Great to enable undomestic goddesses to join the refashioning revolution today with Danielle Crismani aka Digella, Sally Gardner, Alison Triffett and friends of #bakedrelief recreating aprons from reject jeans at a workshop in the Textile Beat studio.

As i introduce others to upcycling, I’m learning more about the stumbling blocks to sewing, how people missed out on learning these life skills, and why others were turned off by previous experience or simply don’t have access to a sewing machine.

Sewing is a reasonably straight-forward process but you need to problem solve because things never go smoothly – particularly when you are working with random, irregular and different resources such as reject clothing and fabric offcuts. Ingenuity, persistence and creative solutions are the order of the day. But it is fun, and you can magic something useful out of not much – as these great ladies did today making aprons from jeans and offcuts. 

Danielle is recognised as an inspiring leader who stepped up to create the Baked Relief movement providing sustenance for volunteers during Brisbane’s 2011 floods and more recently this year for drought-affected farmers with the #loveforthewest campaign. So it was obviously appropriate that she make a groovy pinny from old jeans and various bits of fabric, buttons etc. Danielle cut the legs and the front off the jeans, and used the back pocketed section to form the basis for the pinny. Using fabric offcuts from Sally’s stash, we formed a bodice from a square of the fabric which was then sewn to the top of the jean. Ties were created from other fabric offcuts and attached at the neck and the sides. Two frills were cut using a circle pattern and sewn to the bottom of the jean. Photos below give some idea of the free-form nature of the process.