Circular By Design: Crafted to Continue
Circular By Design Innovation Festival & Crafted to Continue
For a brief introduction to the circular economy and how it can apply to textiles, check out my blog post on the topic from earlier this year.
On Thursday 17th November, I took part in the Circular by Design Innovation Festival, displaying my project, Crafted to Continue, alongside the ten other Irish businesses in this new program’s pilot cohort.
Crafted to Continue is a bespoke 1-1 textile repurposing service, developed as my “circular solution” with Circular by Design. You can submit your sentimentally valuable textiles for the creation of a new, unique piece, such as a jacket, quilt, or wall-hanging. This might be a way for cloth from a favourite but worn-out garment to be salvaged and worn again as part of a new Saturn Cottage Industries jacket, or it may be a precious inherited textile remade into a set of pieces - wall-hangings, quilts, or cushions - for family members.
Crafted to Continue
Where is that special piece of clothing?
Maybe it’s too small
Or too damaged
To ever really wear again
But
You still keep it?
At Saturn Cottage Industries
I see the history in your favourite textiles
And I want to give them a future.
Together
We can reimagine your precious but unusable pieces
As raw materials
To craft something
Especially for you, something
New
Useful
And beloved
Making your favourite things
Crafted to continue.
I prototyped Crafted to Continue with a garment of my own, while making a video to demonstrate this process of honouring the sentimental value embedded in our textiles, the craft involved in doing so, and the joyful, beloved outcome.
Presenting my work during speed-pitches and networking at the Festival. Photo by Liadain Aiken.
The polka dot dress - bought as my first “going out dress” when I was seventeen - was there for so many big occasions and great memories. So, naturally, it stayed in the wardrobe long after it fit, or was itself in any fit state to be worn again by anyone. It was the obvious conduit for me to experiment and prototype Crafted to Continue. My jeans-style jacket/shacket was an ideal outcome for me, and in the video you can see how, with some supplementary new Irish linen, the dress was recrafted into a new, useful, and beloved piece.
Crafted to Continue by Saturn Cottage Industries
The patchwork motifs I used for the quilted back panel are a cottage, for obvious reasons, but also a condensed version of the traditional “flying geese” motif, arranged in a loop, representing the cycling of fabric in my work, with the truncated triangles becoming a continuous fast-forward symbol expressing the urgency for reimagining the systems around us, in the face of resource crises and climate change.
I’m fascinated by the symbolism in traditional patchwork quilting blocks and how such motifs can become part of the visual language of self-expression we have in clothing.
If you have precious textiles waiting to be crafted to continue, please contact me on the Commissions page on my website, where you can find information and inspiration about honouring our textile memories and gifting unique, meaningful pieces.
Circular By Design Innovation Festival
The theme of the day was “designing a circular textiles system in Ireland” and it brought together a lot of key stakeholders. As a maker passionate about this important but still niche movement in the larger textiles sector, coming together with 100+ other professionals who are knowledgeable and motivated along the same lines made for an inspiring event.
Photo L-R: Lucy Bowen (NCAD), Gwen Cunningham (NCAD), Professor Becky Earley (Centre for Circular Design, UAL), Jade Wilting (Ganni), Thami Schweichler (Makers Unite).
I met makers working in similar ways and discussed our common needs and the limitations we face within the status quo, and I was able to start conversations with collectors and processors of textiles across the island. I met a number of people whose work I have followed online for some time (in some cases, years!) and never got to meet before. As someone working alone, it was affirming and encouraging to meet and chat with others doing the same thing, and to realise that there is movement, appetite, and urgency for change in the reuse of textiles in Ireland.
You can read case studies of each of the eleven participating businesses, including Saturn Cottage Industries, on the Circular By Design website.
Businesses pitching and people mingling at the Circular By Design Innovation Festival, Smock Alley, November 17th.