Hi, I'm Emma. I'm a published crochet & knitting author/writer and designer, a content creator for LoveCrafts and a lecturer in Visual Promotion (that's instagram to you and me), I know right, who has the time for all this? I'm a recovering member of YA (Yarnaholics Anonymous) and I really love how making stuff can help us live more sustainably.
Lately I've been trying to work out how to take all the overwhelming stuff I learned during my MA in Sustainable Design (I got a first, I KNOW!) can actually be useful and actually helpful and for me it's about getting inspired and inspiring others. Recently I hooked up with HRH the fabulous Katie Jones, and her attitude, passion and authenticity when it comes to this shiz was awesome. She inspired me to .... oh lord, this is boring already, who wants to see some makes?!
These guys are a couple of remakes/upcycles/interventions? I haven't got a good word for it yet.
This was an uninpsiring grey sweatshirt that was a rubbish length for my long old body and arms, so rather than donate it I decided to make a new yoke for it.
Just some little facts I was thinking of as I put this together:
1. only 10% of second hand clothes get sold, the rest is dumped. So rather than just giving to charity you really need to buy from charity too.
2. Nothing 'new' has been made during this process, there is still just one jumper in the world instead of 2.
3. I got to have ALL of the fun of doing the joyful colour stuff and none of the boring repetitive grey bit 😄
No.2. A thrifted sweater that I had a very low opinion of with sleeves that were slightly too short, transformed with a little chopping, stitching, crochet and colour into something I LOVE!
So there's this thing called 'emotionally durable design' that academics write whole books about, and it's basically a theory that suggests "we need to make products that can adapt as we change so we fall in love with them all over again and don't chuck them away". But I keep thinking that's kinda crazy, WE don't need to do that at all cos we already have the super power of crochet - we can change things so that we fall in love with them all over again.
100 years ago it was still more common to remake and mend stuff than buy it, we just need to get the confidence back to adjust, disrupt and modify our clothes. (Especially cos you can only buy stuff in 5 sizes and frankly NONE of them fit me.) I'm going keep finding ways to properly fall in love with my stuff, and hopefully inspire others to do it too and we can make a difference in our own little ways. On 22nd February I'll be hosting Mollie Makes Sustainability Day over on instagram, I'd love it if you came and said hi.
Lecture over! You may leave, but I expect your homework by Friday 😀😘💗
Good blog... Thanks for sharing
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