Darn It! Repair and Reuse of Textiles Across Cultures and History

• Week 1: Keep it clean 
  In past times, textiles and clothing were produced by hand and accordingly valued. How did the more recent habit of carelessly discarding clothes develop? After considering enemies of textile longevity, we’ll explore the most basic strategy for reusing cloth: laundry.
• Week 2: Darn and mend 
  Humans have been mending textiles for as long as they’ve been making them. We’ll learn about different methods of darning—creating a patch by interweaving with needle and thread—and how mending was both a profession and a patriotic act.
• Week 3: Reuse and repurpose 
  We’ll look at how fabric and garments can be revived as resource material for new creations when they’re outgrown, worn out or out-of-fashion. From hand-me-downs and reinventing clothing to making myriad items from feed sacks and repurposed textiles, we’ll see how people didn’t let fabric go to waste.  
• Week 4: Use every scrap 
  When cloth is beyond mending or remaking, the scraps are still of use. We’ll look at how small pieces are sewn together to make a larger fabric, textiles are unravelled and rewoven, and fabric is shredded into fibre and respun for a second life.
• Week 5: Reconstruct and transform 
  We’ll look at artists creating works to call attention to textile waste, as well as recycling and “upcycling” textiles into new, expressive creations from fabric that would otherwise be discarded. Darned holes have become “loud and proud” as visible mending practices gain devotees.
• Week 6: Crisis and solutions 
  We’ll review the scope of the worldwide emergency of textile waste and pollution, fast fashion and “dump culture” and how exporting second-hand clothing impacts local production elsewhere. What can we do to stem the tsunami of discarded textiles?

By the end of the course, you should be able to:

• Identify basic techniques for mending clothing and household textiles
• Describe various ways that textiles can be repurposed into new items
  
• Discuss the causes and consequences of the worldwide crisis of textile waste
• Identify actions that contribute to combatting the problem of textile waste 

• Lectures
• Participation in discussions 
• Reading articles
• Sharing stories and examples of repaired and repurposed textiles (optional)
• Learning mending techniques (optional)
• Reflective essay (applicable only to certificate students)

No textbook is required. We will provide all course materials online.