Sustainable Fashion - Mending Clothes the Cool Way

I've been reading a lot lately about fast fashion and it's impact on our envirement. You know, new collections are brought into stores each week, people buying clothes almost everyday, only to wear them onceor twice and to ditch them. Mending clothes? Who does that anymore when it is cheaper to buy new ones.  
Old clothes that we throw away take up precious space in landfill sites, which is filling up rapidly. 

Well, I decided that my wardrobe (and my kids) will not end in the garbage before it is absolutely unusable (not just unwereable).  

So, I decided to take action and mend their clothes. Being an artist  means I know things and have recources. This includes sewong machine, fabric paint  and silk screening kit. And, of course, a good idea.

I took some cool graphics, like sceleton, (I knew they woul like), made a screen out of a wooden frame and old curtain. I covered the screen with photo emulsion I had from some previous silkscreening experimets, and hoped it would still work after being stored for  few years in the basement. It worked, and I was happy.
So I took the ripped jeans (I know ripped jeans are cool, but with my kids it means today it is 1 inch tear, tomorrow 2 inch,... until they are ripped in half). I mended them with sewing machine, adding  layer of coton underneath and it looked like this:

Not cool at all!  So I took the silkscreen I made:

And here is the result:

My kid is happy, he has unique, very cool pair of jeans, I am happy, my kids finnaly appreciate me being the artist ;) and the enviroment is happy too :)