access the information, you know, even though, you know, you can buy some fabric and the fabric shop doesn’t even know what mill it’s necessarily come from, you know?

Amanda:

No, no, yeah, it’s very mysterious and are a shroud of secrecy, all of it, all of it. Okay, well, what are things that home sewists or sewists in general can do to make home sewing more sustainable, less wasteful?

Zoe:

Oh, this is like my favourite question in the whole world. OK, so I think, yeah, well, I think like going back to what I just said, really, like you’re I mean, have fun, enjoy yourself, you know, get all the pleasure that you get from sewing, like the meditative, you know, the meditative qualities, the, you know, the mental health benefits, the flow, the lack of screen time, all of that. But maybe your goal could be to make clothing that you are actually going to wear a lot. And do that by making clothes that fit your personal style, fit your lifestyle and fit your body. So that’s what I would say to begin with. I would also say, I’ll come back to that point, I would also say, yeah, when a path sewing pattern says that you need, for example, two and a half meters to make this blouse. they have to make these lay plans that are very general, they often span a number of sizes and it’s quite possible that the also they have to be very general in the because fabric comes in different widths and they can’t make a new lay plan for every single increment of fabric width that is available you know. So I mean take the lay plans with a pinch of salt you could create your own lay plan for example like you could literally um even before you buy the fabric you could mark out on the table or on the floor and get your pieces and really kind of see if you can tetris those pieces in a much tighter lay plan than the sewing pattern recommends

or you could try if you’ve got a piece of fabric that’s a bit smaller see what you can get out of it as well you might be surprised. There is a rise in sewing patterns available for home sewing that’s a zero waste sewing patterns as well.

Amanda:

Cool.

Zoe:

So that is super exciting. It’s a really, really interesting, it’s kind of, it really feels to me like how the indie sewing pattern community and that world was about 10 years ago is kind of where zero waste sewing It’s not overwhelming. There are, you know, there are a number of designers that you can investigate and check out their style. They each have different kind of approaches. They have different kind of looks. It’s just really, really exciting. It feels like the new frontier in some ways for garment sewing. So I would suggest that people investigate some zero waste sewing patterns. I’ve got several episodes about that and I’ve… spoke to a number of zero waste impact designers on my podcast. It’s a good place to start if you’re interested and you want a little intro into that. So the good thing about zero waste sewing patterns is, so a zero waste sewing pattern is literally all the pieces tessellate perfectly into a square or a rectangle. So when you’re cutting out your pattern and your shapes you are not getting all those funny weird shapes, you know like the negative space, you know in between the pieces, it all tessellates perfectly. And generally speaking, actually take less fabric than the equivalent kind of regular sewing pattern would take for a similar type of garment you know so that’s super exciting so I would really recommend people do that and then generally if there is some waste it tends to be like very usable like rectangles or strips you know something that you could use to make other things much more easily than those weird or funny shapes so that’s super exciting and I definitely recommend to do that. Also see your fabric scraps and leftovers, not necessarily as an annoying thing to put in the bin, but as a potential resource in and of themselves.

Amanda:

Right.

Zoe:

This is something that I’m obsessed with at the moment. Personally, for me, I’m getting the most joy in my sewing at the moment by seeing what I can do, coming up with inventive creative ways to use my scraps and leftovers. That’s what’s really lighting me up at the moment. There’s… so much inspiration out there. So you could literally, you know, start making smaller things, you know, such as accessories or, you know, bags or, you know, whatever. Or you could get into sort of like patchwork and quilt making, what have you. But for me, what I’m really enjoying at the moment is piecing fabric scraps together in interesting and inventive ways, and then using that to create like bigger pieces of fabric, you know, and then making garments from that. And it’s yeah, it’s for me, it’s scratching a creative itch that I’ve kind of been missing for a while when you just kind of make a. You make a pattern out of a piece of fabric and that’s lovely but you’ve done it a lot. Like sometimes you want a new challenge and that’s where I’m getting my personal challenge from at the moment. So I would definitely recommend seeing what you can get out of your scraps and leftovers. You’d be amazed actually at how many even like garments and stuff you can get out of a meter or slightly less. And so many people doing interesting ways of combining fabric at the moment. I would go on Instagram and look at hashtags like Scrap Buster or Scrap Busting or Sewing Leftovers or Patchwork Clothing and seeing what other people are doing. You could get loads of ideas doing that. And this one’s not super exciting necessarily, depends what your take on it is, but a way to be incredibly sustainable is by using your sewing skills to mend and alter existing clothes. I think

