#49 Katrina Rodabaugh, Mending Matters

Katrina Rodabaugh, Mending Matters

This week on the show is sustainable craft expert Katrina Rodabaugh whose book Mending Matters: Stitch, Patch and Repair Your Favorite Denim & More sold out of its first printing (2nd printing now available).

During their conversation, Vickie and Katrina talked about humans’ obligation to mindfulness about their consumption of clothing, the rise in popularity of the Slow Fashion philosophy, and what she’s learned over the past 6 years during her fast from Fast Fashion.

Vickie’s a fan of her book, which as a side note has a forward written by Slow Fashion activist Natalie Chanin, whom she interviewed for this podcast in 2016, and really enjoyed hearing her perspective during our chat. Listen below!

This episode is sponsored by Penguin Random House Audio. They’ve curated a great list of audiobook titles just for us makers. Check them out here. While you’re there, download a FREE copy of Ivy and Inky the Butterfly, by Johanna Basford.

Show Notes

BIO:

Katrina Rodabaugh is an artist, writer, and crafter working across disciplines to explore environmental and social issues through traditional craft techniques. Mostly, I rethink the relationship between fiber art, sustainability, and slow fashion. Since August 2013 she’s been on a fashion fast, Make Thrift Mend, to focus on mending, plant dyes, and prioritizing handmade or secondhand garments instead of buying new clothing. She also grows, forages, and harvests dye plants near her farmhouse in the Hudson Valley.

Her work has appeared in galleries, magazines, theaters, books, juried craft fairs, and alternative arts venues like the tiny house my husband built out of reclaimed materials. She published her first book,The Paper Playhouse: Awesome Art Projects for Kids Using Paper, Boxes, and Books in January 2015 and her second book, Mending Matters: Stitch, Patch, and Repair Your Favorite Denim & More with Abrams Books in October 2018. She’s received artist awards, grants, and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Creative Capacity Fund, and InstarLodge among others. Her now-retired blog, Made by Katrina, won the Country Living Blue Ribbon Blogger Award.

Katrina holds a BA in Environmental Studies and an MFA in Creative Writing but she’s been working with arts organizations and making fiber arts for two decades. In 2013, shortly after the Rana Plaza garment factory collapsed in Dhaka Bangladesh, she combined her work and passions into one project, Make Thrift Mend. This project allows her to use her various training in sustainability, fiber arts, writing, and community organizing with a single focus on sustainable fashion.

She’s originally from Horseheads, NY, then spent two decades between Brooklyn, NY; San Francisco, CA; and Oakland, CA before returning to Upstate NY in 2015. She now lives in the Hudson Valley, two hours north of Manhattan, with her artist husband and their two beautiful sons. They’re slowly renovating our 200-year-old farmhouse and converting the adjacent carriage barn into their art studios. They’re planting fruit trees, establishing gardens, tending dye plants, and raising chickens and bees.

Follow Katrina on Instagram

What I’m Crafting(ish) To … this week!

Special new segment brought to you by Penguin Random House Audio

I’d love to hear what you’re Crafting to this week. Please post a comment with your recommendations. Thanks!

TV: Bingeing Schitt’s Creek
MOVIE: Mommie Dearest
MUSIC: The Beths
AUDIOBOOK: The Beastie Boys Book, by Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz
This is their story, told for the first time in the words of the band. With an audiobook narrator list that looks for like a celeb A list, including the likes of Steve Buscemi, Ben Stiller, Chloe Sevigny, Maya Rudolph, and LL Cool J to name a few, this book claims to evoke your favorite mixed tape.