One Stitch at a Time

by Rachel Dunstan Muller

We left the house dressed respectably, but after several errands and a stop at the playground my four-year-old had strawberry juice down the front of her shirt and its seams were coming apart in two places. The shirt was a hand-me-down—it didn’t owe us anything. If it hadn’t been one of her favourites, I probably would have thrown it away when we returned home. Instead I spot-sprayed it with a biodegradable stain remover and applied my sewing skills when it was clean. It took me less than 10 minutes to stitch up the torn seams, and when I was finished, my daughter’s shirt was as good as new. There was something very satisfying about this small task.

We live in a world of cheap goods, where it’s easier to discard and replace things than to repair them. As I was working on my daughter’s shirt, I started thinking about the cost of this easy-come, easy-go attitude to our clothing. Consider the environmental impact of a cotton T-shirt, for example. It takes a whopping 2,700 litres of water to produce a single T-shirt’s worth of cotton. Unless it’s grown organically, you can add a third of a pound of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to the tab. After the cotton has been harvested from a field in India, China, Egypt, Kenya, or the U.S., all major growers, it will likely be exported to China or another country with low labour costs (as low as 18 cents per hour, according to the U.S. National Labor Committee). The cotton is milled, woven into fabric, and cut and assembled into its final form. The typical T-shirt then travels across the ocean to a distribution center in North America or Europe, and on to the store where it is purchased.

But the life cycle of a T-shirt doesn’t end here. Whether its owner wears it out or simply tires of it, the T-shirt will eventually be passed on, donated, or tossed in the garbage. If it’s passed on or donated, its useful life will be extended. But even here there may be more environmental costs. Only about 20 per cent of the clothing we give to charity is reused as clothing domestically. Some of it ends up in the landfill. The rest is purchased by textile recyclers who sort and recycle half of the fibers for industrial use, and bale the rest for export to developing countries. While this sounds like a win-win situation—we save landfill space and supply poorer nations with clothing—the global second-hand clothes trade inhibits local industries in developing countries. It also leaves a significant carbon footprint, thanks to the long-distance shipping required.

So what is an environmentally and socially conscious fashionista supposed to do? We could start by taking cues from the way our great-grandparents lived. Their wardrobes were considerably smaller, but what they owned was made to last. They mended garments that were torn, preserved their best by wearing second-best for work and play, used discarded clothing for quilts or cleaning rags, and saved what they couldn’t use for the ragman. They also “made-over” garments to update them, or to re-size them for younger family members.

But life is different in the twenty-first century, and we need to update our approach to sustainable fashion. Unlike our great-grandparents, we can seek out clothing made from environmentally progressive fibers such as organic cotton, bamboo, or recycled plastic. We can also acquire used clothing at consignment stores, thrift shops, garage sales and clothes swaps. We definitely need to buck the current trend that sees fashion as disposable. My brother and his wife know the value of classic, well-made clothing. What they buy for their oldest son usually survives his younger brother as well. It’s then handed down to my two-year-old, and finally passed on to my sister’s son. Most of it is still in serviceable shape at the end of this cycle.

We could further extend the life of our clothing by doing what I did with my daughter’s shirt. No one should be intimidated by a lack of sewing experience. There are some very helpful tutorials on the internet, which cover everything from the basic running stitch to procedures for the real seamstress or tailor wannabe. You don’t need a sewing machine or extensive sewing kit to get started. Most simple repairs can be accomplished with a needle and thread.

My daughter’s shirt took only a few minutes to repair, but once I started sewing I couldn’t stop. Over the next week I tackled all of the mending I’d been collecting for months. I fixed torn seams, replaced missing buttons, and re-stitched a small quilt that was starting to come apart. I appliquéed heart-shaped patches to the worn spots on a pair of my daughter’s corduroys, and fused hidden patches inside my own favourite pair of jeans. As a finale, I took two long skirts that had been collecting dust in my closet, and re-hemmed them just above the knees.

If you’ve got the skills and you’re really keen, there are all sorts of things you can do to recycle your clothing. I knew a woman who made beautiful toddler dresses out of women’s blouses. My own makeover projects have tended to be simpler: I’ve shortened a trench coat, turned a skirt into an apron, and made pants into capris. My teenage daughters are more ambitious. They regularly take thrift store finds and transform them completely. They’re especially fond of redesigning dresses for formal school dances. One of them has been known to unravel sweaters and reuse the yarn for funky scarves or other knitted creations.

I don’t know how to knit, but I’d like to learn. I recently saw a very cool area rug knit entirely out of T-shirt “yarn” (T-shirts cut into narrow strips—you can Google all the how-to information). Whether or not I ever get around to tackling such a project, I know I’ll never look at a T-shirt in quite the same way again. Happy stitching!

Rachel Dunstan Muller is the mother of five, and a children’s author. She and her family are working at reducing their environmental impact, one area at a time.