Material World is another Voyeur magazine September story of interest that outlines where the world’s best textiles come from. It tells of silk from Varanasi in India, angora from Ankara in Turkey, merino wool from Marlborough New Zealand (Australian merino growers are up there with the best too), crocodile from Crocodylus Park in the Northern Territory and cotton from Texas in the United States.

I’m not sure of the origins of the pure silk in this Keri Craig jacket but I picked it up from a Brisbane op-shop because I love rescuing natural fibre garments in danger of being overlooked and then dumped. Although its wide lapels and long line were somewhat dated, I hand-washed it before giving it a restyle to team with a fine black and white hounds-tooth check skirt (also opshop found) to create a corporate look. 

I cropped the jacket just below the pockets (leaving it with one button) before turning the jacket and lining up and under (wrong sides facing each other), pinning together and top stitching as neatly as I could. To deal with the wide lapels, I folded them the opposite way so they form a new higher neckline and added a press-stud to hold them in place just below the collar. To prevent the jacket front gaping, I found a vintage brooch to secure it. The straight skirt just needed a wash and a bit of de-pilling.

Today I had the opportunity to pop over to the Brisbane Visual Arts Community hub at Tarragindi (thanks to my friend Lena Tisdall) which was hosting an amazing ATASDA workshop Dorothy Caldwell’s The Expressive Stitch.  Ontario-based Dorothy, photographed below right with Pam and Kitty, is world-renown for her stitching work and research into the repair and reconstruction of textiles, including Kantha Quilts of Eastern India. The solo picture at the bottom is one of Dorothy’s own works.