The ecology of the bread bag

As far as sewing goes, I am more or less a two-trick pony, and tend to stick to pieces and silhouettes that I know I like.  Sometimes I break out of the mold and try something new, as with last year's Emerald tops or this year's Remys, but mostly I don't.  

 

 

The free Elemental skirt pattern from Sew House 7 has been my go-to pattern since it was released in the spring.  Comfortable, easy to wear, a fast sew, efficient with fabric (slightly less than a yard).  I think I've worked out the kinks with sizing across various stretch percentages.  It's too hot now to wear my French terry ones, so my airy yellow one has been in heavy rotation.

So I made two more (and have another yard of fabric waiting to be made up...oops).  This green one I made for Pentecost yesterday, and it is the most perfect shade of green ever.  It was much brighter and more saturated than it looked like on the listing, and I was thrilled when I opened the package.

 

 

It is shorter than I'd planned because I made a tiny cutting mistake, but still a good summer length.  (Cutting these at pattern length for summer can be stuffy, even in light weight fabric like this, so I've been shortening slightly for the heat).  I discovered I was out of the right width of Ban-rol elastic as well, so had to use something else that isn't quite as nice, but might swap it out when I get more of the good stuff.

 

I also made this berry colored one from some Telio cotton/spandex knit.  This is the first knit fabric I've bought where washing significantly changed the hand.  It was crunchy and icky feeling when I pulled it out of the mailer.  The fabric felt like disgusting polyester.  So much so that I actually called to return it.  (I had ordered a second yard in the pine colorway, thinking I had ordered teal, and so was doubly frustrated with myself at that point). 

 

The customer service rep said they would refund the money but didn't want the fabric returned, which I feel funny about, but this company usually has you return stuff with a prepaid mailer, so I don't know.  Don't look free fabric in the face, I suppose.  I'll probably buy it again, now that I know this.  Maybe I'll use the other yard to toile some bralettes (another rabbit hole I never thought I'd dive down!)

The Telio is a slightly beefier knit than the green and yellow ones, but less thick than the French terry. It is a nice mid-weight knit with good stretch and recovery.  I think I like it even better than Kaufman's Laguna jersey, so that's saying something!   I'll admit, much of my sewing since May has been of the stress-sewing variety.  My weight has stayed fairly constant for the past year, but I discovered that about half my summer skirts don't fit comfortably around the waist for some reason, and one of them just looks sadder than sad.

These knit skirts are more forgiving and comfortable, and are a silhouette that feels more like "me" than the fuller summer skirts I wear to mark time until I can get back into my slim skirts for fall and winter.  I only wish this pattern had come out sooner!  

I'm struggling a bit with the ecology of my sewing this year, as with so many other things in the house.  I recently finished re-reading Slavenka Draculic's How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed and am now re-reading her Cafe Europa book. 

This is the yellow skirt with a shirt I recently altered.  My sister bought the shirt for me a few years ago (and matching ones for herself and my other sister) but I didn't like the red collar and cuffs, so I cut them off and hemmed down the edges.  I love it now and plan to wear it often!

 

Different things stand out to me on this reading, as opposed to my first reading about 15 years ago.  I keep thinking about the stuff they saved that most Westerners would throw out or recycle, like jars and cans, plastic bags, etc.  It reminded me of the economies when I lived in Russia--if you were lucky enough to find ziploc bags, you never ever threw one away!  Some dear friends moved back to the States while I was living in Moscow and I helped them pack.  She gave me her partial box of ziploc bags and I thought I'd won the lottery!  I still have a hard time knowing how to deal with ziplocs.  Sturdy plastic shopping bags with flat plastic handles doubled as handbags--the Marianna brand was particularly popular.  I was thrilled to find one at a kiosk for 5 rubles once.

But the same economies also reminded me of my grandmother, who survived the Great Depression and never threw away a bread bag or cottage cheese tub if she could use it for something else.  I come from thrifty Dutch stock, but somehow, I have lost touch with some of those things as galloping consumerism has taken over our world.  Sometimes I get so tired of the whole hamster wheel--buying and selling, commodification of everything, the whole world one big advertisement.  I don't like how my brain feels different.

Some of it is simple convenience.  It is a lot of work to keep this household running, and there are some things like frozen diced onions or pre-sliced frozen peppers that just make life easier for me.  And I remind myself that using large-scale delivery systems is more ecologically sound than driving all over the place to shop, so there's that.  It becomes a kind of economy of scale that works in dense urban settings. I'm trying to think about ways to repurpose things that we usually recycle, like food cans or jars.  I've been saving plastic tubs for a few months for various purposes, plus a few other things here and there.  Amazon boxes are useful for basement storage, and stack more conveniently than Rubbermaid tubs (although I do have some of those too, from years ago).

I used big yogurt tubs with holes punched in the bottom to start my bareroot strawberries, and used a big empty can from some freeze dried fruit to transplant a dwarf cypress tree from one of the big planters in the garden.  The reality is that we are a household of six in a dense urban setting, and while our trash and recycling output is low relative to smaller households, there are things we could do to consume less.  I'm still working out how to balance economy of both physical energy and resources against ecology, but I'm often annoyed that I can't do both together.  There is a finite amount of labor I can do in a day's time, but the meals and laundry never stop coming.  So some things have to be sacrificed.  

Anyway, just a yammer about stuff-ism.

In garden news, I moved the strawberry plants outside yesterday.  I had two that suddenly withered in the house, after starting strong, so I thought I'd better get the rest outside before I lost the lot.  They are in the green boxes in front of the big planters.  

A friend gave me a pair of blueberry bushes (so they can self-pollinate), which you can just see on the far right.  They are loaded with berries!  I'm waiting on a few more food plants to arrive, as well as some berry plant food, as my raspberries are looking a bit peaky.  I pinched off all the strawberry flowers while they were in the house, to encourage root and leaf production, but will now let them do their thing and see what we get.  I'm hoping they thrive!