that we definitely do not have a responsibility to do everybody’s altering and everybody’s mending. So I wanna say that now, like you don’t have to take on everyone’s, unless you want to. But I mean, I personally do believe that we do have a responsibility towards our own clothes and mending and repairing and altering, if necessary, our own garments, especially if we’ve got the skills and the equipment to hand, you know. So that can actually in and of itself be quite… satisfying and creative, depending on how you look at it. You know, like there are, I mean, there’s so many resources out there. There’s so many beautiful books, so many amazing Instagram accounts to follow and what have you base, you know, and think of mending in terms of it’s like a spectrum, you know, right from like completely invisible. You never even knew it was broken kind of mending right up until, you know, like the loudest, brightest, visible men that’s just in bracing the whole concept of keeping it alive for longer, and kind of everything in between. So

you don’t have to be like a sticking pack, bright colored patches on anything. Plus also you don’t have to necessarily try and make it super invisible. And also you might want to do different kinds of men’s on different kinds of garments. Like that beautiful Selkie dress you were talking about, that it probably like a big visible mend wasn’t suitable, that wouldn’t have necessarily, you know, it wouldn’t have honored the design particularly well, necessarily, you know, depending on your viewpoint.

Amanda:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I definitely at first thought like, oh, this could be a visible men’s and then I was like, no, it can’t be like it won’t work. You know, but I the way I look at mending, too, is like, you know, this is another one that sometimes people get really hung up on. Like, oh, it needs to look like it’s new again. And I think of it as like now it’s uniquely mine.

Zoe:

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely and I think it’s that thing as well It’s like we’ve got this idea that once a garment is made be that by ourselves or by a shop like that’s it you cannot touch it again and It gets busted it goes in the bin like no like you it’s just fabric ultimately It’s fabric that has been stitched but you can go back in and you can either mend it or rework it in some way whether that’s because there’s something that is literally you don’t like about it, like it’s too long, the sleeves are too tight, blah, blah.

Or just because you’re bored with it, you know? That’s okay too, like think about how you can rework it. Like go on and, you know, go. get some inspiration and see what you can do. Because if you’re not wearing it, it’s kind of like you might as well see what you can do.

And it could be an exciting project. Personally, for me, I don’t love mending, despite the fact that I wrote a whole book about it. But for me, I have this whole make one, mend one kind of system going on. So if I make a garment, I then mend a garment or alter a garment. And I kind of… I mean, it doesn’t always go that perfectly alternating. I might do like a load of mending, you know, one week or whatever, but I find that that’s a good way to kind of keep me on top of my mending pile, you know, keeps things from sitting there forever. Plus also like sometimes it’s. it’s quite satisfying to do a mint, you know, especially if it’s one that hasn’t taken you three weeks, like your Selkie dress. And then you’ve like got a lot of clothes back in your wardrobe or back in your kid’s wardrobe or something like that. There is a lot of satisfaction to be found in that. And if you can find that satisfaction and find that enjoyment, that in and of itself is something to celebrate and something to enjoy, you know.

Amanda:

Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, it’s once again, like we get addicted to shopping or even making new stuff because we, I mean, you know, science has proven it. We get that hit of dopamine and we feel good. You can get that kind of feeling from mending something and being like, wow, I look at this, I saved it. You know, it really can have like that same impact even though it’s ompletely different. in terms of where it begins and where it ends.

Zoe:

Absolutely, I mean even if your mend just makes that garment last another few wears, it will have been worth it, you know. You can’t expect clothing to last forever because textiles do not last forever. But you know, it’s all worth it, it’s worth it and there’s fun to be had at it.

