After a weekend of being out of town, I come home to this.

"Is someone cleaning out their closet?" I ask my roommate. 

"No," she says with a lowered voice and a guilty look. "We found it in the hallway..." 

I start digging through the box. Hideously-designed '70s frocks make me cringe. But they're mixed in with awesome gingham, leopard, and floral fabric scraps. "Ooo...." I get excited. And then, angry. "Who would throw these away?" My roommate explains that she thought the find of scraps and clothes was similar to what she ditched when she finished fashion school in San Francisco to move out to New York. 

Other than renovating a few band t-shirts and stitching a poorly-made mini from my plaid jeans in high school, I don't really think I have the skills to tackle this box-o-fun. (I still fumble with a sewing machine, even though I've been given lessons three times.) But accessing these resources still thrills me, especially when I found out about the Fashion Re/Action event happening this Saturday. 

As part of their 6-week DIY Festival, Fashion Re/Action, Jem Fabric Warehouse and Culture Push will host a "Wearable Sculpture" workshop at their New York store this Saturday. Festival Directors Michael di Pietro and Shirley Rempe want to bring people together to experiment, bounce around ideas, and share techniques while making garments out of used materials. The goal, says Rempe, is to change people's perceptions about what they wear and what they do with their old clothes. 

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