Upcycle Challenge @ ArtPlay - February 25th and 26th

Sometimes I feel like jumping in medias res right into a subject...other times I feel like giving the back story. Sometimes I feel like I'm writing "to" an old soul who has being doing this for years and giggles at my newness. At other times I feel like I'm writing "to" a very young thing who just knows she likes to wear shoes and that the more colors on her clothing, the better.

Today, I'm jumping right in and talking to my inner seven yr old:

Having had the *brilliant* idea to put on a fashion upcycle challenge (a'la Project Runway meets New Dress a Day) benefiting My Sister's Closet, I just needed a venue and perhaps a community arts center dedicated to offering such challenges to the community. And then I found ArtPlay (happily, happily, happily...) and we worked on the first version of this challenge: a workshop.

The proposal was this: six hours to take a garment off a rack of donations from My Sister's Closet, apply creative savvy and artistic panache in the form of paint, felt, (also glue from a glue gun!) and voila! Upcycle that garment into a new, gorgeous article of clothing to be returned to My Sister's Closet reincarnated.

I call the results of the February 25th and 26th Fashion Upcycle Challenge Workshop the best in beta testing history. Modification #1: change that name, girl - it's long. Our intrepid participants numbered four: two artistically minded teenage girls and two craft and sewing skilled women. The participants were asked to bring T-shirts that they could warm up with (and also take home) and it was a joy to watch materials flying once they hit their stride.

I find it so fascinating to watch on the sidelines this process of ebb and flow when a group of people sit down to work creatively with one another. I've seen it a lot in my various classes at ArtPlay, and unfortunately can only speak for women having only had classes of women thus far, but there are beautiful moments of complete silence as each participant goes deep into her creative inner world to pull the ideas forth. And at other times it is so loud in a room with multiple excited stories flying about that one is certain to drop a stitch.

Modification #2: either give participants much more time to work on their own shirts or give them a lot less materials for embellishing (the carrot or the stick?) Some of the participants were so absorbed in the transformation of their t-shirt that envisioned the six hours elapsing and hearing, "I could still work on this shirt" - to me, this is the sign of a truly great activity paired with a truly dedicated artist.

I gently reminded our intrepid designers that they had three hours Friday night and another three hours the following morning and than, tick-tock, just like Project Runway, time would be up! This roused the pace a bit and the designers got to the business of upcycling.

At the beginning of the Friday session, Mary Jane from My Sister's Closet came to give a little talk about the YWCA and its residents and I really loved hearing our participants thinking about their end user while reworking garments. "If a woman needs something for an interview, this dress is too risqué but perhaps it could be paired with these leggings (note on the leggings...they were my collaborative pride and joy and will be discussed further) and made into an outfit for hanging out". With such different ages and personal styles represented, one might think that major differences would have arisen, but for the most part, all four of our designers agreed about what was unfashionable among the donated garments.

In case you didn't know, shoulder-pads are out. Way out. Now if they are a part of a vintage suit from the 1940s, that is one thing...but it might be the only scenario in which shoulder pads are safe...

Okay, let's talk about the leggings. But first, Modifications #3 and #4 - while I really like the two-day scenario in terms of stressing the designers out and making them think they really are part of a challenge, the feasibility of teaching garment alteration in such a short time is non-existent. Not to mention, there really isn't much time for such garment alteration if four designers all need the use of a sewing machine. So #3 would be to extend the length of the workshop into a class, which would then allow designers more time to create an entire look that then might be part of a fashion show...but I'm getting ahead of myself. #4 would be to have sewing machines on hand so that the designer can move seamlessly (get it?) from ideation to modification. For this beta test, one of the participants brought in her own machine the following morning and I bought a simple one on sale from Hancock prior to class Saturday morning. Crazy, I know. I was only a minute late to class...

Leggings. Okay, so one designer, shown in the photos below (full disclosure, she is my step-sister, but I promise this is not about favoritism) pulled a pair of truly ill-fitting pants off the rack and almost thought they were beyond hope. She put them aside but kept returning to them because she loved the stripes and the material. Since they were stretchy, she decided to turn them into leggings and she needed my help to do so. What I love about this challenge is that we both learned a lot by trial and error. The best part was that she finished them just under the bell and was ecstatic with the results.

 There are two subtle details that are really amazing about these leggings: the one is that she put a "fanny patch", hand sewn to the seat of her leggings. Technically, because she made them to go with the dress, the look of the seat wasn't crucial, but she wanted the customer to have the option of wearing them multiple ways. Secondly, she liked the seams that were originally on the sides of the ill-fitting pants and wanted to shift the legs so that the seams would run vertically down the center of the wearer's leg. And we did it. I'm still not exactly sure how, but we did.

I would say the overall nugget of truth from the beta test is that this is an awesome idea. It needs a lot of tweaking and some further research, but I envision a runway show of student designers' upcycled creations that continue the cycle of good generated by the YWCA and My Sister's Closet...and I'm thinking set design students, lighting and music designers all coming together to create quite the spectacle. Note to self: you will probably need a few more modifications to get to this vision...