{"id":10402,"date":"2026-05-08T16:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T21:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=10402"},"modified":"2026-05-08T16:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T21:06:07","slug":"recycling-old-garments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=10402","title":{"rendered":"Recycling Old Garments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In this year’s New Year Resolutions <\/a> I pledged to use fabrics from worn out clothing whenever possible. I don’t need to hunt in thrift shops though, because I have enough much loved shirts and some household linens that really must be retired<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January I cut up and saved the best bits of a much loved bright pink Jones of New York classic poplin buttondown shirt, at least 12 years old. Such things never go out of style, but the poplin had worn so badly on the collar and cuffs that the white stiffening was showing through at the edges in holes that were now so big the felt tip pen dabs I applied for a while no longer fooled anyone, and the cuffs were threatening to part company with the sleeve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those pieces didn’t sit around long waiting for their assignment, though, because soon I partnered that pink with a charcoal grey sheet, cut both fabrics into strips and shapes, machine pieced and hand quilted a 50cm x 70cm work I called it “New From Old”<\/em>. It was juried into the SAQA Oceania Region’s exhibition “Opposites”, and is now touring Australia and NZ quilt shows with that collection, but I forgot to post the whole view after it was selected:<\/p>\n\n\n

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“New From Old” 2026, 50cm x 70cm. SAQA Oceania regional exhibition “Opposites”.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A few weeks ago I simply had to face similar realities with two more classic buttondown shirts by J Jill, in white and milk coffee brown linen. They’ve done good service for at least 8 or 9 years, and although pure linen, they weren’t as high quality as the cream Maggie T linen classic button down shirt I’ve been wearing for nearly 30 years. (I’m into investment drassing!) It recently underwent a little discreet mending, and while it’s no longer suitable for Sunday Best, Going Out wear, it’s still fine for daily doings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m currrently working on a couple of small works in my Out of Order series<\/em>, to enter a juried call, so I won’t say any more about them, except that one’s finished and this week I started the second, using some of the milk coffee brown shirt linen. Works in that series have distorted grid layouts, but the large tacking\/basting stitches you see in these photos will be removed before I stitch the grids in a technique yet to be decided.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Auditioning materials for this irregular grid layout of brown linen over cream. I cut holes in the linen, and tacked the brown into place over the cream.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Most of the materials I auditioned have now been knocked back and set aside for a future project, but as I still haven’t decided how I’ll define the grid, I won’t put them away for a few days.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Considering straight stitch option, (L), it was clear that thread was way too white, so for the stemmed French knots I looked harder, and eventually found the perfect cream match. <\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this year’s New Year Resolutions I pledged to use fabrics from worn out clothing whenever possible. I don’t need to hunt in thrift shops though, because I have enough much loved shirts and some household linens that really must be retired. In January I cut up and saved the best bits of a much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-2HM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10402"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10424,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10402\/revisions\/10424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}