The Green Beet: Design with recycle in mind

Posted on: January 24, 2010 | jenaransom | Comments Off | Print Article | Rate Post:

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By Jen Ransom for Seward City News

My husband and I recently took a whirlwind trip to visit some friends down in Los Angeles. Leaving the little one at my parent’s Oregon home, we flew down to visit America’s sunny city during the worst rainstorm LA had seen in probably 15 years.

Skipping a trip to the beach, we spent the weekend driving around the famous and infamous sites of the area. While not exactly low-impact (I’m sure my ecological footprint is quite large for this week) at least we didn’t hit much traffic: We were often the only vehicle in the carpool lane and had an open road in a city of millions.

The greenest part of the trip, however, was seeing how my girlfriend – a costume designer at Paramount – created outfits and accessories from bits and pieces of recycled clothing. While much of her designing for True Jackson, the show she designs for, comes from new articles of clothing purchased from big name stores, her own lines of hair pieces and clothing are more eco-friendly, created from both vintage and just-plain-used clothing.

The guest bedroom is also her “home office” and is filled with “found” items and cloth so that she has her materials at her fingertips. Not only is the organization of the items green – buttons in used coffee pots, pins in octagon-shaped plastic candy bins – but almost everything she uses already has lived one “style-life” already.

Her line of moderately priced hair pieces, tate maDe, includes vintage buttons from her great aunt’s collection.  A shelf full of vintage sheets she’s found in thrift stores wait to become detailed sun dresses once her show goes on hiatus this summer. I loved hearing about the children’s clothing line she has designed in her head – fun, soft, inexpensive pieces of girl’s clothing that looks girly, not, as she puts it, an almost sexy child version of adult woman’s clothing that one can find at so many department stores these days. I was glad to hear it – I recently saw a “child’s bra”at Fred Meyer that had black lace, leopard print and absolutely no support, because it was made to go on a little girl with no chest! Shocking to me, but I digress…

I guess I enjoyed hearing about and looking at her designs because I myself have been involved in a recycled-sewing project for the last couple years. Made from wool clothing picked up at the five dollar bag sale at Bishop’s Attic and other thrift stores, I volunteer with other ladies from our church making warm, fun, artistic wool quilts. These quilts are prizes at a yearly bingo event. I love ripping the seams out of what some might think are useless clothing and piece-mealing together a quilt that I know someone will use and love. This year I am foregoing a large quilt project (too hard with the little one at home) and am instead using recycled wool to make gloves and hats. I love the pattern, which can be made into basic single color items or thrown together into more of a crazy-patch collection of different prints, and it will be good to use up all my small scrap pieces of wool from the last two quilts. Some of the items will be used in the bingo during our Oktoberfest celebration, others I’ll send to a mission we support in Russia.

Do you long for a creative outlet? Do you enjoy painting on a Saturday afternoon, or do you think you might? Are you considering a Valentine’s gift that is homemade? It’s so easy nowadays to run to your closest art store and purchase everything you “need” for a weekend, or winter, project. I’m not saying that new cloth or paper are not sometimes fun to use, but so many times part of our creative outlets include a trip to the store and a lot of packaging. Why not take some inspiration from my friend and try recycling items for your next project? If your incredibly creative like her and can come up with an idea off the cuff, great – go do it. If you’re a little more like me and need some outside inspiration (and possibly a pattern), try checking out the websites that follow. Have an idea that other’s might enjoy? Please share them here.

FUN RECYCLED ART PROJECT IDEAS

Lots of recycled art projects, I especially like the search engine for this website:
http://www.makingfriends.com/recycle.htm

Not specific for recycled cloth, but would work with used clothing:
http://sewing.about.com/od/homedecprojects/ht/pillowcover.htm

The Imagination Factory has lots of great ideas for kid’s art projects:
http://www.kid-at-art.com/

Learn more about tate maDe here:
http://tatemade.com/Home_Page.php

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