We got 4 artists together to share some of their past experiments in altering clothes (and pillowcases) to give these textiles a a second, better life.  The video is 15 minutes long but action packed with ideas and a variety of approaches to changing one thing into another with as little work or fuss as possible.

Thanks to artists Tanya Murdoch, Jiyoon Moon, Marnie Saskin and Leah Sanchez for sharing their work and ideas and enthusiasms. Pillowcases become shirts, skirts, dresses... old sweaters become bags and doll clothes and crazy new shirts... it's magic.

We are starting a new thing on our website: Artist talks and portfolios...

The artists in The Works-in-Progress collective all have their own things going on, and lots of it it pretty interesting and connected to why we do things together.   Also, we don't always know how cool our friends/colleagues/partners are until we see an overview of their work... so we are starting with Leah Sanchez, my co-founder of Works-in-Progress.

Leah Sanchez had a rich life in the Philippines prior to immigrating to Canada in 2016, including running a resort, working as an architect and in 2010, she and her friend Binggoy started an up-cycled furniture company in Manila in response to the mountains of garbage created by super Typhoon Megi.  Watch and get inspired! And then check out their website: https://resurrectionfurniture.ph/resurrectionfurniture.ph/

This is the Resurrection manifesto. I love it. the website is filled with poetry as well as objects to inspire:

Resurrection Furniture and Found Objects Gallery is an atypical atelier that produces unique pieces of furniture and works of art that use everyday found objects as their main components. It prides itself in being able to bring "dead" objects back to life by breathing into them witty and quirky designs.

We see dead objects.
We revive them.
We are Resurrection.

We had a brainstorming session last week with some creative Works-in-Progress artists.  All of us use sewing machines but don't really know much beyond the basics so when we get together we always learn something, especially from experienced sewer Marnie Saskin.  This time we had what Marnie called "an old lady talk" about needles (what kind you need, signs you may need a new one) and why to invest in a walking foot. It's a lot of useful info so I posted it to our useful info page as well as here.