Necessity is the mother of invention, and as far back as I can remember, my necessity has been to dress in what I thought was beautiful. Included in my idea of beautiful was unique, which always seemed to be just beyond my reach.
My loving mother was a skilled seamstress and made almost all the clothes my two sisters and I wore. (She also knitted sweaters for our three brothers.) These clothes reflected her tastes, which at the time were practical, Dutch, and plain. There were no crinolines in our house! And in the first home my parents built as poor immigrants, there was also no art on the walls. I did not grow up around art and didn’t know how much I would come to love it till I married John Glass, and a whole new world opened up for me. It was his idea to stop in at the National Art Gallery in Ottawa on our honeymoon. Eventually, my growing appreciation of art would mesh with my vision of what I wanted to wear.
Growing up, I had wanted to be either a fashion designer or an interior decorator, but I ended up pursuing neither career because I got married a year after graduating from high school and had two children in pretty short order. I decided to be a full-time mom and get that degree later, once the kids were in school. There was a college 25 minutes up the road that I planned to attend when that day came.
Just as I was thinking of enrolling, the college shut down my chosen program! But a sewing machine had been gifted to me by my parents when I married, and I was already using it to stretch a beer budget into something that tasted more like champagne. As I continued to do so, the lack of funds challenged and expanded my creativity in a way nothing else could, and I look back on it as a God-given gift in those early days.
When Threads magazine released its December 1989 issue with an article about Koos Van Den Akker, titled Koos, the Master of Collage, it changed my life. Until then, my biggest frustration had been finding a coat in a colour I liked. I was blue-eyed, blonde and fair, and all the winter coats at the time were in colours I looked terrible in. I happen to think a garment should enhance the wearer, including her own natural colouring. So when I read that collage article, I thought I would try a similar idea but take it in the direction I wanted in order to make a winter coat.
Across the street from me was an upholstery shop, so I got some leftover materials there and combined them with some I had at home. Creating with different colours, lines and textures seemed to come easily and naturally to me, and I really liked what I had made when it was finished. Everywhere I went, I was stopped by people inquiring where I had bought that coat! My skills had caught up to my mother’s.
And so, I started a business making coats, jackets, mother-of-the-bride/ groom outfits and a few unusual wedding dresses. Many were custom orders (I rarely do custom work now), and all were one-of-a-kind garments, no two alike. This is still true, because I get bored quickly — something I learned about myself when making duplicate bridesmaid dresses for friends.
And I was doing it all without that coveted fashion designer degree! I had to learn (and sometimes unlearn) everything the hard way, including the business end of things. Looking back, not having that degree was probably a good thing. It kept me thinking out- side the box, since I didn’t really know how the box was supposed to be put together in the first place. But it was hard!
Hard was ratcheted up by a host of other difficulties, mostly arising from mental health issues in my family. Over the course of those years, I wrestled with my Maker about a lot of things — including how He had created me. There was a period when I almost hated being as creative and artistic as I was, because it seemed to be attended by so many other square- peg attributes.
But out of that wrestling, we birthed TWAS, The Wearable Art Show (whose story is fleshed out in my book), a not- for-profit treasure box of a show taking place in Oakville every October. It has been a gift to work with an amazing team of people committed to supporting Canadian artists in this field. I am incredibly grateful to those people! But it would never have happened without hard. In the 30 years since starting my business I have come full circle, and am so thankful now for how God created me to be.
In 2023 I won the People’s Choice award for Favourite “Recycled to ARTcycled” Garment at TWAS. I won with a coat made from castoffs, incorporating a needlework tapestry I had found at a thrift store and taken out of its frame. I smiled, reflecting on how that very first recycled coat I’d made years earlier had led to this!
At that show, I also released a book called God Re-Fashions a Garment Maker, featuring 12 totally recycled garments and the 12 stories from my life that inspired them (available as an e-book from lulu.com). Nothing had challenged me like those garments! The only things I allowed myself to buy new were thread and dye, and each piece had to tell its story. Those are crazy strictures to set oneself, but it was so satisfying to create beauty out of ashes.
The thing I have become most passionate about developing further in the creation of amazing wearables is the use of discarded handmade needle arts, to give them a new life and to honour their original creators. To make the upcycling complete, I use thrifted and gifted materials as much as possible. (People think of me when emptying granny’s cupboards after she has passed.)
It’s a time-consuming process: Experiments don’t always turn out, and there’s a lot of unpicking as I figure out what will work so that the garment can be worn for a long time. The result also has to be beautiful, because I’ve learned that how a woman feels in her garment is the most important factor in its durability: If she feels comfortable and beautiful in it, she’ll keep wearing it!
Thinking outside the box still happens at my house. So as long as my hands, eyes and mind hold up, I will continue to do what I was born to do. I’ve had customers tell me how someone stopped them on the street while they were wearing one of my garments and asked, “Is that a Bonnie Glass?” That makes me smile. Out of hard came good.
My Process
1. There are a myriad of ways that a “Bonnie Glass” comes into existence. I may think of a personality type, or accept a challenge. A piece of fabric may speak to me about how it wants to shine, or I may be inspired by a work of art or something in nature. For the piece featured in this article, I wanted to make something that evokes the rich colours of fall. And I wanted to incorporate handmade needle art; in this case, leftover crocheted pieces I had already dyed. So then I went through what I had on hand in my studio to bring that to life.
2. I found the perfect printed fabric and a yellow-gold sample, both from the home decorating field. Here I have cut apart the crocheted pieces after figuring out exactly where to use them.
3. Once the main fabric is chosen, I go through my sizable stash looking for the perfect combination of materials to use for my bias bindings, which are the hallmark of my work. I cut those fabrics into strips and run them through one of my bias trim makers with my iron.
4. The centre front and centre back pieces are completed. The upper side pieces and sleeves are inserted.
5. I then bead the outer edges of the crocheted pieces for use on the pockets, back and collar.
6. I use the “upside-down Hong Kong” finish a lot. Here the first strip is attached and the collar is sewn on.
7. Then I sew on the final bias binding.
8. Voilà! Finally, I use a very old but distinctive button that seems perfect for this closure. I step back to look at the completed garment and choose Spice Road as the title that fits best (I title all my originals). And then I smile, because I like what I have done.