God Re-Fashions a Garment Maker: A Bonnie Glass recycled-to-ARTcycled story told through garments and words

By Bonnie Glass

Bonnie Glass has been designing one-of-a-kind Wearable Art garments for over 30 years, no two of them alike. These "originals for originals" are titled and have now become collectable. The twelve recycled-to-Artcycled garments featured in this book, with the twelve stories that inspired them, tell the tale of Bonnie's fifty-year sojourn with her Maker. "They tell how He made me into something better and more than what I was when I first made the decision to follow Him," says Bonnie. "He took parts of my character and refashioned them, and I have tried to express that story visually in each garment in the book."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debbie Sawczak
• Release date: Sep 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781738011919

Book preview

Introduction

How does a creative garment maker working in the wearable art field add her voice to the chorus of praise ringing out through the centuries to the God who loves her? Through garments, of course! Because that’s how He uniquely wired me, and it is what I know best.

These twelve recycled to art-cycled garments, with the twelve stories that inspired them, tell the tale of a fifty-year sojourn with my Maker. They tell how He made me into—well, something just better and more than what I was when I first made the decision to follow Him. He took parts of my character and refashioned them, and I have tried to express that story visually in what I did to create each garment in the series.

The book is in two parts. Part One is my story, divided into twelve episodes, each with a creative art post of the garment inspired by it and a Bible verse that highlights the story’s theme. Part Two focuses on the visual details of the garments, including what pieces were used to create each one and why. All the garments are made entirely from people’s castoffs; the first person who originally bought each piece of fabric or clothing no longer had a use for it, so it ended up discarded at a garage sale or thrift store, or was gifted to me. The only things I allowed myself to purchase new were thread and dye.

This was a four-year project, from its inspired conception one Sunday in a church (before the COVID-19 pandemic hit) to its full completion. During the last six months of the project I took time away from my business to git ’er done. Whew! Now it is!

PART ONE

12 Garments, 12 Stories

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Behold, You desire truth in the inner being; make me to know wisdom in my inmost heart. Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

—Psalm 51:6-7

Whiter than Snow

I had been in jail twice by the time I was 19. It was for ridiculous reasons both times; I say that to set your mind at rest.

The first occasion was in Penticton, British Columbia. In the early 1970s it seemed that all young restless types were thumbing their way west across Canada, and I thought this would be a grand thing to do too. But not being comfortable hitchhiking—I did have some brains—I convinced my dear cousin Joan that we should save our money, buy a car, and go. So in the summer of 1972, between Grades 11 and 12, we spent two solid months doing just that. I was 18 then (having flunked Grade 2 with my best friend Hetty), and could legally drink in certain provinces, which was handy.

Joan and I packed in plenty of adventures. We also picked up hitchhikers now and then, including two guys from California near the end of our sojourn, who we travelled and hung out with until it was time for us all to get back home. The evening before we parted, we decided to celebrate at a local pub—and came out after a few drinks to discover our car was missing! So I phoned the police and we went down to the station, where three of us promptly got arrested.

That was because earlier in the day, unbeknownst to me, these two guys had decided that they wanted a souvenir of their fine time in Canada and had lifted a Canadian flag they saw flying on the Main Street of town. One of them was driving at the time (I was sound asleep in the back seat), and they threw the flag in the back of the station wagon. As it happened, Penticton was celebrating a significant town birthday, so there were plenty of folks around to witness this crime and report our licence plate. Long story short, we spent the weekend in jail, and appeared before a judge on Monday morning. He must have been laughing inside, listening to these guys go on in their American accents about how they loved Canada and just wanted to sew the flag on a sleeping bag as a memento. The last words I remember him saying, as he graciously dismissed us, were Just stay out of trouble!

I tried. But then during the following March Break, three friends and I decided to drive to Daytona Beach in Florida. We went to some hotel party down there, and when we left late at night I was the designated driver. In the dark, and not being familiar with the place, I turned the wrong way onto a one-way street—which was not good, because in Florida back then, if you were charged with this offence and had no money to pay the fine, you were put in a cell till it got paid. All four of us were flat broke, so that’s where I spent the night till the next day when my friends could get some money wired.

