Held by Glasgow School of Art Future Skills in partnership with Generation of Waste this workshop will provide an introduction to traditional and creative mending skills. By participating you’ll be part of a global creative action resisting the cycle of excess through repair and reuse.  Together, we will explore our personal and collective memories of textile use and wear, learning practical mending skills to increase the longevity of our wardrobes.

It is suitable for anyone interested in re-thinking our approach to our material world and aims to pursue a more circular way of thinking about textiles. All materials will be provided and no prior experience of textile hand skills is required. 

Participants should bring along a personal item that they would like to work with to mend during the workshop.

Favourite top torn? Rucksack ripped? Is your blazer too boring? Design and make your own fabric patch with ScrapAntics!

Choose your fabrics, shapes and colours from a range of recycled materials from Dundee’s only ScrapStore, with friendly guidance and encouragement from artist and designer Lauren Herd.

Go home with your patch ready to be applied to renew your clothing, accessories or homewares!

Free

Suitable for ages 6+

Adult must attend along with any children

All materials and resources provided

Explore the conscious design of kimono – the ultimate sustainable garment

Made of large panels of fabric, Kimono production creates minimal waste. Join Cassandra Belanger from The Zero Waste Design Collective for a discussion around sustainable fashion inspired by this design.

Cassandra and V&A Dundee Curator Kirsty Hassard will look at both the historical context of the garment and how we can take inspiration from it in today's fast fashion-centric marketplace.

Presented in collaboration with V&A Dundee as part of the Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk exhibition, running from 4th May. More details about the exhibit can be found on the V&A website.

Meet the speakers:

Kirsty Hassard is a curator, and fashion historian, and co-curator of Tartan at V&A Dundee, and previously worked in the Furniture, Textiles and Fashion department at V&A South Kensington. Kirsty has worked on a range of exhibitions including Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk, Night Fever: Designing Club Culture, Mary Quant at V&A Dundee, and Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion at V&A South Kensington. She has published on women and work, and the relationship between fashion and print culture in the eighteenth century.

Cassandra Belanger is the founder of The Stitchery Studio, Co-founder/Director of the Zero Waste Design Collective and a founding member of Sustainable Fashion Scotland. She is the Resident Sewing Instructor at the Central Scottish School of Craft and a Fashion and Textile Lecturer at Glasgow West College. Her research interests center around sustainable fashion, textile design education and fashion systems for a post growth economy. Her design and teaching practice explores issues such as zero waste, waste colonialism, transparency, colour therapy, feminism, sizeism, and body image. Cassandra is committed to decolonising her teaching and design practice.

The Zero Waste Design Collective has been at the forefront of global discussions in the field of Zero Waste Design and Zero Waste Sewing since its establishment in August 2020. Committed to reducing global textile waste, ZWDC has fostered a vibrant international community through open-source monthly Community Calls, engagement on social media, a dedicated blog, workshops for universities and communities, industry consultancy and the creation of e-learning courses.

Join artist Rhona Jack for a session centred around visible mending. Rhona will share elements of her artistic practice and the important role that repair plays within her work. She will then teach some visible mending techniques, that can be used both aesthetically, to create artworks, and practically, to mend damaged clothes. All materials will be provided, but participants are encouraged to bring along clothes that they wish to repair - anything with moth holes, tears or rips will work perfectly.

More information and images of Rhona Jack’s work can be found here.

Image credit: Ben Douglas.

Learn to repair and patch with sashiko

Join us for an afternoon of sashiko (a Japanese form of reinforcement stitching), guided by Siobhan McKenna of ReJean Denim. Experiment with fabrics to create a patch that can be used to repair a number of pieces, breathing new life into the clothes you already own.

All materials provided. If you have a specific garment in mind to patch, bring it along! Share your creation with the world @VADundee.

Presented in collaboration with V&A Dundee as part of the Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk exhibition, running from 4th May. More details about the exhibit can be found on the V&A website.

More information about the event can be found here.