GROWING…
We are always growing. Although the obvious physical nature of it stops quite young, the mental and emotional never does, and there are still physical ways we can each grow and change as adults too. For this collection my conceptual focus was on the idea that mental emotional growth can often be shown in very soft and pretty colors but it can be hard and scary. We still need our physical comforts, distractions and environments to keep us safe while we learn to change how we talk to ourselves and process the outside world, among other things. In this collection the comforts come from the nature of the clothes, the distraction is the crochet work, a project fueled by my own emotional discomfort. While the potential for the granny squares and the knits to grow forever is a note to that inner growth of ourselves.
Growing never Stops.
For this collection I really leaned into the idea of using what I had. Many of the fabrics are leftover from other projects, much of yarn was pulled from my stash, some of the fabrics and yarns I dyed myself. Some of the crochet pieces are actually made of plastic bags, partially as a resource I already had, partially for a different texture, a small representation of completely changing something as you might do with a negative thought pattern.
In my Breath collection I featured some big coats, one in particular has 3 big elastic bands running through it so the wearer can maintain physical compression as a calming tool. Similar to the feeling of a baby’s swaddle. For this collection I redesigned it in the lightweight fabric of Rip-Stop from an old Spinnaker sail.
This collection is messy. It is unfinished. It is chaotic. It is the child of a messy, chaotic, anxious, creative brain. But it is also the product of hours on hours, day after day of hard work, a lot of thought, and a lot of reflection on my own experience of living and creating with mental health issues. I am unsure about sharing it but it is a part of my story, and part of my growth.
