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Textile Art - Blog Posts
Zouassi is a visual artist inspired by fractals. Here is the new collection of woven blankets, with a stunning mastering of weaving.
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Humanoids Family (2001) - Ernesto Neto
Wind waker cloth napkin 40 x 50 cm cotton
Prehispanic cloth napkin
Honestly, knowing things about sewing and clothing construction is sometimes a curse I wish I wasn't suffering from.
So my textile hobby is embroidery. Right now, I am embroidering a shirt as a gift for a friend. For the shirt, I just needed something simple, plain, and pink - so I went to Target, because that was what was available to me, and somewhere I was pretty sure would have what I was looking for. It did, and I got a plain pink t-shirt for a not-bad price.
Here I am, a week later and almost done with my project, when I randomly glance down at the hem and feel my heart sink into my feet.
because what. the Fuck. is This???
This is one of the worst hems I have ever seen on a commercial garment in my entire life. If a single one of those threads gets cut, the whole bottom of the shirt is unraveling faster than the life of a college student who only just now realized their final was supposed to be a semester-long project. This is the kind of thing I would expect to see for someone who had to hand sew the hem, because I've rarely ever seen vertical hemming outside of handmade clothes. And looking at the inside, I was even more confused.
Because the inside looks normal? So what the hell happened to the outside?? This appears to be a vertical hemming stitch with a ladder back, which I have never seen before in my entire life.
Let's look at two other examples for comparison.
First, we have a normal cotton t-shirt from a few years ago:
This is a 2 needle flat lock stitch (6mm), the type of stitch I would expect to see. You might be able to snag the inside thread on something, but it wouldn't unravel the whole thing, and you'd have to take some seam rippers to get at the outside in any meaningful way.
Now let's look at something older:
This is the inside and outside of a vintage 50s top I bought about a year ago. Notice that there's no visible hem on the outside at all. The bottom is folded up into the inside, where one or two other layers of fabric are located in order to stitch it together. There's a row of single-needle lock stitching close to the bottom of the garment, with another single-needle row and a line of overlocked stitching just to top it all off. The only way this could be more secure is if it attended therapy and achieved self-actualization. This hem isn't going anywhere.
So where does this leave us? Well, it personally leaves me very upset about the state of the clothing industry. Yes, these tops all came at various price points, and have different levels of quality accordingly, but consumers should be able to buy clothes that won't immediately fall apart on them should a stiff breeze happed to blow past. If I had the time or the machinery, I would fix the hem myself, but I don't, and I am genuinely upset to have put hours upon hours of work onto a project with such a shitty canvas. And frankly, a little insulted.
Moral of the story: Check your seams people. You'll thank me when tugging on a single thread doesn't get you arrested for public indecency.
