Project Outline: Roots, Ratios, and Repairs

Fast Fashion has created a disconnect between people and their clothing. This divide has altered our relationship with clothing, and shifted people away from a focus on lasting quality and proper maintenance, for a relationship of convenience and replacement over repair. There is empowerment in caring for your clothing and maintaining items to have a long closet life. This project will look to utilize mathematical concepts to support and empower students to care for their clothing through exploration of mending, and upcycling materials they already have to give clothing new life.


Search Strategy:

Throughout my search for information and literature I primarily utilized Google Scholar and the UBC Library Collections. Initially Google was used to find blogs and webpages discussing mending and textiles to search for inspiration to narrow ideas and begin the search for academic literature. Starting with general literature on mending and searching for already established articles linking textile mending to mathematical learning, there were no results that supported the directions I was hoping to explore. Shifting towards searching for works that looked at learning that incorporated textiles and mending, textiles and math, as well as works that would provide more insights into processes involved in textile works.


Background:

In Nova Scotia there is an hour a week in the schedule for grade seven to nine students for something called integrated learning time, this is a curriculum-less hour that each school may choose their approach for implementation to create cross curricular and interdisciplinary projects and engagement for students. My school spends the last two months running a program developed by one of the teachers which we call “Skills Rodeo”, where teachers pick an activity, project or skill they would like to run for students, students then give a list of what they would like to sign up for and get sorted into groups, these groups are not separated by grade levels but by interests based on what students listed as their preference. This is an approximately six week program broken down into three two week sessions. Previous sessions I have run for this program were, Google Sheets: Coding, Formulas, Games, and Fiber Arts: Crochet and Knitting.


Topic and Plan:

In this project I would like to focus on textiles, upcycling, and mending. With the set up of the Skills Rodeo program my school runs I plan to break this into three varying projects that differ in focus but build on each other, offering students the chance to take any one of the three possible two week sessions or to take all three and participate in a 6 week cumulative textile project. As the skills rodeo happens at the end of the year I will try out the textile projects with a smaller group of students in my school's GSA. My continued research will focus on structuring this project, and creating support for guiding students while still giving them flexibility and choice across the various stages as to how they will engage and implement the skills and activities.

Nova Scotia Curriculum Connections:

As this format would work across multiple grade levels the related mathematical curricular components it would relate to also span across grade levels.

Grade 7: Measurement, students will be expected to develop and apply a formula for determining the area of triangles, parallelograms, and circles.

Grade 8: Number sense, students will be expected to solve problems that involve rates, ratios, and proportional reasoning.

Grade 9: Geometry, students will be expected to determine the surface area of composite 3-D objects to solve problems.



Annotated Bibliography

Bairy, S., & Inamdar, N. (2026). Enhancing middle school mathematics through interdisciplinary integration: A 21st-century approach. Discover Education, 5(1), 22. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-025-00877-w

Bairy and Inamdar advocate for a 21st century approach to middle school mathematics through interdisciplinary integration, within their article they discuss a micro-project and a variety of activities focusing on hands-on real-world challenges, enhancing conceptual understanding, and student-engagement. Within their methods they highlight the key elements for the design and planning of a micro-project, implementation, assessment methods, as well as 10 activities highlighting the various connected disciplines involved in each activity.

The structure and procedure of this article to guide the creation of these project structures provide strong factors for consideration in the development and implementation of mathematical projects. Additionally, it is beneficial to have examples of activities and interesting to notice the consistent presence of art alongside all of the mathematical activities.


Fisher, G. (2025). A stitch in line: Mathematics and one-stitch sashiko. Taylor & Francis Ltd.
https://doi.org/10/1080/17513472.2025.2469529

In Fisher’s review of ‘A Stitch in Line: Mathematics and One-Stitch Sashiko’ she highlights Seaton’s various project examples noting that she maintained emphasis on mathematics, Fisher shares that throughout the book there are mathematical connections across a variety of levels starting at a middle school level and increasing in difficulty as the chapters progress, providing a brief note of the core math concept of each of the eleven chapters and their corresponding embroidery projects.

The variety of mathematical concepts starting at middle school levels and progressing with direct project connections suggest this book to be a valuable resource with more direct and accessible integration into student learning as well as an opportunity for interdisciplinary work with art and textile courses.


Geetha, B. & Judia Harriet Sumathy, V. (2013). Extraction of natural dyes from plants. International Journal of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, 1 (8), 502-509.

Geetha and Judia Harriet Sumathy demonstrate the use of a variety of plants and moderates that can be used in the extraction of plant based dyes for textile application. They consider the environmental impact of synthetic dyes and the push with global concerns to re-explore eco-friendly alternatives for this process as a driving motivator for their research and acknowledge the use of natural dyeing throughout art, history and indigenous traditional knowledge.

Including a natural dyeing of textiles component to this project prompts connections for participants with the environment around them and provides a tactile experience. In exploration of saturation or shades of colours and for replication of the colours production will rely on detailed recording the ratios and process.


Manoj, T. & Prabir, J., (2023). Apparel manufacturing measures and calculations. In R. Chattopadhyay, S. K. Sinha, & M. L. Regar (Eds), Textile Calculations (pp. 275-299) Elsevier ScienceDirect eBook - Engineering 2023, & Elsevier All Access Books.

Manoj and Prabir connect the planning, production, and postproduction to measures and calculations, from plant set-up and facility design, to manufacturing operations providing multiple direct calculations and formulas centred around textiles in the context of manufacturing plants. Primarily focusing on the optimization of time and resources, providing multiple ways to determine fabric utilization percent giving considerations of the calculation by weight or by length.

The calculations focused on material waste and optimization can be applied by students to conceptualize what it takes to make textiles and to encourage thoughtful planning of material usage. Other calculations provided insight into the development of the commercialized processes more commonly seen in today's textile productions.



Willett, J., Saunders, C., Hackney, F. & Hill, K. The affective economy and fast fashion: Materiality, embodied learning and developing a sensibility for sustainable clothing. Journal of Material Culture. 2022, 27(3), 219–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/13591835221088524

Willet et al. explores shifts in peoples relationships towards clothing and its impact on their consumer behaviours as they are immersed in a workshop on the making, mending and modifying of clothing, from a perspective that considered clothing to be low-cost, to considerations of their complexities, viewing them as precious. They highlight a value-action gap where the ethical beliefs and attitudes held by people do not often equate to consistent actions. In addressing this, the impact of peer group support in maintaining change is determined as invaluable, for people have an inherent desire to conform to group norms, within the workshop of the study it was not the direct teaching but the immersion into the workshop and the space for participants to create their own knowledge, and cultural meaning from their experiences participating in the workshop.

The collective experience and influence of peer group support, highlights the value of collaboration and the impact of shared experiences on the participants. Shifting of attitudes and affect requires more than direct instruction or information, but connection, and direct experience.