And I think that probably the last thing that I would say in terms of how you can sew more sustainably is be a bit more open-minded about the fabric source as well. Like… We talked a bit about this before, so not only is going to a fabric shop for a yardage of beautiful new fabric an option, but you could do that and also see what your local thrift store has got,

or let people, I mean, there’s so many sources for secondhand fabric, so there’s like destash sales on Instagram or Etsy or eBay or… buy nothing groups or, hang on, like you could organize or attend or organize a fabric swap or a sewing swap because you’ve probably got some pieces of fabric that you have got and you’re not using and so have loads of other people, so why not have a swap and rehome some other people’s fabric, get some stuff that you’re excited about, offload some stuff that you’re not excited about.

And also if you’re going to thrift store, especially in the UK, I think because thrift stores tend to be, charity shops tend to be a bit smaller than the US, it’s definitely rarer to find a charity shop that actually has any fabric, like sewing fabric in there.

So, but be a bit more open-minded about what a source of fabric could be. Like have a look at the curtains, have a look at the linens, have a look at the bedding, blankets, throws, garments. Although I would say that when you’re… talking about all these things, maybe, this is a tricky one, and I’ll be really interested to hear what you think about this. Probably try and aim for the pieces that are maybe on the last chance sale or have been reduced so people could use them as they’re in their existing form still, you know, if they are. But what do you think, what are your thoughts on that?

Amanda:

I guess it’s a complicated answer, right?

So I think, like, OK, first off with clothing, something that I do not recommend people do, and I know there are people who have very strong feelings on both sides of this. Do not go to the store and buy large size garments and cut them up into tiny clothes, okay? That is right. So like one, like if you’re not that size, just stay out of that section, please. Or if you’re a reseller, fine, but like I don’t, I’m not okay with that. And I’m seeing less of that. Fortunately, I think

the word has gotten out, but definitely like a couple years ago when people were starting to get into sewing, I would see that and I was just like, oh, you gotta stop doing that.

Zoe:

Yeah.

Amanda:

And when it comes to other linens, textiles, it’s like… On one hand, yeah, you probably shouldn’t buy a perfectly good blanket and cut it up and make it into something else, ideally. But at the same time, like I don’t know how it is in the UK, but here the thrift stores keep stuff on the racks for such a short period of time. And then

they’re like, oh, it’s out of here. And then it goes to, you know, like landfill or overseas. That I, part of me is like, if you see the perfect. bedsheet to make something. I guess go for it.

Zoe:

Yeah.

Amanda:

But also if it’s like really nice and you think that like actually people might want this maybe don’t. There’s no easy answer there, you know.

Zoe:

it’s really complicated, isn’t it?

Amanda:

right, because there’s like, that’s another thing that I see so much of when I thrift here is so many sheets, so many blankets, so many curtains, so many towels, like

so much because people replace those things way too often, like honestly, and they are things that are in perfectly good shape. You know, here, a lot of the thrift stores are so inundated with stuff that if something has like a little stain They don’t even put it out.

Zoe:

Right.

Amanda:

And those are the things that are the ideal for a sewing project, right?

Zoe:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Amanda:

I know. So it’s really tough. And I don’t want to discourage people from reusing those things, because I know they have such a small chance of selling. I guess it’s just like, use your judgment, and take a pause and think about it. Because I think that’s where. maybe things go awry when people are just jamming it all into the cart. I think people go home with stuff that they end up never using for a project anyway also.

And just really taking that moment to say, how am I gonna use this? Is this really the best use of this? I don’t know.

Zoe:

Yeah.

Amanda:

There’s just so much. I can’t believe it. Honestly, I don’t really  have a lot of interest in buying new clothes at this point. So I rarely look at the clothes at the thrift stores, but I can see the racks are jammed. And I might breeze through them just to see what people are donating, to see what’s out there. But I spend a lot of time in the home textile section. And I just like, like. For thrift stores that I visit pretty regularly, I can’t believe how fast the turnover is there. And I know it’s not because it’s sold. I know it’s because they pulled it and sent it away.

There’s no easy answer there. I mean, like with nothing that we talk about here, there really is, but I guess it’s just like, just take that extra time to think about it before you buy it.

