They're just a cheap pleather pair I picked up off an online garage sale page for $2, but I loved them. Like it often does, the pleather coating was separating from the fabric.
That's just one spot. It was happening all over the front part of the boot. I had a lot going on at the time, and let's face it, my recon stash is so big that it's a miracle my husband still currently tolerates it.
I resolved myself to simply give them away. They were tossed in the back of my Jeep, aka Box, in anticipation of meeting with their new owner. The woman who wanted them, however, proved difficult to meet with. Since I live in south Texas, and this was during the heat of our summer, the boots literally melted togethor.
I sadly do not have pictures of the great mess that they were. I was too upset over it to think to take any.
I know it sounds silly, to be that damn upset over a pair of shoes, but for me, it's much more than that. Pretty much every piece of clothing I own, with the exception of my legging collection and my undies, are things I have made from other things. . . mostly t-shirts.
Even my wedding dress was made completely of discarded t-shirts I obtained from a local thrift store. I know other people who use new items to reconstruct or upcycle, and while I do this from time to time, I prefer everything I use be used (and this would be I don't recon undies!)
The head-thingy and my bouquet were also made from t-shirt. So were our decorations. The base was just a simple dress I made from t-shirts, and then I hand-stitched flowers from strips of t-shirt. The top part of the dress, the flowers are tacked down. The rest of the dress the flowers were left fluffy. Yes, it was all done by hand and with t-shirts. Yes, it took as long as you're thinking.
I could have bought a dress. I could have bought a new pair of boots. I actually have other boots, and oddly enough I had a dress I had purchased as a back up dress in case my wedding project didn't turn out.
I don't reconstruct stuff just for the end product. It's not just what I make, but how I and from what I make it. I work with used materials, things nobody wanted. It was something I did as a little girl, playing in the scrap fabric bits of my mom and my grandmother. As a teen, I think I was just so used to using leftover bits that it was just normal for me.
As an adult, I got really into reconstructing clothing after the end of my first marriage. Part of it was the freedom to be able to do such. Cutting stuff up like I do simply wouldn't have been an option then. It was also in part to the fact that I found myself with an abundance of used clothing, from well-meaning friends trying to supply me with a work wardrobe, that just didn't fit right.
There was a deeper part though. A part that has followed me, and now looking back, it's always been there, even in other parts of my life. It's a pull to take the unneeded, the unwanted, and make it something new, something unique, and most of all, something needed.
That is why I made my wedding dress out of t-shirts.
I couldn't bring myself to throw the boots away. I tucked them away sadden that in my next purge of my stash, they would likely end up in the trash. The melted boots came at a bad time though. Shortly after that, I received a bit of shocking news. The same news that sent me into my emotional mess that led to the adoption of Riot. I was upset. When I'm upset, tearing into t-shirts makes me feel better. But those damn melted boots were at the top of my pile. I started ripping the coating off them.
It then came to me that since the coating came off easy enough, and still seemed to be okay on other parts of the boots, that they could be painted.
So I did.
They turned out well. I used just a small, and cheap, bottle of fabric paint.
I know it's just a pair of damn boots. Maybe I've taken one too many English literature class, looking for symbols and deeper meanings where there are none, but my pretty new boots came at a time to remind me what it is I do.
I save shit other people toss out, and this time, I got a kick ass pair of boots out of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment