15 January 2020

The Unfabricate Zine: a Handbook for Unravelling Thrifted Things Into Yarn

by Shanel

One of the early parts of the Unfabricate project was making a zine. I didn’t really finish the zine until recently, but here it is: a PDF version for BROWSER and a PDF version for printing as a BOOKLET (CONTENTS and COVER, paper size is 8.5 x 11”). Print yourself a copy and take it to the thrift store. Have fun.

This is probably the first thing I’ve posted to this blog that is kind of meant to be educational. Up to this point, this blog has been the log of my own education, but its primary purpose was not to educate other people. If other people found it helpful (not that I think anyone keeps tabs on this), great. One reason that this zine took so long to finish was all of the illustrations I wanted to put in. Throughout the Unfabricate project, I found that hand-drawing detailed diagrams of the physical structures (like the chain seams and selvedges) helped me understand the unravelling process on an even deeper level than simply going through it.

Over the next couple of weeks, as I settle into the new semester (Happy new year, by the way!) and reflect on the recent submission cycle, I’ll be polishing up the project page and adding in missing documentation. I have a lot of photos that haven’t made it to the site yet.

Reference Notes

I am not claiming that this idea is original at all. My zine is far from the first resource on unravelling thrifted sweaters for yarn. I actually used these excellent tutorials [1, 2, 3] to compare my process. I also used some photos from these tutorials in the zine. (On the “Choosing a Garment” page, the top photos in both columns are from the first tutorial. The bottom photo in the “Yes” column is from the third.)
I used Adobe InDesign to make the zine. Way fancier and more digital than my previous zine-making experiences, but I learned it for a class.