Category Archives: campaigns and leadership

Sew 106 – Homegrown eco looks

All living things have a place and a purpose on the planet. While life is a struggle for some, others expend much time and effort chasing money and stuff.

Popular culture positions elite, prestige and luxury atop a greasy pole. Many invest a lifetime pursing this elusive high when it is simple things around us that provide meaning in the end.

Through her beautiful distillation of The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Australian Bronnie Ware has become an advocate for healthy, simple living.

We know that whole local food keeps our bodies healthy. If we expend effort in its growing and cooking, then all the better. Quick, easy, processed, packaged fast food might be cheap, but we have come to understand its consumption is not good for our health.

We are coming to grips with our clothing story in the same way. Events such as the Rana Plaza factory collapse last year exposed the dark underbelly of fast fashion as a source of cheap, ready-made, clothing that exploits people and resources. Somebody somewhere is losing out when you can buy $5 shirts and treat them as disposable.

That’s why we need a Fashion Revolution. Young people such as UK-based creative Tilly, of Tilly and the Buttons fame, are empowering a new generation of DIY dressmakers by demonstrating how to create their own clothing. Continue reading →

Sew 105 – Natural, found, refashioned

Every morning we dress for the day. How we chose to dress reflects who we are, influences our wellbeing and impacts our environment.

My choice is natural-fibre and op-shop found, adapted using simple home-sewing skills. My choice is deliberate, authentic, ethical and sustainable. I am upcycling clothing that already exists in the world, sharing Sew it Again ideas to inspire others to refresh what they already have rather than buy more.

Your clothes tell a story about who you are. Fashion has its own story too, and it’s turning into a force for good with Fashion Revolution Day. Here’s the Fashion Revolution story: Continue reading →

Sew 104 – Bring on the Sew Change

It doesn’t cost the earth to save the planet. If we all make small changes and different choices, the collective impact can be huge.

My contribution this year is demonstrating how changing existing clothing by resewing – doing a sew change – can bring new life to natural resources that for various reasons are not being worn.

My inspiration is natural beauty, such as this mushroom cum toadstool which has sprung up in our local bush after recent rain.

Possessing a wardrobe bulging with clothing alongside a feeling of having nothing to wear is a common refrain in advanced economies. Consumer culture encourages buying new as the solution.

There’s little economic imperative to reuse, resew, refashion what we already have because the machine of consumption and global supply chains mean new clothing is so cheap. Whether the purchase represents best value is another matter.

This year I’m working off-trend, sewing upstream against the tide by demonstrating how the application of a few simple sewing skills, some time and creativity we can (if so inclined) revive what we already have as an alternative to buying new.

My Sew it Again campaign comes on the back of leadership study last year and concern for the squandering of limited resources in the form of natural fibre clothing which I continue to observe within my own environment.

Working my way through 365-days of wearable upcycling, I am inspired by fabulous change happening around the world. There’s TRAIDremade in the United Kingdom, Redressed in Hong Kong and the global Fashion Revolution movement which is turning fashion into a force for good.

Today’s Sew 104 is a refashion of a hand-printed cotton garment that is a friend’s reject. No doubt lovely in its day, the waistline frill added unnecessary bulk that is unflattering for all but the slimmest. I removed the frill, turned the waistline over and inserted thin elastic to minimise bulk and provide flexible fit. I cut-up the bodice and used the printed mid-riff part to form a collar-effect on a simple cream wool-blend top. A red stain on one end of the collar is hidden underneath and it is held in place using the press-studs that were already there from its past life. I trimmed loose threads from the cut edge which had frayed after washing.

Sew 102 – Cause for celebration

Learning from the experience, knowledge, ideas and skills of others helps us navigate the thrills and spills of life.

