Eva Kittelsen
Item
- Title
- Eva Kittelsen
- firstName
- Eva
- lastName
- Kittelsen
- Website
- https://evakittelsen.com/
- Social Media
- https://www.instagram.com/evakittelsen/
- Medium
- Hand mending
- Description
- Mending my soul, body and mind, one stitch at the time
- About
-
I think almost all textile crafts can be used as techniques to mend, and I am slowly exploring various ones. As mending is a slow craft, and thus expensive, my main focus is in teaching and inspiring others to do it themselves, and supplying people with the knowledge and tools they need to do so, but I am open to do comissions if the price is right, and have done so, both by hand and faster work by machine, invisible and visible mends.
Personally I prefer mending by hand, and most of my experience is with light woolen knits, sweats, and jeans, as these are the clothes my family wear out the most, but have also mended things like outerwear, shoes and backpacks.
I like to combine traditional mending techniques with decorative elements, usually embroidery. My degree work revolved around colours, details and textures in nature, and a lot of my mending still revolves around this type of work.
Many years of experience with many different materials means I'm a versatile mender, and easily adapt the techniques and materials used to suit the item I am repairing. My experience with commercial fashion design and custom designed weddingdresses also means I can easily adapt my style to my customers preferences, while still guiding the work based on my experience and eye for colours, proportions, prints and textures. - Bio
-
I have a BA in Fashion and Textile Design from the University of Portsmouth. I got a job with with product development and buying for the Varner Group, the second biggest fashion company in Scandinavia right after graduation and worked there for about 3 years. During the maternity leave for my second son (I had my first while studying), I decided to quit my job in the fast fashion company when I started helping out with the startup of the ethical clothing brand/manufacturer Fair & Square. It's a Norwegian non-profit who's fully responsible for their textile workers as the company owns the factory instead of outsourcing. The workers in our factory in China have similar working condition and rights as we do in Norway, including paid holidays, paid maternity leave, sick pay, 37,5h work weeks and more than a living wage. I supplemented my income by making weddingdresses, and started specialising in redesigning inherited 2nd and even 3rd generation dresses.
While I started working with them I also became passionate about visible mending and started promoting it through instagram. I have been doing presentations and workshops about ethical fashion production and mending for the past couple of years. In 2019 I applied to become a member of The Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts, and was accepted by a jury, which means I can now also consider myself a Textile artist. My art revolves around mending, obviously, but I also use it as commentary on the society we live in, and topics like anit-capitalism and feminism/gender/identity interest me in particular. - Accepts commissions
- yes
- Teaches
- Yes
- City or Region
- Oslo, Norway
- Item sets
- Menders
This item was submitted on July 17, 2022 by [anonymous user] using the form “Application Form for Menders” on the site “Visible Mending”: https://visiblemending.org/s/world
Click here to view the collected data.