Using precious snippets of fabrics creatively
- louisegoulttextiles
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Did you know that textile production is responsible for around 20% of clean water pollution? That's a huge amount and alongside the energy and other resources used to create textiles it's easy to see why it's one of the biggest contributors to climate change. I'm often asked questions around textile sustainability which is understandable.
Aside from the environmental impact, re-using textiles and adding snippets of precious fabrics into artwork adds a layer of history or narrative to each piece. This is one of the reasons I began using pre-loved fabrics and materials in my work. In the work above, Spring Days, the fabrics is all pre loved and naturally dyed using various plants.
Most of us have snippets of fabrics in our stash that are too small to use for projects but too precious to throw away. Rather than leave them in a drawer they can be used in many meaningful ways.
Applique is the layering of smaller fabric pieces on to a larger piece of fabric to create pictures or patterns. It's an ideal way to use up smaller pieces of fabric, incorporating them into something bigger. Applique can be used to create pictures, for visible mending or on homewares such as cushions or bags.
Applique can be raw edge (with the frayed edges embraced) or closed edge (with the raw edges hidden) and can also be done with materials such as paper. There's a previous blog post about applique here.
Boro embroidery is a Japanese repair technique. The correct term is Boro Boro which translates to 'Tattered Necessity' Boro wasn't a decorative embroidery technique, it was born out of necessity due to poverty. Fabrics were put over the top of worn or ripped areas of both clothing and home furnishings and held down with a simple running stitch.
Boro is such a mindful form of embroidery and any sized fabric snippet can be used. There is a blog post about Boro here.
Hand embroidered landscapes is my most popular workshop and as the landscape background is built up using fabric snippets it just had to be mentioned here! Landscapes of any kind and size are perfect for using up tiny and small fabric snippets. Details are then added with stitch.
The back of the fabric is often better than the front for this - the colours more muted allowing your embroidery to shine.
Visible mending is such a fantastic way to lengthen the life of garments - either repairing them to last longer or using the techniques to upcycle a garment you've fallen out of love with into something you'll wear time and time again.
Snippets of fabrics can be used for patches in Visible Mending, with or without embroidery on them.
Fabric vessels are ideal for using up fabric snippets and making something beautiful yet practical for your home. They can be any shape or size and have as much or as little embroidery on as you would like.
I hope that's inspired you to try using up some of those fabric snippets rather than keeping them in a drawer or box - let me know in the comments if you try some of these ideas.
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