Making my own clothes allows me to express my identity in fit, color, garment type, and style. Recently, I had the opportunity to showcase my sustainable fashion creations at Hidden Villa’s Sheep Shearing and Fiber Arts Festival.

The ensemble on the left is called From Bottles to Sportswear. I am an athlete and rarely find leggings as wild as I’d like. When I saw this  Athletic Knit Kraken Border fabric by Sew Dynamic Fabrics I knew it had potential. The octopus design was bold in subject matter, line, composition, and color.  The fabric was printed so the design would run up and down the leg rather than around the leg.  Each yard of the fabric was made from approximately 16 plastic bottles. Making clothes out of it meant reusing waste to make something beautiful.

I made two pairs of legging from this fabric trying on different approaches:

• one had tentacles around the ankles and the other one had the tentacles around the waist. 
• one used a pattern with a crotch gusset and one without
• one I used the cover stitch machine, on the other a serger.

The t-shirt is made from Sew Dynamic’s matching Drirelease Kraken 2.0 Purple Printed Woven Texture fabric.

My third make is called the Field of Poppies Dress.

I copied a ready-to-wear dress using silk organza to trace pieces of the dress. I turned that tracing into a paper pattern. The fabric is also an athletic knit, made from recycled plastic bottles, created by Sew Dynamic Fabrics. 

This dress is a first draft. In the next version, I will make some changes:

• pleat out the excess fabric in the neckline and armscye,
• reduce the width of the bias binding, and
• change the material of the bias binding.

Continuing the theme of sustainability, I purchased used mannequins from Mannequin Madness in Oakland to display the garments.

Learning skills to express my creative vision has been a constant work. Over the past 8 years, I’ve studied

• locally with Fabmo, Cañada College, Beth Galvin, and Lynda Maynard,
• regionally (West Coast) at Style Maker Fabrics and Seamwork, and
• internationally with Viki Sews, a Russian brand.

These projects required special skills. I learned to use a cover stitch machine from Anita by Design on YouTube. I learned to sew athletic knits from Sewing Active Wear, a book by Johanna Lündstrom.