How much of our textiles are ‘just’ objects? Useful. Practical. Maybe even nice to look at. How many of our textiles are connected to moments in time? To people? To powerful emotions that we don’t want to let go of. An argument can be made that most of the textiles we own falls onto the side of connections. Even, perhaps, that textiles are ALL about connections, not just in the weave or stitch but in the fabric of our memories and emotions. And that if we forget that then our lives, our culture and perhaps our planet will suffer.
One of our earliest memories is often of the fabrics that surround us. Their colours, their warmth, their feel, and their smell. Your baby shawl created by a close family member or friend that has perhaps travelled down through the generations. Maybe your mother’s nightie or your father’s shirt. Or the curtains in your first room. All these are objects that serve a purpose and for everyone else maybe are just that. Yet to YOU they are something more.
They are a reminder of the first feelings of love. A symbol of an unbroken legacy. An introduction to a favourite colour or even, for many of us, a gateway into why we create with fibres and fabrics!
As we grow older these tactile connections of colour and comfort become the gifts that we give to those we care about. Curtains and cloths, tops and towels, bags and bookmarks. A birthday. A Christmas. An anniversary. A going away present. A welcome home gift. A textile object that bridges a gap between two people and creates a connection.
When our loved ones are gone, we can still feel that connection, remember those moments when those gifts sometimes find their way back to us.
If our connection to these emotional artefacts is strong enough, we pick up the needle, the loom or the spinning wheel and connect with our cultural past stretching back 20,000 years! We learn the skills that have kept ourselves warm. That have helped identify us. That have let us express ourselves. There is real joy in the making, joy in the using and joy in the giving.
Machine made fabrics are convenient and cheap but perhaps the hyper-industrialisation of fashion and fabric threatens these connections by cheapening their meaning to us. If it is easier to buy a new top than to fix one, does that make it better?
There is an ever-growing movement of not just recycling but of upcycling, of reinvention and repurpose that allows us to keep items, keep using them and create stories and new connections with them. Someone after all has been behind that object. Designed it. Selected the colour and the style. If picking up from a shop with pre-loved items… that object has been a moment in time for someone else BEFORE US.
If we can teach and learn about fabrics, fast and slow fashion, it will allow us to honour the connections and the skills that have gone into those items. We can preserve our craft and pass it on.
Finally, we can save our planet from the unneeded waste of the unconnected ‘new’.
Connections in Textiles