I had a lot of friends growing up, in different towns and in four different high schools; I got along with the frat boys, the greaseballs, the stoneheads, the jocks, and everything in between, and had a nice boyfriend. I was always fun to be with and up for an adventure. Hey, I would say, why don’t we do this…? and out would spill some idea that didn’t seem too crazy at the time, but which later often went a bit sideways. So, what with all my friends and harebrained shenanigans, I wasn’t exactly having a boring life in between classes at school, and I was pretty happy.

Happy on the outside, that is. But what my friends didn’t know was that, on the inside, I felt as if I were torn in two. Integrity was something I valued then, as I have all my life since. But I was not living a life of integrity—and by that I don’t mean the impulsive larks that led to those brief stays in jail; the fun-loving, adventuresome part of me wasn’t the problem, because that’s just how God wired me. I would have even been considered a fairly good kid, at least compared to some that I hung with. I don’t think I skipped more than two classes, I didn’t screw around (that’s what we called it back then), don’t recall a single catfight, and got along with teachers, my siblings, and people in general. But I was still dying on the inside, in the soul of my being. Integrity means wholeness, and I didn’t feel whole inside; I felt divided, and it was eating me up. By the time I turned 19 in the spring of my Grade 12 year, I was feeling tormented by the weight of that divide inside myself.

What was this divide? It had a whole lot to do with my relationship with my Maker—and when I say Maker, I mean God as revealed in the Bible. I believed in Him, but at the same time I was hiding my belief in Him, and hiding from Him. I felt like I was straddling a fence, with part of me turning my back on Him and another part of me wanting Him and longing for how it used to be between us when I was a child.

I had known God as a kid and had felt Him in my life as a comfort and a stabilizing force. This might be because of my narrow escape from death by appendicitis when I was about four. When you have poor Dutch immigrant parents who have come through stuff like a war, and your father is working crazy-long hours driving truck and starting a business while your mother has two other kids to see to (one of them sick with asthma) while living in the middle of nowhere with no car—well, somehow you don’t get quite the attention you should if you are bent over in the corner writhing in pain with a ruptured appendix. And if I was true to character, I wouldn’t have wanted to be a bother. So it was a while before my condition was noticed, and I was screaming by the time they got me to the hospital, which was way too late. According to my father (in a story I heard often) some sort of prayer meeting took place, and God was gracious and answered the way they wanted Him to, or I wouldn’t be here to write this. I was a shy and timorous kid back then (for all my ebullience later on), and the experience is cemented in my memory as somewhat traumatic. Did I sense His presence with me then? Possibly. I can’t remember.

My family were Christians who worshipped with the Christian Reformed branch of this faith, and I had gone to a Christian elementary school till Grade 8. I got good grades in Bible class; I loved those crazy Bible characters and stories—they read like a soap opera sometimes—and in my vigorous imagination they came alive. Looking back, I think that what drew me to God was the stability of His character, because my home life was anything but stable. I liked the fact that He was the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and that He could be counted on to be who He said He was.

I also felt loved by God. Even though He was all-powerful and holy, I wasn’t scared of Him. When I did things I knew were wrong, I did feel guilty—because I was guilty—and I hated that feeling that hung on till I told God (and any others involved) that I was sorry, and knew I was forgiven. I thought of God as my Father—a very different father, in some ways, from my earthly one. God was the kind of Dad where you could climb onto His knee and tell Him everything, and He would listen. I look back at myself then and can’t get over how completely I took for granted what Jesus had done to give me this kind of relationship: I just accepted that He had taken my sin on the cross so I could skip right through to Abba, which is what Jesus called His Father in Aramaic: Dad.

When you have faith like that as a kid, is it real? Because it sure felt real, and at 19 I remembered it that way. There’s a story in the Bible, in Mark 10:13-16, showing how Jesus felt about kids, and how close they are to His heart. I loved that story! But I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I understood that just being born in a Christian family didn’t make me a Christian as an adult any more than being born in a garage makes you a car. During my teen years my parents had made me go to catechism classes (classes instructing us in the faith) so I would know what our church stood for, and when you finished all the classes you were more or less expected to make a public profession of your faith. But even my father had cautioned me not to do that if I didn’t really mean it. So I didn’t.

