Woven In Respect

January 9, 2025 9:19 AM

Sakiori is a hobby of making new cloth out of strips of old fabric salvaged from worn clothes. It comes from a time and place when cotton was a scarce commodity, but it lives on today because the result is a fabric with a unique aesthetic.

Clothes made from synthetic fibers are a significant source of micro-plastic pollution. If this hobby caught on, it might be a small part of reducing waste and pollution.

posted by ambulocetus (12 comments total)

"If it's big enough to hold three beans then you must never throw it away."

It was really great to learn about this! With sakiori as with other folk arts like rag rugs and kantha, I'm always amazed at the inventiveness, thrift, sustainability, and artistry passed down in these textile traditions.

I do wonder if/how this would work with synthetic textiles, or clothes constructed in a modern way with things like synthetic fusible interfacing stuck to the inside. I find that most clothes today are designed and produced in a way that makes them challenging to reuse and recycle. I have been saving my mixed synthetic/natural-fiber scraps for stuffing items, though.

One of the podcasts I listen to, Check Your Thread, recently did a great two episode series on how to use fabric scraps, from lengths of natural-fiber yardage like the artist in this video uses right down to thread scraps. I found it an interesting listen.
posted by ourobouros at 9:46 AM on January 9 [9 favorites]

Tying tiny thread scraps together and reweaving with it as weft is yet another Japanese textile recycling technique.
Northern Japan’s textile tradition before cotton was tree bast. The labor intensiveness of cutting and scraping and splicing tree bast fibers (from kudzu or linden or wisteria or various others) is so so so high compared to wool or flax or hemp or cotton processing. I think that is a driver for still treating textiles as precious and worth the work of recycling.
posted by janell at 12:15 PM on January 9 [7 favorites]

And then, if I remember correctly from a museum exhibit, for a while the working classes weren't supposed to have cotton even if they could afford it, so many of the bast-developed repair techniques were also used on cotton to make it look unassuming.
posted by clew at 1:06 PM on January 9

It's a Swedish tradition too. You can buy them from new at IKEA and other places in Scandinavia, but when I was a kid, the adults used to look for good originals at flea markets and yard sales. They keep forever, like their Japanese counterparts, and I found it fascinating that the origin story was so similar too. Traditionally, a trassmatta is a precious thing that is put out for festive events. I'll admit mine are out all the time, and the amazing thing is you can just wash them in the machine, and they come out as good as new. That would of course have been more complicated in the days before washing machines.

This is a very inspiring post! I've been thinking a lot about taking up a craft, and this might be just the thing for me. Thank you.
posted by mumimor at 3:20 PM on January 9 [3 favorites]

Mumimor, I think my grandma had one of those.
posted by ambulocetus at 3:27 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]

I’ve been noticing YouTubes on making a rag-rug loom out of waste cardboard (or small wood, or cardboard minimally reinforced with wood…)
posted by clew at 3:54 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]

I am seriously interested in this technique. I do not have room for a loom like the one shown in the video. I understand it's possible to do the same thing using a static frame (e. g. wood with nails) . Is that practical for this technique or is there a smaller loom that would serve the purpose?
posted by Rivvo at 4:54 PM on January 9

My grandmother (in Norway) used to weave those rag rugs (fillerye in Norwegian), her house and ours didn't use anything else on the floors for as long as I can remember. They're quite soft and comfortable, although in my experience they're not extremely long-lasting, they start fraying after a few years of regular use (and machine washing), but they're easy and cheap to replace.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:56 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]

Rivvo, check Ebay. They have little ones that come in a kit.
posted by ambulocetus at 5:13 PM on January 9

This is cool, thanks for sharing! Relatedly, I've recently been trying to mend a few pairs of pants using Sashiko techniques. My early attempts look like doodoo, but it's been a fun process and there's been some improvement.


Sashiko as cultural sustainability
posted by nikoniko at 5:44 PM on January 9 [2 favorites]

Nikoniko, I'd love to see your work. Looking at finished pieces by people who really know what they are doing intimidates me, but seeing how someone else who isn't already proficient would be reassuring. I'm one that gives up before I start just because I know everybody else is better at things then I could be. (Yeah, dumb, but I'm the best self-neg around!)

Clew, I'm going to look for the YouTube videos on homemade looms. I've been wanting to use all my baling twine up on rugs and wishing I had a funky loom to make it easier. Crocheting doesn't seem to work well for me for that project. And if I could do a rug out of scrap material like grandma had, I'd tickled pink!
posted by BlueHorse at 6:11 PM on January 9

From the algorithm to y'all:

cardboard looms:
Brisk video, handsome result; or much more detailed loom construction, not rag weaving though.

Rag rugs on homemade peg looms . Twining on peg looms. If you happen to have raw fleece, weaving that directly into a rug, which looks delish...

Or a technique one of my grandfathers used, we called them "toothbrush rugs" because he made a needle/awl out of an old toothbrush -- these look a lot like braided rugs but don't need sewing together and IME therefore last longer. Clothing scraps are going to take a lot of joining, but the joins for toothbrush rugs are easy.
posted by clew at 7:36 PM on January 9 [2 favorites]