Recycled Textile Designs by Jana

A hooded tunic made with recycled silk and leathers.

I was given an old sewing machine when I was in my late 20's and since then, I have been nurturing a passion to create with textiles. I am completely enthralled with the process of taking a 2 dimensional piece of fabric and engineering it into a 3 dimensional garment. Combined with my love of colour and texture, sewing became a natural fit for me.

This meandering path into expressing myself creatively with sewing lead to an interest in hobby crafting specifically with recycled materials. As a virtually untrained seamstress (unless you can count junior high home economics classes), I found I was much too timid to cut into new, virgin fabrics - petrified at the prospect of wrecking an expensive piece of fabric.

Eventually, I discovered great joy in treasure-hunting in thrift and consignment stores, yard sales and clothing swaps: finding interesting items, taking them home to my sewing machine and customizing them into one-of-a-kind garments. There is a lot of freedom to explore in this modality because I can easily try new things and make mistakes without too much financial risk. I found all kinds of textiles and garments to work with, most at an average price of about $5 - $10 each.

The possibilities are limitless and I am endlessly inspired by things I find when I am treasure-hunting and dreaming up new shapes, dimensions and incarnations for them.

I took this brocade Asian vest and tailored it by adding the eyelets and lacing.

A Studio of One's Own

A photo I took of myself in my new sewing studio

I was so thrilled when I moved to a home 3 years ago that had a little abandoned out-building in the back yard. The space was full of junk, cold, damp, moldy and leaky, but I saw great potential for finally creating my very own sewing studio.

My little studio before it was rescued from obscurity

I set about clearing and cleaning the space. Although small in square footage, it had large heavy sliding glass doors and several electrical outlets at counter height on the walls all the way around the room. This, I felt sure, was intended to be a workshop or studio of some kind. I removed approximately 20 garbage bags of moldy stuff that had been stored there over the years.

After MOST of the random junk had been removed...

When I finally completed the clean up, hired a friend to fix the leaky roof and another to build my work table which included a number of "guest workstations" and brought in a dehumidifier, I was ready to launch my studio with a great party!


I created an event which consisted of an all-day open studio (open house) and clothing swap. All the guests were invited to bring gently used clothing that they were no longer interested in wearing. They were welcomed to choose items that others had brought to take home in exchange for the clothing they were leaving behind. We had a huge pile of clothes on the living room floor. I served mimosas as a daytime aperitif cocktail and finger-food appies. The guests rummaged through the pile of clothes, finding treasures and then we spent time in the studio altering and customizing our selections.

Clothing swap!

Try it on!

Customizing our clothing at guest workstations