The thing is, I had been growing up in a church that believed every square inch of life belonged to God—even if some of the church people didn’t live like it. And reading the Bible I saw this truth shining through it everywhere. When Jesus was asked by someone to summarize our obligation to God, He said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. That sounded to me like the whole of a person. It wasn’t just about going to church on Sundays, or being a nice moral person, or believing certain things in my head; it was an all-or-nothing kind of deal. And I wasn’t ready to do the all.

But just because you are turning your back on God, it doesn’t mean He is turning His back on you. He had ways of reminding me that He was still present and active in my life.

One such incident happened in Edmonton at something called the Klondike Days Festival (they call it K-Days now, I think), on that infamous trip out west with my cousin Joan. We stumbled across a group of young adults handing out pamphlets about Jesus and inviting people to talks they were giving. These folks were incredibly hospitable, and we ended up pitching a tent in their backyard for a couple of days, using their shower, and eating their food with them. They were called Jesus Freaks back in the day, but that didn’t faze them; they didn’t care who laughed at them for who they believed in. I was attracted to their courage, because I wasn’t courageous. I could tell they were real and that they had figured out their purpose. They also happened to be fun to hang with, and thought outside the box about what church could look like. Church with them happened in an old theatre; there, following one of their talks about Jesus, we broke bread and drank wine together in an intimate gathering at the foot of the stage, remembering and celebrating what Jesus had done for us. It felt like a holy moment, and I sensed God calling me back to Him.

When the God of the universe calls you and you don’t answer, it does not sit well with your soul. I decided that this thing with God had to be resolved, and that I needed to move away to do that. I didn’t want anyone’s influence impinging on my decision, because deep inside I also knew that whatever I decided would impact the rest of my life.

So at the end of the summer after finishing high school, I broke up with my nice boyfriend, said goodbye to all my friends—except for one childhood friend named Judy, who came with me—and left home to move to Alberta. A friend of Judy’s named Diane decided to come with us at the last minute; I only met her on the plane on the way out there. The three of us ended up in a little apartment in Calgary together, and forty-eight years later I still have wonderful memories of our time there. We are friends to this day. Anyway, I landed a job as a salesclerk in a Reitman’s store to pay the rent. And I started reading my Bible and going to church as a seeker.

One night, a couple of months into this chapter, I was home alone in our little kitchen. I was reading my Bible, but can’t for the life of me remember what passage I was reading when I came to my decision. That makes me smile now, as I clearly remember the exact pyjamas I had on—because I’d made them—and that I had some sort of cream concoction all over my face, because I was still 19 and such things were oh-so-important then! I do remember that my decision took the form of a very simple prayer asking Jesus to forgive every sin—past, present, and future—and to become the Captain of my ship.

I will never forget how I felt after praying that prayer! A weight rolled off, and an indescribable peace descended on me as I finally came off that fence and landed with two feet on one side. It felt like fractured parts of me were coming together. I wasn’t hiding from God anymore; our hearts were joined, and I was back. I had also committed myself to following Him. As I expected, that decision has impacted the rest of my life—sometimes shaping me in ways that were more than uncomfortable and hard to take at the time. But it’s a journey and an adventure that I’m glad not to have missed!

As I thought about how to interpret this part of my story in a garment, I looked to Psalm 51:6-7, because those verses say best what I went through in that moment of surrender to God at age 19. And when I finished making the garment, I looked at it and thought, I am no whiter now than I was then when I asked Him to wash me. He did it all.

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My Grade 11 school photo.

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My cousin Joan and I on our two-month road trip in Alberta between Grade 11 and Grade 12; some artistic person we met took this picture of us sitting on a hill (hence the foliage in front) and developed it. It’s the only good picture taken of us together in the age before selfies. We had a LOT of adventures!

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Unless the Lord had been my help, I would have dwelt in the land where there is silence. When I said, My foot is slipping, Your mercy and lovingkindness, O Lord, held me up.

—Psalm 94:17-18

Blue

If you had told me in June of 1973 when I graduated from high school that I would soon be someone’s wife, and a year after that a mother, I would have looked at you like you were crazy. That certainly wasn’t something I wanted to do anytime soon—and yet that is exactly what I did at age 20. The guy I married? John Glass,