Rag of the Day: The Story of a Shirt

When I showed my mom this shirt (because it is quite a find) the day after I found it, it dawned on me how much we knew about it. Between the tag and how and where I found it, its story is remarkably clear.

I found it spilled out of a sun-rotted garbage that is grown into, overgrown by, engulfed by the meadow plants and wild shrubs that reinforce a decades-old chain link fence that separates the CN tracks from municipal property. The municipal property in question is a very odd little wedge of unmowed dirt and gravel that, until recently, was a privately run parking lot- illegally so, because the City had just overlooked that it actually owned the land, for years.

After the City took back control, it added another fence, and created a well-fenced triangle of meadow, now full of flowering sweet clover, alfalfa and milkweed. The fences give the impression it is sealed off, but the newest fence misses the one it was supposed to adjoin by a good foot, and the elaborate, expensive gate along one side has no lock, just a heavy latch. It is a perfect place for The Dog and I to pass through on our way home from the river (unpaved), and a perfect place for mostly men from the homeless shelter a minute away to while away a fair day. The Dog, They and I all know and greet one another, we are acquainted. I call out "is anyone afraid of dogs? She is friendly but will knock over your beer!". Usually some one says "oh that's my buddy, that dog with the blue eye". Maybe we are more than acquainted. (update: today, after three years, there is a lock on the gate).

It is not a surprise to find a bag of clothes in this place. A garbage bag full of clothes in this place is one of three things. It could be a bag of a man's or woman's possessions, a man or woman moved out of the homeless shelter and either not welcome or not willing to cycle into the other shelter. Or, it could be a bag of donated used clothes distributed to a person with the proper paper work (a 'voucher') by the clothing bank run out of the nearest homeless shelter. (Neighbours have brought me clothes from there, in repayment of small favors we've been able to do for them; I always have to bend to that kindness and accept). Or, finally, it is a bag of clothes that was left in the drive-through drop-off at the also nearby Goodwill, by a donor who pulled up in their vehicle after the donation centre closed, and decided to just leave the bags outside and hope for the best. And then the bag was stolen.

I think this shirt came out of the last kind of bag. Its contents were all neatly folded- they are being spilled out one layer at a time. No one moving out of the homeless shelter has such neat luggage. And the bag was packed, full, dense. No one gets such a volume of clothing from the clothing bank. And, judging by this shirt, well, it is hard to see whoever owned it taking it to the homeless shelter, which is slightly harder to find, you need to get out of the car, you need to go inside and find someone to take the bag, etc. It's a chore.

Judging by this shirt, I mean to say, it is a brand name shirt from a company that bills itself as "purveyor of island lifestyles and maker of luxury lifestyle clothing and accessories". This is one of their Camp Shirts, and a nearly identical new one retails for $110.00 US. As they say on their website, "Whether it's late summer in the city or any time on the islands, this versatile camp shirt is the perfect complement to your relaxed lifestyle." Silk. Well made. The website recommends that you "zoom in to see the plaid dobby texture and how it flows uninterrupted over the front pocket." And so it does.

When Mom and I looked at the shirt, I said "I think it is from a bag of clothes stolen from the Goodwill". She tsked, "stealing...." and trailed off. Because she knew I didn't mean shoplifted, daylight robbery, late night break and enter. She knew I meant that whoever owned the shirt left it outside the Goodwill. Really just dumped it. Just had too much other stuff and needed to get rid of it. And didn't really care where it went, just that it went.

What strikes me most is that whoever dropped it off has no idea that it was more likely to be poached than to ever make it into the store. Whoever dropped it off has no idea that the shirt might fall off the consumption treadmill that needs the Goodwill for a legitimate conclusion to the process of over-consumption. What strikes me is that whoever dropped this off has no way to understand not just where it ended up, in the no-man's-land triangle, but how likely it was to end up there after all.

Rag of the Day- Summer 2012

A few little things have come my way, or I have come their way, in the past couple of weeks, a shop rag, two whole garments, a shawl, two handkerchiefs, and some tomato soup-coloured cloth that has remarkably survived some unusual stuff.



June 2012, Bathurst Street. A typical pink shop rag, heavily stained. Fell out of somebody's car. I passed it about five times, but after a very rainy few days, I decided to pick it up. These wash and sew well, oddly. And the mottled staining is kind of great.

 

June 2012, brought home by B and The Dog. Lovely cotton with spectacular tear.



July 1, 2012- spilled out of a sun-rotten green garbage bag full of clothes in the brush along the fence that separates Bathurst Street from the CN tracks. Last week there was a blue t-shirt pulled out of the bag, this morning this had been pulled out into the dirt. Machine sewn, of course, but well made by someone sitting at a machine in a factory in China. An almost stiff, heavy cloth; when you shake it out it makes the sound a sail does when the wind fills it. Snap!

