Our journeys through life are all different, yet most are trying our best at being and doing, playing and working at the level of consciousness on which we’re operating. We look after hearth and home, support our family and friends, and reach out to career networks and opportunities.

This year I’ve come full circle. Like a homing pigeon – I’ve been out there and now I’m coming back to base. I’m applying everything I’ve learned through various career roles and professional development opportunities to create a homespun campaign to shift our thinking about what we wear. 

My mother Elizabeth Capon was a home-economics teacher who co-authored a textbook called Focus on Living in 1975 which was a high-school textbook for decades. There are life-skills in every chapter of that book, and amazing foresight in chapters such as The Consumer Role, Your Image and You, and Living Space considering it was written at a time when our me-too consumer culture was just emerging.

Even though Mum died (from cancer) when I was only 21, at the beginning my career and before I had children – my values, skills and approach to life came from what she taught us.

It was therefore fabulous, poignant and inspiring for me to be invited by the Home Economics Institute of Australia (Qld) to tell my Sew it Again story at a ceremony to welcome graduands to the profession. Thank you Kay, Kaitlyn, Delia et al for the opportunity.

It was fitting to wear my favourite History Skirt – made from textile waste including lace scraps left over from my mother’s sewing projects in earlier times – and tell the story of my journey into creativity, empowerment, thrift, sustainability, ecological health and well-being woven with threads of childhood, professional expertise, networks and nature.

I’m sharing these ideas every day to show how we can reuse what we have in creative ways to conserve and revive existing resources.

The gored history skirt is created from eight panels, individually sewn from offcuts and existing garments, which are then sewn together in a circle. For this skirt, I used Mum’s lace offcuts, a beige linen jacket, white linen shorts, a cream silk dress and various others. I created a stretch waistband and trimmed the skirt with silk strips cut from the dress (need about 4m long by 6cm wide). The jacket is the only tailor-made item in my wardrobe – part of a wool suit made in New Delhi during our Australian Rural Leadership Program trip to India in 2010. I have barely worn it – so I’ve upcycled it by raising the hem about 3cm so it fitted my shape much better. To link the conservative jacket with the creative skirt, I used a felted wool scarf (not made by me) I’ve had for years which is created from raw wool and scraps of fabric.