Zoe:

Yeah, I was speaking to a wonderful woman called Judy Williment Ross, who lives in New Zealand, and she makes incredible stuff. And she’s got a really kind of set, set of rules almost that she applies to. her sourcing and she only tends to buy like very ubiquitous garments like she really likes men’s trousers to work with like kind of suiting trousers or she’ll get like men’s work shirts but they’re definitely not large size they definitely have to have been like if there’s like a last chance rail in her local op shop and so she’s got all these really kind of specific Yeah, and then she kind of uses the big bits and then she keeps the little bits and then she keeps the little bits and then she makes she then literally pieces the tiny scraps together and makes these incredible like coats and dresses out of like pieced together tiny scraps of these fabrics and it’s just incredible but it can be done. repressive or frustrating. Like it can feel like a fun challenge, you know?

That’s something that I’m really exploring at the moment. Yeah, just like this sense. I mean, I’m doing this challenge, so I’m doing this challenge at the moment called Last So It’s Standing. So it’s, is… is organised by a woman on Instagram called Miss Tashley and it’s, I think it’s about its third or fourth year now, but it started on Valentine’s Day and it goes for a year and a whole bunch of people signed up and you see how far you can get, ideally throughout the whole year, using only materials, sewing materials that you’ve already got. So not buying anything new for as long as possible. you can go down into the there’s like heavyweight which is literally you just use your fabric and your patterns your notions your zips buttons everything you’ve already got um and that’s the heavyweight and then but you can go down to the lightweight division if you buy like zips or patterns things like that but you don’t buy fabric but so i’m i kind of signed up by accident but i’m really enjoying it i’m finding it so fulfilling and yeah, like an extra level of challenge on top of making stuff. It’s like, yeah, like I’ve only got, I’m like, I’m really running low on elastics. So what can I, can I get some elastic from like something that my kids are no longer wearing or can

I adapt something so it’s only got, you know, can I, I’ve recently adapted a pair of trousers so it’s only got elastic in the back, not in the full way round, you know, just things like that. How can I, um. yeah, get the most from what I already have. And that sense of resourcefulness, I think, is something that maybe we’re kind of discouraged to do. I think because it has this, it’s very anti-capitalist, isn’t it? It’s very anti-consumerist to kind of make do, find joy in that. It’s more like, oh, okay, that’s not enough. Let’s go buy something new. It’s like… No, like, let’s see what we can do. And Judy Williment-Ross is a brilliant example of how you can be supremely creative with restrictions. And yeah, that’s really exciting me a lot at the moment, that kind of idea, you know?

Amanda:

No, I think it’s amazing and I do find that these sorts, this sort of thinking and really, it forces you to get creative, right? And this is how we bring create like artistry and innovation back into

the realm of clothing as a whole, right? Because right now, if you were like, tomorrow I’m gonna do this whole change to my look. I’m trying out a whole new aesthetic. You could go order a bunch of clothes right now and probably have them by tomorrow, but

where is the creativity there? Where is the creative expression, the artistry? And that is what clothing began as, and that’s how fashion became what it was for so long, and then it turned into an industry It just makes a lot of stuff that doesn’t make many of us very happy, right?

I get excited about that. I mean, I liken it to this job I had. It was for a terrible company, evil fast fashion brand, for sure. But. One thing I did for them was develop visual displays. And we literally made everything that was on display in our store, in our store, in the back, in a wood shop. And they were very stingy with the budget. They would say, hey, we’d like you to do work that would probably cost you $5,000 in materials, and we’re gonna give you $500. And

it would be like, oh, what are we gonna do? And so we were constantly reusing materials, looking, a month where we were driving around back alleys looking for things people had thrown away that we could harvest wood, you know? And I’m not saying like, was it cool for the company? Is that company great? No. Do I think they do things in a super smart way? No. But we came up with so much cool stuff and most importantly we didn’t waste anything. We took things that people were going to throw in the trash and turned them into beautiful displays. We reused fabric, wood, in the woods and their wear and like showcasing that. And it was really beautiful. And I also will just say, for me working on those projects, it flipped a little switch in my brain that sort of made me even more creative.

Zoe:

Yes!

Amanda:

Like I got used to thinking that way all the time about every aspect of my life, whether it was like

how to use leftover food, you know, how to repair something around my house. And I feel like it was a very happy time for me.

Zoe:

Interesting because you had a creative, yeah, there was like a creative outlet in there.

