As my project highlights the issues we face within the fast fashion industry I started thinking of ways to acquire textiles and materials that I could use for my work without having to pay for them. I was considering different people and even companies who would likely try to get rid of materials and clothes they didn’t need anymore. This included people who have grown out of clothes, don’t like certain styles of clothes anymore, people who are moving and therefore need to get rid of items as a way of making the transport process easier, companies who have left over materials that aren’t of any use because they didn’t sell or are scraps etc. I was searching through Facebook and luckily found someone who made a post stating she had a bag of fabrics available that she didn’t need and was asking whether anyone else might find a better use for them. I messaged her and arranged to pick up the bag and to my surprise, there was an incredible amount of various fabrics that I could use for my postcards and more!
After having cut card into the right size for postcards, I laid them all out onto the floor so I could start thinking of ways to fill them. We were advised to gradually apply work onto different postcards, working on multiple at a time rather than only working on one individually. Honestly, I found the empty postcards looked quite daunting once I had them all laid out trying to figure out ways in which I could make them look interesting. Using the scraps of material I had available, I started piecing and sewing fabrics together. The first five I created are the ones I dislike the most. I didn’t feel that they had any aesthetic to them or visually appealing aspect and I simply put them together for the sake of starting a few postcards. But it did get me thinking about how to create ones that I don’t want to throw away immediately.
Rather than starting with the materials themselves I sketched out around 6 postcards that looked like mannequins wearing different items of clothing. I was then rummaging through the bag to search for fabrics that looked like they matched the sketches and made collages out of them. I had fun selecting materials that I think could be made into an item of clothing based on durability, style, and functionality.
Working on the different postcards at once while they were all laid out on my floor then gave me a new idea. I thought of combining multiple postcards that would all together create one image. I liked the style of a few jackets and decided to sketch out an image spanning over 9 postcards. This also made the process of having to create 50 postcards seem less daunting. Although I obviously didn’t create an actual wearable jacket, I really enjoyed the making of these postcards. Again, I enjoyed figuring out which materials would be best suitable, but also seeing where shade and highlights might be visible on the jacket and finding different colours to reflect such. I started contemplating the meaning of my work and experimenting in this way definitely reflects with my concepts of this project. Using leftover scraps of peoples materials and creating something new out of it is my main intention. It’s intriguing to think about what we might consider as a leftover, but could be valuable to another person. What do we mean by leftovers? What do they look and feel like? Old, dirty, used, rough, unfinished, disregarded, incomplete…
Further I started thinking about when I engage with a piece of material, what do I choose to take and what do I leave behind? With the jacket, I kept the colour and the texture of the material, but I’ve taken away the original purpose and design of the piece.
I really like collages and with all the materials I have I figured it would be fun to make some miniature style ones for my postcards.