This morning, as an experiment, I decided to select some of my most prized colorful silks and velvets and throw them in the waste basket just to see how it felt to be nonchalant and indifferent. What prompted this exercise was an article I read yesterday afternoon in a publication that is delivered to my husband each month. I seldom look at the magazine, but for some reason decided to flip through it. I discovered an article on a designer and perused it. What I came across was quite disconcerting.

I will not disclose the name of the designer, but in so many words she decided she was not happy with her spring 2010 line. She felt that all the bright colors were not working, so she threw out a quarter million dollars worth of fabric and started over. She said that once she got rid of the color that everything started to work. Not only do I find this appalling, I find it to be a silly, self-absorbed solution. Maybe designers have always been so wasteful. Then I suggest they no longer market any efforts to be sustainable.

I am almost finished with my wool wrap skirt and will post it soon. My next project will be more spring-minded. I want to work with some linen and antique laces on perhaps a vest collaged with large and small pieces of lace. I look forward to this because primarily it will mostly be sewn by hand.

I have been inspired lately to look at paintings for clothing ideas by this. What a wonderful idea to be inspired in this way. There is so much that can be gleaned from such a beautiful vision. This painting above has so much to stir one’s spirit. I love the lace insertion on her dress sleeves and the way the fabric drapes, suggesting it might me a beautiful cotton voile, the older ones being the most exquisite to feel and see. She is draped in the most beautiful textile. Is is getting wet?

I just love the simplicity of this dress. It is so classic it could be easily worn today, and the purple sash tied at the hips is pure magic. The way the sleeves gather and fold, could there be anything more elegant and romantic? The leftovers were surely put into a quilt of some merit, I would like to imagine. No waste.

I will often save photos from magazines before I discard them. I have had this for some time now. I could step right inside this world and be perfectly content with the clothing, scenery, and ambiance.

Now I must go retrieve my textiles from the wastebasket and put them back on the shelf for a future project.

Please excuse me, but this is the most uninspiring photo that I have posted in some time. It is akin to watching the grass grow. I wanted to show you the layout of this skirt, how it is cut crosswise. It seemed the perfect pattern to accentuate the throw and its jacquard pattern. Actually, it fit the vintage textile in such a way that it seemed as if the throw and the pattern were meant for each. It is cut as one piece.

This is what I have left. It does seem a little poignant when I look at this, as if I have ruined an artifact, but I would like to think that I honored it by giving it new life. At least I felt a little justified when I began the first excruciating cut.

My only female cat often appears out of nowhere when she knows I am cutting a garment in the dining room….”Oh! She is there! I must attend to the cutting. I love to lay on the tissue and crumple it up”, or so I imagine she is saying as she leaps into place on the table.

Lauren, as she was called when I rescued her from the animal shelter, days from her demise, is quite remarkable. I can usually convince her of the importance of staying off the fabric until I finish cutting. Since she is a woman, I am sure this is why she is so sensitive to my efforts.

This is the skirt pattern. Nothing ever goes to waste when it comes to my collection of patterns. Many are older or vintage, and I use them as they are or alter them to suit my vision.

This is the skirt, all in one piece.

These are the pieces used, only #10 and #10A. The lining is cut identically as the skirt so there are no facings. I looked through a lot of patterns, and this one seemed the perfect one to use to accentuate the vintage textile and preserve its integrity. So the next step is the sewing, and that is my favorite part of the process. The cutting is always a challenge because of the cats, and I refuse to sequester them in another room. Cats and sewing simply fit like needle and thread or bread and butter. Besides, they are the best company one could hope to have, and invariably they will bless you with their purring, a sound that is so peaceful and comforting.

This book is a history book, a biography of cotton, and could possibly be read as an epic novel. I discovered it through an online quilt history list. Members of the list were praising the book for many reasons, one for the wealth of information, another for its fascinating read. I decided to purchase it for my textile history collection. As I opened the book and started reading, I found it difficult to put aside. I was underlining and writing notes in the narrow margins. How could one single crop have such an impact on so many civilizations and continue its influence in the future? These are questions this book addresses as well as many others.

Cotton seems almost whimsical in its shape, size, and fanciful puff, but aside from this allure, it is one of the most pesticide-laden crops ever grown. I was not aware of this until I started reading many of the blogs that I keep up with, and this fact encouraged me to not only read the book, but to become a better consumer of textile goods.

The reason for the use of these insecticides began with the boll weevil, imported by Columbus. The author Stephen Yafa describes this beetle: “A single female beetle could give rise to six generations all within one year. If only 10 percent of those generations survived, the sixth generation would produce 729 million weevils”. It was clear that this was an enemy of the crop that had to be controlled in order for cotton to survive.

“But what of the chemical weapons we used against it? They at first represented the contribution of our best and brightest. Yet as time wore on and we learned more details about the unintended effects of these toxins on the health of humans, wildlife, and vegetation, a more subtle and elusive adversary began to emerge: our own methods of destruction.” [I am reminded here of Rachel Carson's illuminating and profound book, Silent Spring]. “Like Agent Orange in Vietnam, the arsenal itself became a self-inflicted wound. By the time we acknowledged that we were killing scores of birds and fish, contaminating our air and groundwater, and spreading cancer across the Cotton Belt, we’d developed three generations of potent pesticides that we had been applying to cotton and numerous other crops in torrential quantities for close to fifty years.”

As I became more informed, I could not go into clothing stores and see the racks and racks of cotton clothing without a certain amount of disgust and anger. Then I realized, with even more impact on personal habits, that new fabric purchases implied the same alarm. What right did I or we have as a country to be so mindless and greedy in our unconscious spending habits?

The Industrial Revolution played a vast role, if not a primary one in the proportions that we seem to be accepting as practical and necessary. If one is not influenced by the poison of cotton, then its history and the labor abuse might convince one that its beginnings were not so innocent.

Many years ago, I had a chance to go through the textile mill in Lowell, Massachusetts that has been a museum for some time now. It was a real eye-opener for me. When you enter the room where all the power looms were working at once, the noise was so deafening, that you had to cover both your ears to even tolerate the experience for a few minutes. Many young girls had permanent hearing loss from the racket and noise of being in this room for many hours.

The hours were long, 12 hours a day in conditions where the air was stifling and unhealthy. When the mills first opened “Children as young as eight years old worked from six in the morning until seven at night with a half hour off for breakfast and forty minutes for dinner,” writes Yafa on his account of the mills in England. The horrible conditions were pervasive wherever mills were built and children were employed. And so these were some of the beginnings of one of our favorite and most popular fibers.

And so in thinking about all of this, I was looking around for better ways of existing in my own community. How were we trying to improve and begin a new paradigm, a better way of existing in our city, our county , and our world? Every few mornings, I would walk by this house that was being built in one of our neighborhoods. What initially informed my thinking was how this new construction did not really fit into the neighborhood with the rest of the older homes, and why would someone construct a home that was so out of character with the surrounding early 20th century homes. Then last week, I noticed a wooden sign on the house and went over to read about it. I was very impressed and suddenly my reasoning for its being there completely changed to one of support and affirmation. This is the new paradigm that is being created. It must happen or we are going to self-destruct as we move forward.

What also needs to change is our thinking about our wardrobes and what we wear and what we purchase to put in our homes. We have too much stuff and we have too much that we purchase that exacerbates the conditions that create pollution and unhealthy conditions in our environments.

“The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery – not over nature but of ourselves.”

Rachel Carson