I’m half-way through the Sew it Again project – and celebrated by flying into the Gold Coast this morning with the sun rising on a beautiful clear sky day – and a bush walk up Mt Coot-tha with daughter Lily where the clear skies meant we could see across Moreton Bay.

I loved visiting the colourful, cultural melting pot that is Kuala Lumpur to catch up with my brother Tony Capon and his family, and my aunt Kate McLachlan from New Zealand, but city high-rise living in a tropical metropolis is very different to our leafy-green Queenslander lifestyle in inner-suburban Brisbane where we live close to nature. 

July 1 is Day 182 of my 365-day project to inspire upcycling, demonstrate slow fashion and present refashioning ideas which help bring home-sewing into the 21st century.

Globalisation means buying new clothing is cheap and easy for most of us, and we rarely sew from scratch because it is uneconomic to do so. We now have so many clothes in our wardrobe we’re not wearing  – but we can refashion to suit ourselves and creatively resew them for a new future. There’s some good ideas on styling yourself on this website and you can get refashioning and upcycling ideas on Sew it Again. 

Upcycling old clothing does not need to be hard or time-consuming – it can be as simple as mending or adapting. Sew 182 is a mend of a favourite black Icebreaker wool t-shirt which I’ve had for nearly 10 years but this winter emerged from the cupboard with a few holes. I patched it with wool offcuts (a heart and a rectangle) from a garment I’ve sacrificed for mending purposes. Today I wore this top with some upcycled wool tights (I replaced the holey legs with non-wool tulip sleeves from a reject garment), a wool jumper-skirt, and a beige opshop merino coat which needed its second button replaced (I shifted the button from the bottom, where the gap was less obvious). Not super-flash but really comfortable for bush walking!