At Sandy Hill Studios
During the Planet Purbeck Festival, Jane Colquhoun and her friends organised a mending session at Sandy Hill Studios; it was a gentle way to sit for a while, stitch and find out about sustainability in the fashion and textile industry.
Jane explained: “We’re trying to open up a sort of awareness about the fashion and textile industry and how polluting it is and how fast fashion is responsible for a lot of destruction of the planet”. It’s not just about mending clothes but a chance to get together and think about how we wash things and sustain the life of the clothes we already have. In short; how to buy less.
The group creates beautiful darns on clothes that don't hide the fact they’ve been repaired, “it’s a way of owning your clothes” Jane says, like the scars of our skin, the darns on our clothes tall a story and remind us of our past. It’s easy to see that it’s not just about the end product either “I find it incredibly hard to be slow and to be mindful of what I'm doing. I think stitching this is a good way into that. You're in the now and you become present which is part of mindfulness, and you can't do it quickly, you can't rush to the end of it. You can only do it in its own time.”
It’s was a privilege to be around this group of friends and watch them reclaim this lost activity; once commonplace in the past, it actually enabled the planet to be more sustainable and It’s clearly better for their well-being too.
You can find more information about Jane’s work at http://janecolquhoun.com
With thanks to Sandy Hill Studios
