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the sweater factory
June 17, 2010
11am to 5pm daily, June 14 to 25, 2010
406 Pelissier Street, Windsor, Ontario
as part of Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation, an initiative of Windsor-based arts research collective Broken City Lab.
The Sweater Factory is a trial run for a project I’ve been talking about doing for a while. Old sweaters are unraveled and knit on a machine into a long panel from which pattern pieces will be cut; these pieces will be sewn together on the serger to create new sweaters, which will be given away to visitors at the end of the project.
The first two days were taken up with setting up and getting to know the new knitting machine, which I hadn’t managed to get out of the case and try out before beginning the project (whoops). Now that we’re friends, new fabric is pouring off the thing at a pretty good clip, although the varying weights of the sweaters being recycled makes necessary constant little adjustments to tension. I hope to stop knitting and start sewing by the end of the weekend. Due to the short time frame and the summer heat, I’ll be making sweater vests instead of full sweaters (so far most of the visitors to the project who’ve been really excited about the prospect of a free sweater vest have been artists and various other types of nerd anyway, so striped sweater vests could become our NERD UNIFORM). The last few days will be devoted to hand finishing (ribbing!) and giving vests away.
Posted by jodi on June 17, 2010 at 9.29pm
Categories: art, it's only sticks and string, things are happening
Comments on "the sweater factory"
this is great, jodi! congrats on getting a cool project off the ground.
Posted by libby on June 17, 2010 at 9.53pm :: link
What a great project :-) You guys must have better op shops (thrift shops) than us…. All I seem to find is cruddy, cheap acrylic.
Posted by Claire on June 17, 2010 at 11.49pm :: link
It was nice finally to meet you today. I wish we could have stuck around long enough to see the knitting start to emerge. Very cool. We’ll be back!
Posted by Kikipotamus on June 27, 2010 at 9.59pm :: link