Amanda:

Yes, yes. And it’s like you said, sewing is challenging to go get a pattern, cut it out and sew it is still its escape. It’s also like a lot of like brain work right there. But like, imagine if you could take it to that next level and make it your own unique creative expression.

Zoe:

Yeah.

Amanda:

That’s what happens when you are resourceful.

Zoe:

Yes, and this is totally what’s floating my boat at the moment. Exactly. It’s like, yeah, finding people who are doing interesting, resourceful things, seeing what I can do. And yeah, it’s so exciting. And I think that it’s something, oh, it’s tricky, isn’t it? Because I think that when people’s budgets are getting restricted, people are having to be more resourceful. But I hope that people find joy in that, you know?

Amanda:

I think you can, right? Like, listen, struggling financially is hard, and I’ve done it more of my life than not, and I’m not advocating for that, but I have also seen how I have a different relationship with stuff and how I… have, I don’t know, I have a lot of, I’ve been so much more resourceful because of it. Not that it’s okay for people to live in poverty or anything like that, but when we restrict the flow of stuff in and out of our lives, it actually helps us build better relationships with the stuff that we have and think about it in new ways. And that is what’s really great about saying, I’m not gonna go buy a bunch of new fabric, I’m not gonna go buy a bunch of new clothes, sure you don’t sew every like all of your kids clothes and stuff because you would be sewing 24 hours a day but like you know even shopping secondhand it forces you to innovate and think differently and more creatively. And that’s what I like too about saying like, okay, I need to make curtains for my office rather than just go, I could order curtains and have them probably in a few hours from Amazon. I’m gonna go thrifting and see what’s out there and what I can turn into curtains.

Zoe:

Yes.

Amanda:

It makes me happier with those curtains at the end of the day. And I think there is something about stimulating your brain in that way that leads to more fulfillment and happiness.

Zoe:

Yes, and then you’ve got a story attached to that thing as well then, haven’t you? Like you’re like, oh, I dream of the way I went to that thing and I got that thing and I got that thing and then I thought, oh, it turned out it wasn’t long enough so I added this other border and it looks really weird and it looks really cool. My friend thought it was amazing because they thought that I’d done it deliberately, but you know, there’s a whole thing attached to that rather than like, oh, I went on Amazon and it arrived the next day.

Amanda:

I wanted to talk about the Me Made May Challenge, which is your, I don’t know, invention? Would you call it an invention? I don’t know, your idea.

Zoe:

Um, my accidental invention, yes.

Amanda:

Ha!

Zoe:

Yeah. So I’m the creator and host of Me Made May, which, um, is very different now to how it begun. So I started it. I’m trying to think now. I think it was about 14 years ago when I was living in Barcelona. Um. When I was getting into, I was getting, so when I lived in Spain, what I did for money was I was doing English speaking childcare. So I would go and collect kids from the school, but I had all the day until I had to go and collect the school, collect the kids from school. So that’s why I was doing loads and loads and loads of sewing. And I was starting to challenge myself to make different items. You know, like I was like, Oh, could I make a coat or could I make some undies or could I make So I was getting really into it and I’d created all these clothes and one day I just for some reason, I think my flatmate had, my flatmate had like a clothes rail in the hallway. He was always rearranging his room. So he’d put his and I just thought, oh, it would be interesting to see what my clothes would look like that I’d made. So I did that. I just thought, oh, it’d be fun. I’ll take a photo for my blog or whatever. So I put all the clothes I’d made on this rail and I thought, oh, that kind of looks like a wardrobe. And that just kind of really got me thinking like, yeah, like that looks suspiciously like a wardrobe. But yeah, I still wasn’t quite trusting it as, I wasn’t trusting these pieces in the same way that I was trusting a shop or garment for some reason. Yeah, so I thought that’s ridiculous. And at the same time, there was an artist, a Canadian artist called Natalie Perschwitz, and she had done a project called the Make Shift Project where she was only wearing things that she’d made for a whole year, including shoes and everything. She took it really from an art angle and was making things out of wood and had a real distinctive style that probably wouldn’t blend in with a lot of people’s lifestyles. But it was super interesting. absolutely fascinated by her project and that kind of just got me thinking like could my clothes function like a wardrobe so I set myself a challenge and actually the first challenge was called Me Made March and for March that year I decided to only wear things that I’d made myself excluding I think I excluded bras, tights, shoes, socks but everything else I had to make myself yeah. So I did it and it was fun, but it was really cold. Like it was a really, really cold month. And I only had two kind of warmish tops. I was literally alternating them every day.

