From Product to Project; A Flannel in Flux
Submitted by Noah Hirsch (@yung_curmudgeon), edited by Meg Chellew
How did you acquire this outfit?
At the risk of sounding like a Pacific Northwest stereotype, I’ve found a flannel shirt to be a crucial part of my wardrobe but I’ve never really felt the need to own more than one at a time. My first flannel was a Carhartt shirt I bought at a thrift store sometime in high school. When I got it, I sewed some patches on it for decoration and when it started to fall apart, I patched it until the fabric had worn so thin on the entire shirt that I couldn’t keep up with the repairs. At that point, I begrudgingly tossed the shirt in a box of fabric scraps.
After that, I adopted the fleece-lined flannel from Costco that I still wear today. By my estimate, I’ve had it for about six years. The lining makes it very warm and comfortable and also has helped the shirt remain wearable even as the outside material has worn out. Still, six years of frequent wear has taken its toll, and now I’m almost constantly repairing it.
Why is this your favorite go-to outfit?
This flannel is probably the garment I feel most attached to. Besides being extremely comfortable, I love the visibility of all the work I’ve done to keep it alive as it not only speaks to my values of upcycling and reducing waste, but the shirt also serves a collection of stories that I hope I will be able to maintain and add to for years to come.
Any other comments?
I'm a longtime maker/hacker/fixer, passionate scavenger/trash connoisseur, and someone who stubbornly refuses to let clothing die. I will keep mending things as long as I possibly can, often resulting in garments with patches on top of patches from years of mending.
Pretty much every piece of fabric I use has an origin story, like old clothes I've had for years, leftover scraps from other projects, fabric gifted to me by friends and family, and materials from thrift stores, free bins, and dumpsters in my city. I usually have a terrible memory but somehow I have a perfect memory for the origins of almost every piece of fabric I own. My flannel now has over thirty patches and every bit of fabric has a story.
1. Piece of material and Carhartt tag from my previous flannel shirt-- it lives on!
2. My dad bought some patchwork pants on eBay that arrived looking nothing like the picture. I think he learned his lesson on that one, but he passed the pants off to me and I spent hours seam-ripping them apart and many of the pieces ended up on this shirt.
3. Plain cotton fabric from a box ditched on a street corner
4. Ragfinery is a nonprofit retail store that sells secondhand fabric and craft supplies by the pound to divert textile waste from the landfill. They are a wonderful resource and I’ve sourced a lot of awesome material from them.
5. Old bedsheets that I cut apart to make a button-up shirt from a vintage pattern, now sitting in a box of UFOs (UnFinished Objects)
6. A piece of fabric from a box on the sidewalk. There were quite a few pieces of this material in the box cut into different shapes, leading me to believe they were part of someone else’s unfinished sewing project.
7. A tapestry I pulled out of a dumpster. It was displayed on the wall of a basement apartment under a mutual agreement with roommates that it was better than nothing. However the tapestry was undeniably ugly and we agreed that any of us had the right to replace it if we found something better. We never did, but after moving out of that place I subsequently turned the tapestry into the lining of a vest.
8. Sometimes if I come across an armchair or couch on the curb that’s so completely trashed nobody would actually want to take it, I’ll cut a square of material out of it.
9. A pair of pants I thrifted came with a useless belt that I took off and cut up for patches
10. Bias tape from a shoebox full of miscellaneous sewing notions bought at a thrift store
11. One of the only pieces of fabric I can’t recall the origins of, although I have used more of this material to mend a couple other garments
12. A tablecloth I thrifted and tried to make some drawstring pants from years ago (without really knowing what I was doing). The pants started to fall apart while I was wearing them and I learned my lesson about finishing edges.
13. Another couch piece.
14. All of the embroidery floss used on this flannel came in a ziplock bag of tangled thread I bought at an estate sale
How completely amazing is this storied garment?!? A truly unique work of wearable art. With each patch that’s attached we gain a memory or learn a lesson. By mending we can become more connected to our clothing as people. This shirt is so much more special than any mass produced fast fashion or corporate product. We are in awe of your talent and creativity Noah. Keep this flannel alive!
Do you have a favorite outfit that makes you feel totally rad? Do you have a thrift store find that you flipped into a beautiful wardrobe staple? Show us and tell us all about it. Strike a pose and interrupt conventional internet traffic with your awesome e-couture HERE.
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