Not the End of the Journey: Exploring re-knitting as a 'craft of use'

This paper discusses the possibility of transferring amateur knitting practice from the making of new items to the remaking of existing garments. Knitting has enjoyed a surge in popularity in the last decade, and many people are now knitting items for themselves to wear. In sustainability terms, this is positive; amateur fashion making could offer a more satisfying and less materially intensive alternative to mass-produced clothing. However, because knitters focus on making new items, their efforts mirror - rather than challenge - the linear production-consumption model of the mainstream fashion industry. The reworking of existing garments could be a more radical type of amateur making, which extends the making relationship and disrupts the prevalent fashion system. Remaking can be seen as part of what Kate Fletcher calls ‘the craft of use’: the practices associated with wearing and caring for clothes. There are many examples of wearers restyling and upcycling garments using sewing techniques. A variety of blog posts and books provide tutorials for turning old jumpers into quirky fashion and home accessories. These projects transform knitted garments by felting, cutting and sewing, and treat the fabric as a continuous sheet. However, the knitted structure is inherently ‘tinkerable’; the rows of intermeshed loops can be unravelled, laddered and reformed. Knit-based techniques, which treat each loop as a unit, or a building block, can be used to transform knitted garments. If these techniques were in common practice, knitters would be able to engage in remaking, through knitting. Such techniques were common practice in the past, but have fallen out of favour; the tacit knowledge of how to unravel, alter, replace and re-knit has largely been lost. Working as a design activist, I want to initiate reknitting as a new strand of amateur making activity. For this research, I carried out a pilot project in which I developed methods of altering knitted garments using knit-based techniques. I rediscovered knowledge from the past, and developed new approaches, creating a re-knitting practice appropriate for the garments in our wardrobes today. I shared the techniques with a small group of female amateur knitters at a series of workshops. My aim was to explore the possibility of transferring amateur knitting practice from the making of new items to the remaking of existing garments. The result was positive; the knitters embraced the idea of reknitting and the project culminated in each participant using the techniques to rework a knitted item from their own wardrobe. Discussions about possible future projects showed that reknitting could become a regular activity, which links a making practice with wardrobe (use) practices. As one knitter remarked, when a garment is worn out or unwanted, it is ‘not the end of the journey ... it can always become something else’. However, the project also indicated that amateur reknitting requires support in order to flourish.