Have you ever used an industrial sewing machine? Those bad boys roar and pull through your fabric so fast. It’s nuts and for the longest time, sewing a straight line was an impossibility for me.
Gippslandia’s General Manager, the great Michael Duncan, is typically astute in his regular column with his comment that none of the Gippslandia founders can knit. But for a while there, I did want to learn how to sew. Call it a ‘phase’, I don’t know, but it stuck for about as long as some of the buttons I attached during that time.
My sister can create almost anything from fabric; she’s a gun. Nana was a mean darner of socks, and my mum fashioned us some of the coolest ‘happy pants’ of the early nineties, which would likely be kinda cool again now.
Along that line, I think I read a quote from singer, letter-writer and frequent philosopher Nick Cave about the importance of having a tailor to ensure everything fits just right, so that you always look on point. Ol’ Cavendish- fingers Cave oft leaves an imprint on me – making it a likely origin for my interest.
Recently, visiting the National Gallery of Victoria for the Alexander McQueen exhibition I was reminded of how freakishly talented some people are (or is this case, sadly, ‘were’) when it comes to manipulating material. Incredible.
I, on the other hand, managed to create a handful of collared shirts. Some with short sleeves, a couple with cuffs and even a dart or two thrown in to spice it up. They’re incredibly average. But I remember enjoying the whole process, even though it meant I became very well acquainted with my new pal, the quick unpick.
If you’re unaware of the quick unpick – maybe your high school was deprived of key character building textiles classes – it’s like an eraser for poor sewing. You run your line through as you sew, you take your project away from the sewing machine to see your handiwork, then realise that your seam is as straight as a banana, pick up the unpicker, start pulling out the drunken thread and sew the line again. In my case, you repeat this process umpteen times, until you achieve something passable.
It’s a hoot.
Michael presents another excellent point in closing out this edition, mostly that a thread is weaker when it’s solo. Combine them in any way, or even fashion fabric, and the collective of threads becomes substantially stronger. Quite an apt way to describe communities, which I think is highlighted beautifully in the page 22 feature on the Sbandieratori e Musici di Faenza.
Bryce Magnuson’s terrific article on page 55 reminded me of some of my favourite band tees, including my treasured Kings of Leon cherry t-shirt. You likely have a similar tale; KoL come to Australia to support a much larger band. You arrive early cause you’re an eager frother (or you’ve got a hunch/tip) and the support act rips off a set that leaves the tiny audience dumbfounded. You have to buy the tee.
I loved that thing to death. The printed logo was largely separating from the body of the T-shirt, it had faded considerably and had holes everywhere. It barely achieved cloth-ing’s aim – to cover our skin from the elements.
In fact, when it hit the spare rag bucket in the bottom of the laundry cupboard, I don’t know if it had sufficient heft to soak up the smallest of spills.
If a thread can be combined into something strong, supportive and flexible, and the selection of the very source of the thread can cause innovation and change, as Green Lab Futures raise on page 50 in their article about future fibres, then what else can a thread do?
Well, speaking to my cherished cherry tee and the shirts I tried making, pulling a single thread could make the entire thing unravel. Which we typically see as a negative, right? But after the unravelling, we still have a thread, it’s just in another form. We could make another attempt at making the same item again, but better this time. Or, we could make something completely different. There’s potential there.
Many of the stories we’ve presented in Gippslandia speak of a region in flux. Transitioning. Improving. Some things are unraveling, but there’s the potential for new things to be created. Others can be mended to keep valued aspects going. And, sometimes, maybe we shouldn’t be so hesitant to reach for the quick unpick when we see well-intentioned plans go awry – viewing the potential for change as an opportunity to improve.
Deep down we really know that there’s no one-size-fits-all, especially for regions, but we can create the tailoring so that aspects of it best fit us. Maybe Nick Cave was right? Of course he is.
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