Upcycling today at the Queensland Rural Regional and Remote Women’s Network conference at Charters Towers with great women and girls from All Souls &  St Gabriels School.

So grateful to have an opportunity to demonstrate creative ways to reuse existing clothing at the Women of the Worlde conference – and talk about how our modern clothing habits have led to increasing consumption of textiles, two-thirds of which are synthetic fibres derived from petroleum.

The world is smothering in cheap synthetic clothing, with UK figures indicate nearly one-third of clothing ends up in landfill. This waste has sparked my creative Sew it Again journey that integrates professional expertise with a desire for sustainability and well-being – woven with threads of childhood, thrift, empowerment and a love of nature. 

It was so lovely to have the school girls involved in the upcycling movement – and see and hear them inspired to get into refashioning clothing when they go home from boarding school in the holidays. I’d started Sew 260 at home, but the girls got involved arranging and sewing extra doilies I’d found in a Charters Towers opshop (10 or $3) to an op-shop found circle skirt. I had begun the refashion by altering the hemline, turning up the corners which drooped near the ground and adding a few doilies around the bottom. Gorgeous young student Kate agreed to model Sew 260 in front of one of Charters Towers many historic buildings.