I got a little bit frustrated by the, because also this was like a long time ago. There wasn’t as many garment fabric, it wasn’t the range of garment fabrics available. There certainly wasn’t the range of like. patterns available. Like if you wanted a sweatshirt pattern, you had to kind of draft it yourself or adapt it from a t-shirt or something. There wasn’t like, oh I could have one of a hundred different sweatshirt patterns. Like it was, it was a very different kind of scene at the time. So I was kind of, you know, making do with what I had. So yeah, it was, it was really eye-opening and I kind of thought Okay, well I’ve learnt a lot. I’ve learnt a lot about my clothes, about myself, about my creativity. I’d like to do it again in a slightly warmer month when I could kind of like put more of my wardrobe to the test because I had a lot more. So I felt like, okay, right, well let’s try again in a couple of months. Let’s do Me Made May. And because I was blogging a lot at the time and it was kind of, there was a lot of kind of online. blogging, commenting and back and forth and reading each other’s blogs and stuff. I kind of put it out there, like, does anyone want to do something like this with me? You don’t have to do what I’m doing, everything apart from those exceptions. You could maybe just do one item a day or something like that. And I thought, oh, maybe there’ll just be a couple of people wanna do it and we can just follow along with how and cheer each other along. But it ended up being something like 70 or 80 that first Me Made May. which was really surprising. I got everyone to sign up on my, you know, in the comments and stuff. So that was really exciting. And then, that was really fun and really illuminating and I learned a lot about my stuff. And then we did it again. And it actually took a couple of years for it to end up being just a thing that we did in May. I think there was like a self-stitched September in there So, after a couple of years, it became like an annual thing that we did every May. And people, so then rather than saying, oh, you have to do this, you have to do that, people can set their own pledge. And this is still how it runs today. People can set their own pledge because everyone’s different. Everyone has a different situation. Everyone has different goals. You know, some people might not want an entirely me-made wardrobe and that is absolutely fine for all the reasons we’ve discussed today. So yeah, you can set your own pledge. And so for example, like one of my pledges one year was, I was wearing, I was making a lot of like dresses and skirts. It was that kind of like rockabilly era, you know?

Amanda:

Mm-hmm.

Zoe:

But I wasn’t really wearing them. And I was thinking like, well, this is a weird disconnect. Can I kind of almost force myself to wear those skirts and dresses more often so that… I can learn to incorporate them more into my life. So my pledge that year was like, wear all me made, but wear a skirt or dress four times a week or something like that. So you can kind of do whatever you want. It might be some people want to, some people have to wear a uniform for work or something like that. So they might just be able to do it in the evenings or the weekends or whatever you want to do. Some people will include mended items or include, I don’t know. upcycled items or whatever you want, like you figure out what’s going to be useful for you and you kind of set your pledge and then you do it and that’s kind of stayed the same. throughout the last like 13 years. But kind of what’s changed, I guess, is the community aspect. So it is a personal challenge that you do yourself.

You don’t have to, you just certainly don’t have to take photos. You don’t have to share it on Instagram. You don’t have to share it anywhere. It’s just about doing the challenge. But lots of people do like to do that. And that is a lovely aspect of it. And it is a nice community feeling. And it’s nice to be able to cheer people along and receive encouragement yourself. So people do enjoy that part. So it started out following each other’s blogs and it got a bit unwieldy because there were so many people signing up. So then we started having a Flickr group

