Emma Friedlander-Collins - Crochet Hacking: Repair and Refashion Clothes with Crochet

Emma Friedlander-Collins

www.davidandcharles.com

This book is not just a collection of crochet patterns or a selection of makes and hacks to keep you looking de rigeur. Oh no! This book is actually a toolkit of hints, tips and instructions to help you rethink the clothes that are already around you, from your own wardrobe to second-hand stores and thrifted finds. This book is a way of life.

There are already enough clothes in the world. Fact. Every year 80 billion new garments are sold; that is a HUGE amount. When you get to thinking about how many plants have to be grown, watered, sprayed with pesticides, processed into fabric, cut, sewn, pressed, and then shipped around the world to get to a high street shop near you, its mind boggling.

Add that to the fact that most people throw away half a kilo of clothes a year. Each. Even if you donate yours to charity, only 10% are actually bought and rehoused and the rest can still end up in landfill giving off methane and could take 200 years to break down, or get sent overseas for someone else to deal with. This, my friends, is a big part of the climate crisis and to make a difference we need to either keep the clothes we have or buy second-hand clothes.

But this is not a book to make you feel guilty about that. In fact, this book is the opposite. This is for people that love clothes. Keeping them for longer definitely helps; a garment kept for over three years will reduce its global impact by 2030%. But buying something second-hand instead of new will reduce the carbon footprint by a whopping 82%. So, Im not talking about mending stuff to make sure it lives longer, Im talking about remaking stuff. Seeing the potential in second-hand and remodelling, remaking and changing it to make it something you truly love.

This book is for people that want to rehabilitate ill-fitting t-shirts and make them functioning members of society again. Its for people that want to fall back in love with jackets and jumpers that have been lying at the bottom of drawers and hanging in the back of cupboards. Using a bit of crochet, scissors and some simple stitches this book of crochet hacking will show you how to completely rethink your relationship to clothes, inspire you to say yes to preloved, save things from landfill and make real change in the world.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin at the beginning. Once upon a time there were a pair of twins who didnt have a lot of money but loved dressing up. For their 10th birthday each made the other a garment. One made a Ming the Merciless dressing gown fashioned from their very floral, brown bedroom curtains; the other made a skirt from a jumper. Luckily their Dad wasnt too cross and happily encouraged the use of sharp objects, pointy things and soft furnishings from around the house.

From then on I just kept making. I would always whip up a quick skirt if we were going out for the evening, but having never formally learned how to sew I would make it up as I went along. Id use hemming tape to stick a top together, cut up t-shirts to make vests or remodel jumper sleeves to make legwarmers.

IT DOESNT MATTER HOW YOU DO IT, AS LONG AS YOU ENJOY WHAT YOURE DOING AND GET THERE IN THE END.

My foray into yarny crafts came later. When my second baby was born I learned how to crochet from an online tutorial and very quickly started writing my own patterns. Within a couple of years I had written my first book, with another two to follow. I never wanted to make stuff to sell, there was already enough stuff in the world and I didnt want to add to it. What I really got a kick out of was finding ways to get other people making, and writing patterns felt like a brilliant place to start. I now have a regular upcycling column in a crochet magazine, create crafty content and tutorials for an international crafts company and collaborate with all sorts of yarn brands, maker organisations and craft companies to create things for people to make. I also teach and lecture all over the place, with the focus being it doesnt matter how you do it, as long as you enjoy what youre doing and get there in the end.

Crochet IS a super power, dont let anyone tell you otherwise. It truly is a life skill and in the zombie apocalypse well be the ones that are clothed, cosy under our blankets, with baskets for carrying all we need. So I got to thinking about how we can use crochet as a positive tool to combat the current climate crisis.

After a year of research, an MA in Sustainable Design, many mangled attempts at making stuff and lots of super helpful conversations with the Instagram community, a path became clear. With Fast Fashion causing so much damage to the planet, churning out clothes at incredible quantities in sizes that often dont really fit us, there seemed to be a real opportunity to use crochet, and a bit of hand sewing, to make a positive impact by remaking. After all that time it really was only a small step away from those bedroom curtains, but this time, with wool.

Crocheting or knitting a whole jumper can be incredibly boring, as well as technically challenging, so why not make the fun bit like a coloured yoke and reuse the body of an existing jumper to attach it to? A jumper that you were bored with or rescued from a charity shop can have a second life and you get all the fun with a fraction of the effort.

When something doesnt fit, you dont need to find a sewing machine, let out seams and insert plackets (I dont actually know what a placket is, other than an intimidating sewing term)! A bit of hacking with some scissors, some beginners running stitch and a bit of woolly work and it can fit you perfectly. It really doesnt matter how you do it, as long as you enjoy what youre doing and get there in the end. Everything you do is a learning experience, so there truly are no mistakes, just lessons.

This collection of tutorials is more of a guide and inspiration than anything else. There are full instructions on how to hack and remake each piece, but they are there to give you the tools to start hacking and remaking the clothes in your life. Once you start rethinking what a jumper or pair of jeans is and realise what it could be, nothing will be safe.

A note about crochet stitches and sewing if you are reading this book it is likely that you already love to crochet. All these hacks use the simplest of crochet and sewing stitches but if you need a little help they are all described in detail in the General Techniques section at the end of the book.