Confessions of a Fabric Hoarder

Part 1: Finding Frank

I remember standing in my grandma’s house, a small Northern Territory home with a large fly screened veranda, watching her stitch together tiny patches of fabric. One by one over the space of weeks they made a quilt. We all have one, every child and every grandchild, each with colours corresponding to our personalities. It was a laborious process but you could tell how much she loved to do it.

I was seven when she first sat me down to teach me to sew. I had just had surgery on both my legs and was unable to walk much, so I had been bothering her to keep myself entertained. She came to me with a ziplock bag filled with patches of blue and gold fabric and a few needles, pins and pieces of thread. For a few hours each day that week she sat with me and taught me how to sew the patches together to make a small pillow. I couldn’t tell you where those patches are now, they never became a pillow, and I forgot all about sewing for a while after that, but I never forgot what my grandma taught me.

Ever since I was little, I have been a crafty person. My best friends’ mum used to refer to me as “far too arty farty” and never understood the joy that came from sitting alone in my room and making something that was cool to look at. This never stopped me from picking up one hobby after another. I get easily bored, I always have, so being able to practice lots of skills in making things with my hands, some scissors and a hot glue gun became a great way to quell that boredom. However, for some reason sewing was never something I considered doing.

As I grew up and entered high school, what you wore became more important and it brought with it a lot of anxiety for me. Halfway through high school, I began questioning my gender and transitioned from female to male. I began rejecting anything feminine for fear that I wouldn’t be taken seriously as a transgender man if I showed signs of my previous self. This was the time that sewing started to become a big part of my life again. I started to get more into tailoring ‘men's’ clothes so that they fit better and upcycling my ‘women's’ clothes so that they looked more masculine. This remained the case until I left my small country hometown to go to university in a very multicultural and ‘modern-thinking’ city. My university accommodation was considered the ‘gayest’ accommodation on campus and it was here that I began feeling more free to explore the true intricacies of my gender identity and how that flowed into my gender expression. Living with people who were so unabashedly themselves made me feel more comfortable to follow in their lead and discover the new me. I started wearing more colour and stopped caring as much about whether an item or an action was considered masculine or feminine. During this time I started sewing for fun even more and got really into it. It took me back to a time in my life where gender didn’t matter and allowed that connection I had with my grandma to grow stronger. I could sit at my desk in my tiny bedroom and forget about coursework for a bit. It became my escape and also my means of earning enough money to continue to eat.

While at university, I was reliant on my savings for a while as the job market was difficult to break into and didn’t pay enough to sustain my living expenses completely. I placed an ad on my university accommodation’s Facebook page, advertising tailoring and embroidery services in exchange for money and food. It was never a booming business but word quickly spread that I could help mend, adjust and add to peoples’ clothing for a cheaper price than other tailors in the city and I was less than 100 metres away from them. Some of the more interesting commissions I got in that time were: taking in someone’s suit jacket so it accentuated her hips for which I was paid a kilo of potatoes, and embroidering a patch on someone’s year 12 jersey to match their change of name for which I was paid actual money. This solidified my position in my hall as the go-to-guy for anything sewing related.

Part 2: “It’s ALIVE!”

Of course, me being me I then took my sewing skills to a level I never expected to take them. Using the clothing that I had “spare”, aka hoarded over years, I embarked on a painful, yet rewarding adventure in fashion design and creation.

The first item of clothing I ever made that actually looked good was a denim jacket. I know what you’re thinking; ‘he’s mad’. Yes I am but that didn’t stop me from making it even harder for myself. I was too much of a cheap-skate to purchase a pattern to help me out so I just took my measurements and, looking at a photo of a denim jacket online, started working on it. I used three pairs of old jeans that I was wearing through as the fabric and some old thread doubled over to stitch it together. As I had only really just started sewing again after a very long time, I didn’t have a sewing machine. Being the masochist I am, I sewed this baby by hand, every single stitch was painstakingly, and I mean PAINstakingly sewn with my own fingers. Eventually I ended up using an old pair of scissors and a set of craft pliers to help pull the needle through the fabric as it had gotten so thick. Cue Rocky montage.

I began affectionately calling this jacket the FRANKenstein jacket as it was pieces of old denim haphazardly stitched together to form something new and slightly ugly. Also my name is Frank. But I love it. It’s a talking piece, an item to prove that I know how to sew and make clothing, and something that I created that represents my love for all things creative, sustainable, and genderless.

Part 3: FRANKenstein vs. The World

Since the creation of the FRANKenstein jacket, I have loved making clothes and it has become part of how I express my own identity and my rejection of gender norms. As well as a connection to my grandma, a way to express my creativity, and a way of making money, there’s one other reason why I love sewing so much. It all stems from where I grew up.

I grew up in a remote area of the Northern Territory of Australia. If you have heard of my home state you probably associate it with crocodiles, deserts, and the phrase “we’re nowhere near, nowhere you’d know of”. My home was in a small town and for my whole life, the bush was never more than a five minute walk from my house. I grew up embedded in nature and I have always cared deeply about the environment. As I grew up and realised that the world was changing, it deeply affected me. From the rubbish that invaded my town, to the hotter and hotter summers, and the destruction of entire forests and populations of animals, I saw the land I loved forever altered, and I didn’t know if there was anything I could do to change that.

When I moved to university I was met with the low waste movement and the slow fashion movement. Two things I took on enthusiastically and have since grown to incorporate deeply into my life. With both movements comes the idea of reducing consumption and increasing recycling to reduce waste. I have taken these sentiments on board when sewing only using fabrics that are either offcuts sold by fabric shops (which would usually be thrown away) or using fabric from old clothes and sheets found in op shops. You’d be surprised how nice some of the fabric from these sources can sometimes be!

There is a good feeling that comes from knowing the clothing you are making and wearing doesn’t contribute to the environmental issues facing our planet today. From the making of the fabric, to the sewing of most fast fashion in underdeveloped countries, and then to the disposal of “out of season” fashion. It is all leading to massive waste, human rights and environmental issues that everyone contributes to, often without meaning to. Knowing that my creative hobby doesn’t add to this problem is a great feeling, however I dream of more. I dream of more colourful patterns, more obscure designs and more accessible slow fashion.

Part 4: The Devil Wears Slow Fashion

Today, I’m starting to work on more designs, as well as building my portfolio and considering enrolling in an alternative fashion school in Australia to learn more about how to better the environment and people’s lives through fashion.

I have managed to connect my passion for sewing with my drive to ensure that vulnerable people in society and our delicate environment are protected through a social enterprise start-up I am working towards. Once I know enough and have enough money, wink wink judges, I dream of scaling a social enterprise focusing on slow, low waste fashion. Handmade clothes that focus more on style than gender, 100% Australian made products, and dignified employment and upskilling of long-term unemployed and homeless people in a workplace which pays a good, living wage. Real clothes for real people who really care about how they live and their impact. As time goes by this pool of people is growing. In the past five years, there has been a growth of environmentalism compounded by the fears centred around unemployment and global warming and I want to do my part.

Part 5: P.S I Love Sewing

When I started writing this it was simply a love letter to a craft I thoroughly enjoy, however looking back, it is also a letter to the person I am becoming. It’s an amalgamation of my experiences, my loves and my oddly extensive knowledge of movies. In the end, it’s an homage to my grandma who taught me what I know, my identity which makes me the artist I am, and the environment which gives me a reason to do what I do.