The study of home economics has disappeared from some Australian schools entirely and is considered a lightweight in others – yet it teaches important life-skills about food and nutrition, sewing and textiles, and consumer citizenship.

Lack of knowledge about food and food preparation is no doubt contributing to obesity while absence of simple sewing and laundering skills leads to many clothing being discarded prematurely.

Recent United States research discussed in this Ecouterre article found that young people there have little idea of how to care for clothes.  Textiles and Apparel Professor Pamela Norum from the University of Missouri-Columbia surveyed hundreds of American baby boomers and millennials about clothing consumption and found the ability to sew, hem, repair, and launder diminished across generations. 

These skills were once considered common knowledge, handed on through families and communities or taught in schools, but the proliferation of cast-offs in op shops which require only minor repairs tends to suggest a loss of skills or motivation to mend.

No such lack of skills at Fairholme College in Toowoomba where the number of girls studying under talented Head of Home Economics Mrs Clare Greenhill, photo right, is expanding rapidly. There was some nostalgia for me in being in Mrs Greenhill’s textile room last week. Although I didn’t study home economics at school myself, my late mother was a home economics teacher who co-authored the Focus on Living textbook as I wrote in an earlier post.

I was invited to demonstrate upcycling options to the Year 10 students last Thursday and Sew 291 is one of the outcomes. This denim skirt with braid-trimmed hem was one of my natural-fibre op-shop finds which was unfashionable long. The girls decided to chop off the hem, shorten the skirt then re-add the trim, using zigzag stitch to reattach it to the body of the skirt (and resew the sideseam after removing a portion to make it fit). Sophie models the skirt, with an upcycled top that is sliced up the sideseam and knotted for a groovy look.