Christine Terry

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 were feeling stale and repetitive. I began to wonder if there was something here. 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 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 purposeless 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. Students conveniently 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.

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 global—it requires us to start with local reflection. Students reflected on themselves and their community, which allowed transformation, an internal process, to ground the impact of 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?

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.

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?” Each student chose a resonant phrase and drew it on their final tote bags. This transformed the bags into a vehicle of communication.

From 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. Students relied on help from one another when they were cutting their t-shirts to keep the fabric taut. 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 final bags. The functionality of the totes made the project especially rewarding. Immediately after they finished working, students excitedly put their Chromebooks into their new fashion totes. Students continually found new uses for their bags, such as carrying their lunches or bringing home art projects.

Students learned how to put their pre-existing skills toward something new. Students already understand how to cut, draw with markers, and even how to knot, but they have 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. rachelaberliner@icloud.com

Green Stitch: From T-Shirts to Tote Bags