economic resistance can take many forms! Including very tiny seemingly very tiny stuff.
Here, cutting a scrap of stretchy fabric from a pair of old tights into stretchy ties that can be used for various purposes. In the kitchen, and other rooms, and out in the garden etc. I even use them to tie bamboo poles together to make trellises and little outdoor rooms. Various kinds of stretchy fabric are suitable. Old T-shirts etc. If using outdoors, you can choose greens and browns that blend in well with the landscape.
No one should ever have to buy any kind of twist ties for any reason. Not to mention which, a lot of us probably have a bunch of unused twist ties in a random kitchen drawer somewhere. (I don’t, because I have actively refrained from buying them, as well as from buying plastic bags and things like that.)
Football napkin in the pic is a cute little Super Bowl day souvenir that my sweet friend Catina Johnson brought me the other day (with a delicious boxed meal!).
oops it looks like a technology glitch vaporized a bunch of my post. Well the gist is that little things like this help train us that we really don’t have to buy very much. My favorite way to buy things is used, or only from my friends and neighbors, and from Black & indigenous businesses.
PPS. I still have the pair of old tights, I just cut the upper part off and now they are a set of sleeves which I can put on on a cold morning. When it’s cool enough to need sleeves but not so cool that you need a whole jacket. The tights are nice thick fleecy tights, they just never did actually fit me the way they were designed to be used. So I turned them into sleeves ha ha!
For those who may not be familiar with the idea of a garment known as sleeves, I took some pictures to try to show what I mean. I think i picked this concept up in Austin from a super elegant supermodel-looking artist I know from back in the RV park in south Austin — check out her art The Art of Flip Solomon!
Final picture is me downtown and ready to attend Cinematique board meeting, as you can notice I have added one of my favorite warm scarves to this outfit. So, portable sleeves and a scarf for optimum warmth and didn’t need a jacket over my sleeveless T-shirt.
PS. Sewing machines can be awesome, but really I have found my best friend to be a simple needle and thread. I do have my grandmother’s old treadle machine which is foot powered and awesome but I simply can’t keep it tuned even though I was able to find a scanned instruction manual on the Internet. Needle and thread remains my best friend and a core part of any bug-out bag.
And:
There could be lots of reasons why it’s desirable to not need a jacket. First, you may not have a jacket, and jackets are not the easiest thing to sew. Also, you may just like your shirt as part of your outfit and not want to cover it up with a jacket. And also, if you are walking or cycling, it can be easier to have a less bulky outfit.
Scarves are very easy to make even if one is not good at sewing or knitting or crocheting. Even the clunkiest, uneven sewing stitches can make a pretty darn good serviceable scarf. And sleeves, when it comes right down to it it’s just a couple tubes of fabric stitched together.
Now, I don’t want to discourage anyone from making a jacket. That can be a very fun adventure. Although, there are many available in thrift shops. But if you want to make your own jacket, you can learn how by disassembling a shirt or jacket from a thrift shop and then cutting your own fabric to make your own version of the garment.
One of my favorite dresses was made this way. I disassembled a very elegant seven-panel dress from the thrift shop, and then based on it I sewed a five-panel dress made of T-shirt fabric.