This weekend I became obsessed with making a Gather your Sew-plies purse for each day of the week. You can see, I am well on my way. I have been settling into a new form of textile art, which isn’t clearly defined yet but it seems to have something to do with cloth, dressing myself, and embroidering and embellishing the clothing I wear, make and use. All of the sudden, I feel as though my clothing can become a journal. I can trace off a drawing from my journal, embroider it onto my clothing, I can say things, verbally and visually on the clothing I wear, it if it were my journal.
I have been playing with the idea of labels. We like to categorize things, people, visual impressions, items. When working with clothing we have lots of physical labels, actual labels that tell us about size, fiber content, washing instructions and the like. I have been having fun inserting and using found labels in new ways. Here you see my latest Gather your Sew-plies purse is a size 14, or is 14th in some unspecified order. I have been daydreaming of removing and redistributing the labels that are sewn onto my clothing.
This latest Sew-plies purse goes with a t-shirt blouse I bought at H&M. I started embroidering it just this morning. This is part of my new approach. I am going to work on and wear the clothing I choose to embellish all summer long. This is an active project. I don’t yet have a blouse to pair with the pink Gather your Sew-plies purse…but I have been thinking about how to remedy that.
I will be teaching in Arlington Texas this week and will be away from home for almost 4 days. Luckily, I now have an iPad (A.K.A iMelly) and can keep up with you guys wherever I am.
Melanie Testa 
I remember back in the 70’s (gasp) several pairs of jeans that I wore that I recreated as they were broken in (meaning as they got holes). Between patches for holes, patches for fun and embroidery, they morphed from week to week as wearable expressions of my mood. I haven’t thought about them in years. One day in the 80’s while visiting my brother in Boston, I found myself on a subway platform looking around at women in big shoulder pads and reailzing I was the only one in patched jeans. I think they went into the closet at that point, but boy did I love them. Your interaction with your cothes brings back that feeling for me.
LikeLike
I also had a pair of jeans like Lizzie described. I loved those jeans. My boro jacket has moved from boro to journal. I found myself adding birds that I found in the fabric design (I can now achieve the pot addled mind without the pot. ;D). Then the idea of a blue bird on my shoulder and heart on my sleeve, and the jacket has moved closer to those loved jeans. I tend to be quiet and reserved, so wearing something that proclaims who I am and where my interests lies, is a stretch. What I have found is that the weight and feel of the embroidery makes the garment cozy. Almost like a hug, and who wouldn’t want clothes that give you a warm hug? I have been known to buy items at the thrift store just for the buttons or labels. I have two blouses destined for you that I found last weekend. 😉
LikeLike