the story behind tükz

If you take a look at my tea cosies, you will see a startling resemblance to these toques. Yes, the hats are basically tea cosies without holes for spouts and handles.

My original tea cosy pattern was based on the shape of a close-fitting toque that I knit for myself a couple of years ago. I didn't really think about making hats out of recycled sweaters until a guy in my Alexander Training put one of the cosies on his head during tea break one day (read the tea cosy story, here). His comment was that I should make some hats.

So I did.

michelle lynne goodfellow

I've been sewing since I was about eight years old. As a child I played almost incessantly with dolls, especially my Barbies. One day I discovered that one of my closest friends knew how to use her mother's sewing machine to make doll's clothes. I immediately begged my own mother to teach me how to use our Singer, and soon Barbie's closet was full, and the Barbie-sized dollhouse my father had built for me was overflowing with new cushions, quilts, and curtains.

Mom also taught me how to knit, crochet, and embroider. I'm just one generation removed from rural farm life, and every adult female I knew as a child did some sort of handiwork. Even the men in my life dabbled at fibre arts: my paternal grandfather designed patchwork quilts in his retirement, and my father learned how to crochet when I was a child, creating ponchos for me and my sister to wear. My brother was a meticulous machine sewer who tapered his friends' pant legs as a teenager.

My mother always nurtured my creative talents in her own quiet way, and encouraged me to pursue art or design when I finished high school. I have a bachelor's degree in home economics with a major in clothing, textiles, and design, and also studied visual arts at the university level for two years before transferring programs and finishing my second bachelor's degree in film studies.

Looking back, I can see that the times when I ignored my creative impulses were the bleakest and emptiest of my life. There were many wake-up calls along the way. Once, when participating in a watercolour class at a local Waldorf school as an adult, I was shocked to realize that nobody else's work looked like mine - because I had engaged in the process on a completely different level than everyone else in the class.

I'd cried on the way to class because I'd just left a singing lesson where I despaired of ever singing well; I cried on the drive home because I finally realized how much time I had wasted worrying about all the things I couldn't do, while letting my true talents languish.

My art - whether fibre or fabric crafts, drawings, photographs, or even writing - is my way of putting the beauty I see in the world back into the world for others to see. I hope you enjoy it.

why "reincarnations"?

I have been interested in sustainable living for over twenty years, and I'm always encouraged to hear about artists and craftspeople using recycled materials in their work.

For some time I've been wanting to create beautiful, useful products from the huge stash of fabric and yarn - much of it recycled clothing - that I've collected since I was a teenager.

The name reincarnations was not my first choice for my recycled fabric creations. I wanted to call them healing threads, since I believe that recycling fabric is something that can help heal (or at least reduce the harm to) our planet. But when I did an online search I found a company in the States already using that name.

Another product line I want to create is meditation cushions sewn from recycled jeans, and as I played with the idea of meditation and Buddhism and recycling, the name reincarnations came to me, and kind of stuck. So reincarnations it is...