Emily Saleh and Rachel Berliner

Emily Saleh: 92 million tons—the amount of clothing waste thrown into landfills each year. A number I was unaware of. A fact that is clearly impacting my former and current students.

Rachel Berliner:  As a high-school junior overwhelmed by such a statistic, I didn’t know where to start. How are we, students, supposed to address the quick, vicious, and widespread cycle of fast fashion?

ES: Rachel is a former student of my fourth- and fifth-grade classes who approached me about the problem of fast fashion. Going into year ten, the art lessons I was teaching felt stale and repetitive. Even though co-creating a curriculum with students is unconventional, that is what I needed: something new, yet meaningful.

RB: When I reconnected with Ms. Saleh, we chose to focus on upcycling old T-shirts. We wanted students to see how they could repurpose their own items into new, functional artwork instead of discarding them in a landfill.

ES: My fifth-grade students were able to turn donated T-shirts into practical, stylish tote bags. By marking, cutting, tying, and decorating the shirts, students gave discarded items a new life.

A Community Process
We started this project by sending an email across the district schools explaining that we were collecting T-shirts for our art project. Families were excited to get rid of their old clothing, and students brought unused items directly to school. This was a communal process, and the more people we involved, the more impact it had. Not only were students learning in art class, but their entire families were learning as well.

The power of transformation is within each of us; it’s a matter of seeing the beauty of what we already have and recognizing the potential of something new.

Grounding the Why
In the art room, students reflected on the impact of textile waste and fast fashion. Solving these big-world issues doesn’t require us to think globally—it requires us to think locally. Students reflected on themselves and their community, which allowed transformation, an internal process that served to ground their artwork.

Using Harvard Project Zero’s “3 Whys” protocol (see Resources), students explored the following questions:

• Why is textile waste and fast fashion important to me?
• Why might it matter to people around me (family, friends, city, nation)?
• Why might it matter to the world?

Words of Awareness
Students were then asked, “What is one word or phrase you can use to describe, advocate, and spread awareness about textile waste?” Students each chose a phrase that resonated with them and drew it on their final tote bags. This transformed the bags into a vehicle of communication.

From T-Shirt to Tote Bag
Students used the following procedures to turn their tees into functional totes:

1. Write your name and your teacherʼs name on the inside of the shirt.
2. Draw a line following each armhole seam. Measure the length between the neckline and the armhole seam and mark halfway. Complete on both sides. Find the middle of the neckline and measure down half of that amount. Connect the two lines with a big “U” shape.
3. Mark 3" (8 cm) above the bottom of the T-shirt. Make lines 1" (2.5 cm) apart from the bottom of the t-shirt to the 3" mark. This is the fringe.
4. Cut all of the lines you made. Ask a classmate to help you by keeping the fabric taut while you cut. When cutting the fringe, make sure to cut both layers of the shirt.
5. Tie the top and bottom strip of fabric together to create the fringe. Make sure to double-knot each strip.
6. Decorate. Slide a piece of tagboard into your bag. Clearly write your words of awareness, symbols, and patterns.

Reflections
Students loved their tote bags. The functionality of the totes made the project especially rewarding. As soon as they finished working, students excitedly put their Chromebooks into their new fashion totes. They continually found new uses for their bags, such as carrying their lunches or bringing home art projects.

Students learned how to use their pre-existing skills to create something new. They already understood how to cut, draw with markers, and even how to knot, but they learned to transform these skills into a way of addressing, advocating for, and communicating about community issues.

We learned this lesson, too, while co-creating the curriculum. Sometimes we have to take what we know and use it to think outside the box. The power of transformation is within each of us; it’s a matter of seeing the beauty of what we already have and recognizing the potential of something new.

Emily Saleh is visual art and design educator in Princeton Junction, New Jersey. emilysalehedu@gmail.com

Rachel Berliner is a high-school senior at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South in New Jersey.

Green Stitch: From T-Shirts to Tote Bags