Material encounters: using video elicitation and journaling techniques to understand the hands-on experience of beginners learning to sew clothes for themselves during a global pandemic

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Cooke, S. ORCID: 0000-0001-9704-594X, 2022. Material encounters: using video elicitation and journaling techniques to understand the hands-on experience of beginners learning to sew clothes for themselves during a global pandemic. In: Fashion reimagined: proceedings of the 24th IFFTI Conference, 5th-8th April 2022, Nottingham Trent University. UNSPECIFIED, pp. 466-474.

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Abstract

This developmental paper focuses on an innovative multi-method approach adopted for a practice-informed participatory craft/design research study undertaken during the Covid-19 pandemic. The context for the study is the unsustainability of fashion as we know it and increasing interest in amateur textile crafts as tactics within a panoply of potentially sustainable fashion practices. Amateur clothes sewing has found renewed favour in the 21st century, supported by a new generation of paper patterns and an abundance of online resources and social networking opportunities. Covid-19 enhanced the visibility of sewing as a valuable and desirable skill. While some people turned their hands to the production of face coverings and even scrubs for medical professionals in response to the pandemic, others, finding themselves with unexpected free time at home, took up clothes sewing as a new hobby. This paper is based on PhD research which seeks to understand the experiences of people learning to sew clothes for themselves, the resources that help then do so and the difference this makes to their relationship with clothes. The main participatory element of this study, devised to account for Covid-19 restrictions, combined journaling and video elicitation techniques to gain insight into the experiences of five sewing beginners as they attempted to learn to sew clothes for themselves at home. Participants recorded their sewing activities in short video clips and in written journal entries which were then used as prompts for subsequent online ‘elicitation interviews’ where participants talked through their learning experience. This combined method provided a ‘near present as possible’ insight into the experience of the sewing beginner and allowed both participant and researcher to reflect on this experience at each stage of the project before agreeing the next stage on an individual basis. In this process, participants became both the self-directed learners at the heart of the study and co-designers of the study itself and the researcher navigated multiple roles as researcher, designer/maker (experienced other) and facilitator with shifting orientations towards elicitation, motivation, empathy and knowledge sharing.

Item Type:

Chapter in book

Description:

Paper presented at IFFTIxNTU22: Fashion Reimagined,
Nottingham Trent University, 5-8 April 2022.

Creators:

Cooke, S.

Date:

8 April 2022

Identifiers: