Megan Goldsworthy is currently a third year graphic design student at Sheffield Hallam University. She has a keen interest in using waste materials in her work and she likes to work across different disciplines where possible and bring what she learns into her own work. Woven Stories was created under the theme of ‘pre-loved’. It ties together her interests of environmentalism and waste materials whilst allowing her to combine the disciplines of fashion and graphic design as a tool for storytelling.
She created Woven Stories with the aim that it would promote pre-loved clothing as something very valuable as it has memories and stories attached to it. She hopes that it will get people thinking more carefully about prolonging the life of their clothing and encourage shopping second-hand rather than shopping new and supporting fast-fashion.
Woven Stories is made out of old clothing that Megan and her friends and family no longer wear. She gathered personal memories that people had attached to the clothing and accessories and used an embroidery machine to weave these into the fabric. There are a variety of typefaces used to represent the different storytellers’ voices and the unique personal stories that relate to each piece of clothing. The book is in a traditional storybook format and is bound with gold thread to emphasise the value of these stories.
“I hope ‘Woven Stories’ will get people to see second-hand clothing as something much more beautiful than just old clothes. It is a piece of someone and their life.”