 

Mid-June, a Sunday, 2012 in the parking lot at weekend park. A pair of shorts, in a boxer style. Cotton, Old Navy, made in India. The inside of the waistband is a different light indigo and white stripe. Very worn cloth, bleach stained, sun faded. Tears easily, but still not too thin to sew.

 Early June 2012, Bathurst Street, a viscose shawl tied up like a head scarf when I found it. The black flows into the white. Black tassels on all of the edges. Each tassel is knotted, by hand.

June 29, 2012 Bathurst Street near Waterloo, fragments of camoflage print polyester cotton blend. Very oddly, one is a circle.

May 2012, but I didn't pick it up until early June, under the Horton Street bridge, in the river bank that has been exposed by the drought for the first time in two years. Polyester-cotton blend. Fragment of the backing of a nylon-stuffed comforter. Machine stiched quilting lines perfectly intact. Left edge shows where it has been on fire. ON FIRE- this cloth has survived being on fire, buried in the mud, and being under water for months. through every season. Way to go, red cloth.

  

 I'm working some of these in to the last section of the Magic Diaries 2 cloth, above you can see some of the red cloth and some of the shorts. The rest of the open space now is going to be light coloured cloth, using up lots of anonymous little bits. I've become acutely aware that every stitched thing we buy (and throw away or leave behind, or give to charity) is hand made in some way. Hands hold precut shirt pieces, turn seams open, tie tassels on shawls. So I'm thinking about this. To add to the stories of how these things find their way to where I find them I suppose.

Thanks for stopping by.

Rubble, Rags and Boro

The stone wall at the top of this photo is actually the base of a pathway that runs along the river near my house, viewed from below on the path that runs along the bank of the river. This is  not a photo of something falling apart, but something being built, by an anonymous pathmaker we just call 'Path Man'. This is the view from up on the path.

Over the past five years, with hand tools that include a spade, a handsaw and a short handled hoe, he has composed a nearly kilometre long path from one park to another. He uses what he finds- broken cement and bricks from demolished buildings that were dumped here from probably the 1870s until, who knows, the 1980s? Rubble that he puzzles together in such an impromtu way you can't always tell if it is falling apart or coming together.

I hesitate to reveal that we have met him, because the whole enterprise is surely contrary to some rules. Probably a lot of them, too. But I can't resist, because of the nature of his work. It engages these ragged edges of the City. And his work doesn't feel entirely composed. I'm starting to think Path Man's work is composed in a spontaneous and immediate way that makes it a lot like boro. But, his deliberate work also fits in with what is happening here on its own. Here is a tree growing around some of the other rubble.

I think there is a certain harmony between Path Man's work and constellations like this. I'm starting to think that certain harmony is part of boro. Ragged edges that do not disappear, but enter into different kinds of relationships. This is a piece of black (or blue?) nylon tent, completely worked into the ground by spring flood water. It could be there for years.

It's hard to see now, but this is a green pillow case embedded into the river bank. Plants are actually growing out of it now.

And some red yarn.

This red yarn, the green pillowcase, the black (blue?) nylon are being worked in here, open to the elements, the wind, rain, flood water all shaping how they fit in to the larger picture. Spontaneously. Is this what Path Man is modeling with his nearly invisible paths? Compositions that are slight and sensitive to the context? We'll never know, because as nice as he has always been when we speak to him, we don't speak Portuguese and he barely speaks English. He just makes his art breaking all the rules!

Rag of the Day - Spring Things for the Second Magic Diaries Cloth

-April 28, 2012; river bank near the falls; completely worked into the bank within a horizontal band of gravel between chunks of broken cement. Probably a pillowcase; the size of about 1/2 of one side of pillowcase. Probably cotton/poly blend? No pilling, supple, tears easily. I'm thinking of using it doubled as a layer that will abrade away.



-April 2012, but I can't remember which day; actually buried in the river bank behind the hospital. Loosely woven cotton, full of holes; machine finished like it was a washcloth or hand towel? It had been partially excavated by someone cutting into the bank to widen the narrow little footpath. Found the same day as a strip of black (below) and a wedge of brown plaid. Supple, intensely bright white where it is not stained. Sews beautifully.

-March 2012, but I can't remember which day; buried in the sand near the falls. An entire pillow case made out of over two yards of fabric, seamed on the sides. The picture shows a root grown through. Rust spots are from screws that were embedded in it too. Cotton/Poly blend, Made in Turkey. Wonderfully huge and interesting. Like a flag or a curtain.



-March and April 2012; cotton handkerchief (necktie beach), blue and white Cotton/Poly blend men's shirt (under the bridge?), faded black cotton shirting, (tucked in a hole in a log), little strip of black cotton with white paint on it (partially excavated along the path). 



-March 2012, weekend park near sandy beach; pillow case from a fibre fill pillow that had washed up into the park in a flood last fall. Probably Cotton/Poly blend. Worn, thin enough to see through, light and flyaway.



This last piece has been added to my second magic diaries cloth with a bright white backing fabric.

 I've just started to integrate it to the first part of that cloth by weaving ends from the first cloth across the new seam line between the two cloths.

I was originally going to sew them separately then join them together, but then decided to try and work on it as a whole. You can see that the pillowcase fabric is so thin, the colour of the cloth woven into shows through.

The black scrap in the photo above got worked in before I could record it as a rag of the day entry. It came in this shape, a real shred of lovely black wool that I found at the river last week. Despite being full of sand and once underwater, it is completely unfaded.

I just had to run out a few minutes ago and found yet another undocumented rag (white, full of holes) in my jacket pocket. When I found it, it was as if it had fallen from the sky and landed whole on the ground- as if someone was carrying it in the trees. I have also noticed that little scraps I see on one day are gone when I go back another day to get them. I wonder, thus, if some of these little rags are nesting materials for squirrels and birds. I think I should put collecting on a hiatus until after the spring.

Rag of the Day- Winter Colours

 -February 16, 2012 in front of a fancy club on Queens Ave; it is a very nice quality and finely woven cotton handkerchief; seems to have been caught up in a snowblower given the networks of holes and frays. Bright bleached white. Machine stitched hem. Seems brand new, though well washed; not cheaply made.

-February on Ridout at Bathurst, but I'm not quite sure which day; cheap handkerchief with holes cut and abraded throughout; mauve cotton faded to grey; has a nice feel to it despite what all it has been through.

-February 19 where the L and PS tracks meet Bathurst Street; fine wool suit jacket; black pinstripe faded to grey, but also dusty; pinstripes are white, blue and burgundy; still frozen here; it was hung on a fence post, but too rotted in part to recover as a garment. Beautiful light-weight wool; tag says made in Canada.

It has been a remarkably mild winter here, punctuated by a few snowy periods. This is why I keep finding cloth this winter; it's usually a spring and fall thing- when the snow melts and then later when the plant life loses its leaves and reveals the ground. The cloth of the jacket is especially beautiful, and when it dries tomorrow in the sun I'll see how much of it can be salvaged.

Another Magic Diaries Cloth....

I have, kind of by accident, started a second Magic Diaries cloth, another one to help me think about foraging around in the outdoors here in the city. This one started with a funny little incident, when a squirrel stole a little shibori bundle off the back steps- I set it to drain on the lid of the walnut dye pot. This is kind of what it might have looked like to her, but not as frayed:

And it tasted like walnuts. So two days later I noticed a squirrel on the peak of the shop behind the kitchen nibbling away on something, something which kept getting bigger. It was the missing bundle unfurling in the wind as she turned it to nibble the edges. I found the cloth where she dropped it:

All nicely nibbled into a pattern. To preserve her work, I used one of Jude's methods from CWB, which is to just take the whole cloth and slit it where you want to weave something into it. I stitched the squirrel's patterned pieces to a walnut dyed tea towel, which seemed right.

Cutting around the eye/vortex thing below that came out of the same pot on the same day as 'the squirrel incident' (it's a mark made by a huge rusty bearing tied up in cotton), I started cutting in curves. This is another thing Jude taught us in CWB. So these slits, running in parallel but wavering lines, create these shapes that are fascinating me. And the weird warping movement of the thing.

There are twenty things about this so far that I am going to change, but for now it is just so easy to play with. It is almost all found cloth, except for a strip or two of old pillow case (my fern print thing above), some silk from an old blouse of my Mom's, a little yellow sari strip, a patch of linen tablecloth dyed in my indigo jar and a glorious strip of silk from Arlee.

But my favorite thing about this so far is this ivory coloured cloth:

It's a piece of a tent, a former Rag of the Day, that I found tangled up in branches at the river. It's just a fragment of a nylon tent, but it is just my favorite thing. It gives me hope for all of the discarded umbrellas I'll find in the spring. 

Rag of the Day 2011 Wrap Up

 -cotton-blend? velvet-type, partially sunfaded; found on the curb on Horton Street where it had been plowed up out of the gutter with the snow; had one panel of wood (at the top here) glued to it.  'Up-stream' is a place which regularly throws out old cases from musical instruments. December 2011, but I can't remember which day.

-polyester (some type) cover from an 'accent cushion'; tangled up at the bank in Weekend Park between Pebble Beach and Sandy Beach; the polyester fill stuffing had been pulled out by the recent floods and fanned out for yards where it caught on stems of plants and looked like tiny snow drifts. Horrifyingly the cloth has no fading, few pulls, no signs of erosion at all even though it has been underwater, in the sand, for weeks. December 31 2011.

Strange new finds. I love the colour of the purple and how it faded so consistently to mauve. It is not a particularly drapey velvet, it is stiffer, but will be a perfect base for stitching, maybe applique. The polyester brocaded kind of thing is easy to sew, but feels cold and unpleasant to the touch. I could use it as a lining for something, between cloths. And it appears it will last - forever.