Amanda Rataj x Roncy Packs

 

Upcycled Handwoven Offcuts

Amanda Rataj's hand-woven cotton and linen was originally created for 2023 Craft Ontario, where she used them to recover chairs originally designed by her grandfather (Brunswick Manufacturing). The leftover off-cuts from this project were too beautiful to waste, so she sent them our way to turn into a limited edition batch of fanny packs. Read on to learn more.

Hi! I’m Amanda Rataj, and I’m an artist and weaver living and working in Hamilton, Ontario.

My work is created on a wooden Finnish weaving loom in my home studio. Every thread passes through my hands in a rhythmic, full-body process that slowly creates fabric inch by inch. If you’ve never experienced hand woven cloth before, it’s very different to machine-made!

The hand woven cloth in these packs is a blend of organic cotton and linen in various colours, and are off-cuts from my 2023 solo exhibition at Craft Ontario on Queen Street — I initially wove this cloth to recover wooden chairs built by my paternal grandfather in a project supported by a craft grant from the Ontario Arts Council. He was the principle designer for a furniture manufacturing business called Brunswick Manufacturing — if you went to school or live in the GTA, you may have sat in one his chairs at some point!

Fitting the fabric to my chairs created many small off-cut pieces that I really didn’t want to throw out after it took months of planning and weaving to make. I asked Roncy Packs if they could use one of these pieces to make a special pack for my mum’s birthday and sent my biggest pieces of leftover fabric for them to use. 

I’m really conscious of my choices and the waste created in my craft practice — it’s not something artists usually address, but waste is a natural part of creative process, and I’d like to minimize my impact. I’m very much attracted to Roncy Pack’s recycling ethos and I love that my cloth can be reused in this way instead of just sitting in a drawer as I wonder what to with it. 

Explore Amanda's work at www.amandarataj.com or follow her on Instagram @amandarataj