A long while ago, I began working with recycled neckties, incorporating them into my fabric. So little by little, word got around that I have the ability to re-purpose your old, unwanted neckties. What this means is that friends/family/strangers bring me bags of neckties – sometimes for a specific project, sometimes just because they want to donate to my art. Fabulous!

Measuring on the warping board!

Case in point, last fall some family friends (we’ll call them the “J” family) provided me with a bag of neckties. Mr. J is a well-known community member and business owner. So, he’s definitely collected a few ties in his day. They assured me that they didn’t want anything for themselves – they simply wanted to contribute. Typically, I would take these types of ties and add them to the stash. But in this instance, I was feeling the need to take on a random challenge. How do I use all the neckties provided in their bag to create a multi-colored, interesting piece of fabric?

It’s like blue/purple yarn soup!

Step one –

Checking out the goods. Let me tell you, there was a little bit of everything in this bag! Mr. J? Big golfer! Lots of cool golf-related items. Lots of power ties. Lots of color! I kept thinking, “this is going to be fun”! (And p.s. I have scoured my images and somehow, I did not take one photo of the original bag of ties! Swing and a miss!!!)

Ready to go into the reed

Step two –

Deciding the size of the project. Because I didn’t have any clue what I would do with the fabric (and ultimately, it didn’t matter), I settled on 4 yards for the length, and about 32″ wide. Whenever the neckties ran out, the plan was to simply play!

Sleying the reed – my favorite!

Step three –

Picking colors. For this project, I could have chosen almost any color to compliment the rainbow going on! All the colors were all represented. But my gut requested blues and purples. So, there you have it! Always go with the gut.

Winding on to the loom

Steps four-through-seven –

Dressing the loom. This included –

• Warping the yarns (this step measures each yarn to the correct length, in the correct order)
• Sleying the reed (this step decides the spacing of the project)
• Threading heddles (this step places each yarn in a strategic location in the loom)
• Winding on to the loom (just what it sounds like!)

Next up, the weaving will commence! It’s time to fillet some neckties!! Happy Weaving, everyone!

Ready to weave!

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So, while I was working away, my mind took a little trip down memory lane to the very first time I did anything with neckties, or any recycled material for that matter. And here’s my quaint little story!

Once upon a time (I don’t know the year, but I’m sure it was longer ago that I think since time gets away from me so quickly!), I was in a group called the Creativity Continuum. This was a set of ladies who all met once a month at the TLD Design Center in Westmont, IL with the purpose of supporting and stretching ourselves as artists. We did all sorts of fun, crazy activities meant to make you think, challenge you to be brave, and mostly trigger the need to keep creating!

Well, each year, we would put on a small exhibit to show what we have been working on and for a couple of years, we decided to give the exhibit a theme. One of those years, we settled on the theme of “A Woman’s Wardrobe”. Now, there were no other restrictions beyond the theme. You could take that as literally or philosophically as you wanted to. So that very broad topic, combined with the fact that each of us worked in different mediums and possessed very different strengths, always guaranteed a wildly diverse and fascinating collection!

While I was mulling over the theme, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to do a play on stereotypical gender roles. Now, keep in mind that this was LONG before it was commonplace to discuss gender identities at the kitchen table. I was aiming for something much more simplistic than that. So, I settled on the fact that I wanted to create an item that was very feminine, woven with very masculine materials. And when it all came together, I had a pencil skirt constructed using hand-woven fabric made of men’s neckties!

The end result was clunky and stiff and you couldn’t really walk in it (never mind that I couldn’t fit into it now by a long shot even if I wanted to!). But, I remember marveling at how unique the fabric was! Blending all those patterns and colors together gave it a completely different look from anything I could achieve using traditional yarns! And it wasn’t until a few years after that that I connected the dots and started using recycled materials to make fabric for handbags. But, it is so wonderful to look back through my history to ponder the seemingly random, wonderful starting point for an idea I really love!

So, here’s to pencil skirts, the Creativity Continuum, and the family members who gave me their neckties knowing I was going to chop them up into who knows what! Thank you!!! 

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