Saturday, June 6, 2009

Just Playing

Whoa!  Heady few days.  I've been working on a few projects, and I'll try to get pictures taken and post them here.  The girls were back at school this week, and we've been taking full advantage of the gorgeous weather.  So things have been a whirlwind.  A self-imposed, domestic, wonderful whirlwind, but without much time for reflection.

Anyway, I have been giving some thought to this whole Upcycle thing (thank you for the amazingly supportive comments, by the way.  And of course, for the new machine!).  I think I'm not quite totally 100% ready to dive into the whole business thing.  I'm dipping my toes in.  I'm playing, pretending, dreaming, experimenting.  After all, I do have this whole other full-time job, and kids, and a busy social life, and a garden, and a body that needs to walk and run and stretch now and then.  Though, to be honest, the thing I want to do most, every day, is sit at my sewing machine.  It's become a bit of an obsession.

I'm trying to respect these impulses, then, by imagining where they might take me.  And though I'm not ready to start it yet, if I was going to start a business--which I'm tentatively calling JDS Upcycle--it might look something like this:

I envision a business in which you could bring in good, serviceable clothing, material, or linens, and JDS would turn that clothing into even better clothing or gifts.  The idea is not so much to make clothes from scratch, though JDS could do some of that, or to do alterations, though JDS would certainly alter clothes!  Rather, it would be to take clothes that sit in the back of your closet because they don't fit quite right, or have sentimental value but aren't stylish anymore, or they just need an update, and to turn that clothing into something you want to wear first, something you can't wait to take off the hanger.  So, the idea is not to recycle clothes, but to upcycle them:  to take something that was on its way to a thrift store or the trash can, and to make it something you really want to wear, something that could have come out of Anthropologie or a boutique. 

The idea behind upcycling comes from a book called Cradle to Cradle, which suggests we should no longer design things so that they can be recycled, but rather design things that can be upcycled, that become better as their design life unfolds.  JDS adapts this idea by suggesting that, rather than constantly cycling clothes in and out of our closets, we can look good by remaking the clothes we have in some simple ways.


Okay.  That was hard to write.  Lots of doubts and self-talk coming at me every moment there (like, who am I to say what's fashionable?  What if I mess someone's clothes up?  What if someone doesn't like Antrhopologie?  For Heaven's sake.  I'm just pretending.  I'm just playing.)

I'm just playing.  Give me a break already (not you, TS readers.  Me.  Ima gonna give myself a break.  Right now).

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