Summer 2020 Education Column

Winter 2020 Education Column

Embrace the old by making it new!

By Sharon Blank

     Education Chair

This year our theme is RECYCLE, UPCYCLE, REFASHION.  I’m sure your neighborhood group leader has at least mentioned this.  My inclination toward those items that still have a life to them, but I really don’t want them … I wind up putting them into the big bag in the basement marked ‘Salvation Army.’  During a meeting at the end of 2019, our CAB’s esteemed planning committee wanted me to climb out of my box.  Again.  Geesh!  So, I started mulling this over in my mind and then mentally set it aside
until later.

A few months ago one of the gals in my neighborhood group came to a meeting with this big bag of jeans jackets and SHE put it out there.  She showed
us some of the jackets she had already given new life to, and, more or less, challenged us to take one or two or more and revamp them. So I took one.
And it took root on a little chest in my sewing room.  When I couldn’t stand
it sitting there taunting me any longer, I put it in the closet and closed the
door. And now here I am needing something for my Education Column.

I went to the closet and opened the door and there it was. Right behind it was
a shelf of totes that had things like sweatshirts parts, pillow-top fabric, spring outfit fabric, denim shirt findings.  Whoa! Denim shirt findings?  I opened
the tote and here was a brand new denim shirt, a stack of batiks in shades of blue, violet and green and yards of some kind of trim that I probably picked
up at a give-away price and I was going to do something spectacular with all that. But there it sat… for maybe 5 years. Maybe more. So now I have two denim garments. One is
definitely a jacket and one is definitely a shirt.  At this point I have no idea what I am going to do but by golly I will do something! I have lace! I have embroidery designs! Oooo, I like that thought … I have
buttons. I am getting carried away!

I am challenging you, my faithful readers, to open that closet door, go through those drawers, go through that box in the storage area where you put those things, temporarily, for one more year that you just aren’t sure you are ready to part with. Surely you can find something, a heavy shirt that could become a vest, a dress that could become a skirt.  Dust off your imagination, get out your creativity. If your creativity is
already out, alive and thriving, then point it in another direction.  Recycle, Upcycle, Refashion.  Wouldn’t it be fun to blow that planning committee away by each of us bringing at least one ‘something’ to the annual meeting?  There is so much creativity among our members that we SHOULD all be able to bring at least one item. One something that could turn out to be something you can’t part with now that it’s finished.

Yes, I can be a nag. And I will mention this again.  After all … I must keep on myself somehow.  OH!  One more thing … Spring is not too far away. Keep the faith ladies.

 

 

November-December Education Column

October Education Column

September Education Column


August Education Column ...


Part 1, published in June, is below