REINVENTION AT THE BARBICAN.

Thursday last we had the most inspiring evening at the Barbican for 'Reinvention'; an evening accompanying the exhibition 'Future Beauty : 30 years of Japanese Fashion.'
We were asked to do a talk and run a workshop about darning, along side the wonderful Dr. Noki, founder of 'NHS'- (Noki's House of Sustainability) Dr. Noki, who never fully shows his face in public..(We saw his face and I can assure you it is beautiful)...showed a film about his couture customizing, and spoke eloquently about how we are going to have to police our situations and stop being seduced into buying cheap crap. He talked about cutting - we all have an unloved t-shirt which is going to have to be cut from our lives at some point, so cut it now and reinvent it!
We had a rack of darned and un-darned clothes, and our lecture lasted long enough to enthuse most of the audience into darning through the workshop after wards. We were grateful to Dr. Noki on the back row, for chipping in questions about environmental issues in our Q&A time.
The whole event was curated by the amazing Rosie Cooper, who fortunately had a hole in the collar of her cardigan, which I enjoyed mending, while she fixed a draft in my brothers sleeve.
Louise is fixing an old tea towel of mine, which is full of holes but remains a beautiful blue, and reminds Louise of the time when she flew over some tropical islands off the coast of Mexico.
We darned with mushrooms and speedweves, but also demonstrated our new obsession with needle felting, where you stab at fleece over and under the hole, repeatedly, over a sponge. Needle felters were letting off so much steam, we wondered if the would could go home.

Thank you to Kaz for taking such lovely pictures, And you can see Dr. Noki's work at 123 Brick Lane, and needle felting tools are on sale at PYF for £9.