This week was just super, I was teaching Eco Printing to 4 individuals well connected with The Fashion Revolution…. AZADI FASHION visited me and The story is …
Sometimes you know that you meet someone who will be present in your life for a long time and will make a difference. Barbara Denker, Head of Fashion School of Nuremberg came into my life a couple of years ago when I was running The Big Banner Project during the Mackintosh Festival. Her Fashion students wanted to take part and learn all about Mackintosh stencilling. We got on really well and the rest is History. Since then we speak from time to time and we have been involved in several projects. I was invited when her students presented the most superb fashion items in a fashion show at Kelvingrove during the Mackintosh year…. So I was not surprised when she came to ask me to organise an Eco Printing workshop for some participants who were involved in a Dye garden and had just won an award about sustainability for a clothing project…
Barbara, Judith, Rainer and Elke arrived a couple of days ago in my studio to spend two days learning all about using Natural dyes and Eco Printing… they were textile based and beginners. We had a ball, they learned a lot and made beautiful pieces… they asked a trillion questions about dyes, mordant, more mordant, about prints, leaves, blankets, cloth, and so on… and they told me about their project…
It all started with a young Indian girl visiting Elke in Germany talking about a AZADI a NGO in India, a safe place where young girls who had been involved in trafficking learned a new textile skill and could work safely, get a new future. Elke like a lot of us had heard about the terrible tragedy of “The Plaza” in Bangladesh and saw a great way to work in cooperation with skilled and deserving workers who needed to earn a reasonable wage by producing great garments. Farcap was born as a Social Enterprise and has been growing from strength to strength… Every year a collection is designed, and the workers of project AZADI make them in an ethical way, earning a good wage, a wage that allows them to have a good life and be safe.
They make the clothes and Elke’s company sell them… So what is Barbara doing in there… well we all need a good designer for a great collection and Barbara is Head of Fashion in the Textile college in Nuremberg. The cooperation goes further and further when you include young students in fashion to design Fair Trade Fashion no? No Fast Fashion there…
How exciting for me was it to be asked to teach Eco Printing to a Head of Fashion, to one of the Textile experts in Nuremberg and to two Fair Trade entrepreneurs all of them involved in this Award Winning project… I truly believe in the Fashion Revolution and have been so for many years now. I feel so blessed to be able to add a little bit to this project and I had such a great time working with those four individuals with such great drive and passion.
So they learned all about cloth, mordants, dyes, leaves, blankets, colour fastness etc… we made many tests… in between we had coffee and kept warm by my cosy fire as the weather in Glasgow is now truly Autumnal. We achieved a lot and I learned a lot about how to run a small social enterprise… this is my one little step towards getting closer to The Fashion Revolution.
I have not yet made your clothes but I may have taught something useful to someone who will be involved in making them…
Oh did I not say? We recycled some cotton from my local bed and breakfast during the workshop and my visitors stayed the night in that very place… My world is a Village and I love it. Everyone is so very interconnected !
Love
Betty xx
PS : Barbara left me her travel bottle so she will be back for sure… I wonder who she will bring me next time… I cant wait to find out !
P
THE LANSDOWNE HOUSE 
Please can you give me dates for courses in 2020. I am a beginner and would like to learn how to eco print thanks
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