I know, going way back. We tried Facebook but that didn’t work out so well. So we had a Flickr group and that actually worked really well and we did that for a few years and we’d have these fun little extra challenges. On a Friday we would do something like… We’d include an item of food in our photo or it’d be like a shot of our hometown or we’d do something else as well like a fun little way to connect with the other people that were. were taking part and sharing, you know. So that was really fun. And then obviously the rise of Instagram as the kind of sphere of the online sewing community meant that Instagram became kind of where it resides in terms of the community aspect of it now. So there’s the hashtags. But yeah, but once again, the thing about… Instagram is it does tend to promote this idea that it’s all about just showing off the latest things you’ve made rather than rediscovering your wardrobe, rediscovering your older things, getting to know your clothes better, finding new fun combinations, getting more use from what you already have… that kind of does get a little bit lost sometimes I’ve actually spent the last couple of years really I’ve made a couple of podcast episodes on it and stuff just to really emphasize that it’s about improving your relationship With your handmade wardrobe rather than just showing off all the things you’ve made

Amanda:

Yeah, totally, totally. And I think it is important to keep repeating that message because I think,

you know, like people are scrolling by so fast, they are just thinking it’s all about like trying to sew as many new clothes as possible.

And that we just need to, I think, it’s like I was saying earlier, like we need to change something within ourselves that makes us feel, I mean, it’s like an addiction, right?

And when we… do that together and support one another through that change and reiterate why we’re doing this change, it brings us closer together as humans too, which I think is another thing that I love, for example, about the sewist community as it’s like a community of people all over the world

Amanda:

Do you have any final thoughts? You would just, and if you don’t, that’s okay too. I know I’m putting you on the spot, but perhaps you have, if you want people to walk away with this in their minds when they hit

Zoe:

I’m just wondering if we kind of like made sewing clothes sound like it’s really difficult.

Amanda:

I mean, it’s not easy, you know? And I do want people to understand that. Like, it’s not like the machine sews the clothes for you.

Zoe:

okay, I would say then, everyone, everyone can do a bit of mending. You don’t need a lot of equipment, you don’t need a sewing machine, you don’t need loads of time, you don’t need loads of stuff, you can get a tiny little sewing, you know, just a little sewing kit, you know, the kind of thing you get free from a hotel, you know, something like that, that like you bought in the convenience shop in Japan. Like start with that and then as you then… need something else, you know, maybe, oh, something’s gone, you need a bit of elastic, go and buy the bit of elastic, or I don’t have the right thread colour, go and buy that thread colour, you know, like start small, just get little bits as and when your projects need them. There is so much information on YouTube, on people’s blogs, you can get loads of amazing mending books in the library, you don’t need to spend any money learning how to mend your clothes, there is so many going to be perfect straight away that absolutely doesn’t matter but I think everybody can start mending their own clothes a little bit. If it’s something’s a bit too daunting fine take it to a professional alteration and repair expert absolutely don’t start with trying to change the zip in your jeans that’s not the one

Amanda:

No, that was one of my first sewing projects was how to replace a zipper. Do not recommend.

Zoe:

Oh, yeah, don’t start there. But you know, yes, men that little ripping a seam, yes, sew that button on, you can do that. And that garment is back in rotation, back in your wardrobe because you paid good money for it. And yeah, and you owe it to yourself as much as you owe it to those clothes. So I would start there, yeah.

Amanda:

I agree with that because I think it’s a gateway. It’s a gateway drug to more

sewing. And it helps you build your confidence. And also I think like we live in this culture where it’s like, oh, if you’re gonna take on a new interest, a new hobby, learn something new, there’s this like pressure to go out and buy all this stuff to get started, including with sewing, you don’t need to do that. Let it happen gradually.

Zoe:

absolutely get yeah get the little sewing kit and as and when you need something else just go and get that that’s fine it’s not going to cost you loads of money there’s no point buying so much stuff that it’s cost you more than buying the clothes again you know

Amanda:

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But I definitely think, I mean, I’ve had friends who are like, I’m getting into sewing. And then they spend like $500 on all of the top of the line notions and whatnot and a storage thing.. And this is how they get you when you walk in the door. They’re like, oh, well, you’ll also need this special organizer for everything. 

Start with something small. There is like, seriously, even just replacing a button on a shirt is kind of one of the most satisfying feelings ever when you’ve done it.

Thank you again to Zoe for spending so much time with us! I’ll be sharing all the ways you can find Zoe in the show notes. Please give her a follow and listen to Check Your Thread! I’m going to end this episode here because I have to get it to Dustin for mixing before he goes to band practice!