As a parent, I’ve passed on what I know to three offspring and it is exciting today to be celebrating our son Casey and his fiancée Jenna Moir’s engagement at the Gold Coast – thrilled to have another woman joining our family. (see nostalgia photo of Casey and I below)

One of my favourite women Georgie Somerset brought my attention to a recent Women’s Agenda post that shared key lessons from successful women to help at work, at home and in life. Great wisdom in these quotes:

“Done is better than perfect. I have tried to embrace this motto and let go of unattainable standards. Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst.” Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In

“The way we’ve defined success is no longer sustainable for human beings or for societies. To live the lives we truly want and deserve, and not just the lives we settle for, we need a Third Metric, a third measure of success that goes beyond the two metrics of money and power, and consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving.” Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington in Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder. I wrote about Beyond Power and Money earlier this year. Continue reading →

Sew 99 – Upcycling for green thrift

Green thrift describes the action of upcycling old stuff for ecological and financial health … and wellbeing.

Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. That’s what I’m doing right here, right now, using a few traditional sewing skills to adapt found clothing to demonstrate how we can all join the Fashion Revolution by upcycling.

Refashioning clothing that already exists makes good sense. The hard work has been done (zips, buttons, hems already in place), resources expended (cotton grown and spun, fabric woven and dyed) and dollars already spent when items were newly purchased. Continue reading →

Sew 97 – Join the Fashion Revolution

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it, is one of my favourite Albert Einstein quotes.

Most thinking people appreciate we are consuming resources at an unsustainable rate, eating into reserves that belong to future generations and generally abusing our natural environment. Many know it, few make changes.

As with the rising interest in home cooking and food growing for improved health and wellbeing, there is a pressing need to rethink our approach to textiles and fashion for ecological health and sustainability. That’s why I’ve embarked on the 365-day Sew it Again campaign throughout 2014 to demonstrate creative ways of reusing existing garments by empowering individuals to reimagine and recreate their own wardrobe collection by resewing at home.

In so doing, I am pleased to be part of Fashion Revolution Day’s Australia & New Zealand committee bringing awareness about the reality of where clothes come from and the resources from which they are made. Continue reading →

Sew 95 – Three-shirt shift dress

You can go out without breakfast or a car – but you can’t go out without clothes. It is the story of those clothes that is the focus of my Sew it Again campaign to inspire resewing existing clothing for a second life.

I’ve been asked to talk about my work at the Brisbane Visual Arts Community hub by the Australian Textile Artists and Surface Designers Association in Queensland today and I’m taking along my model Mabel in Sew 95, which is three shirts reworked as a shift dress.

All the materials I use are found, mostly from op shops and always natural fibres. I love linen, wool, silk, cotton in that order. Continue reading →

Sew 94 – Repair rather than toss

Being mindful about consumption – of food, energy, clothing, technology, sweet stuff – leads to outcomes that are best for our selves and our world.

A recent Rabobank calculation found that every minute there are 158 new mouths to feed (and dress) in the world and that by 2050, on current trends, there will be just 0.5 hectares of land per person on the planet.

From my own research last year, this graph (below) from a FAO World Apparel Fibre Consumption Survey visually demonstrates the rate of fibre use increasing by 80 percent in two decades. The report is written from a consumption perspective on recession impacts but I interpret it as an overall warning because per capita consumption between 1992 and 2010 increased from 7 to 11kgs per person per year. Continue reading →

Sew 92 – Pursuing mindful creativity

Refashioning existing clothing is my chosen creative practice this year as I tap my roots as an agricultural scientist cum rural communicator and branch into eco-leadership bringing awareness to the stories wrapped up in our clothes.

This upcycle is a linen double-breasted coat dress from which I removed the shoulder-pads and extended the hemline by adding sheer panels cut from a reject silk shirt.

Over decades I found myself returning to natural fibres and threads for the pleasure, relaxation and purposefulness they provide that appeals to all my senses. Chances to make paper, textile art, fabric paint, pot, spin, eco-dye, knit, crochet and sew crept into my consciousness between career and children. In fact it was playing with paint and clay when my three gorgeous children were little (now grown) that I attribute my creative development.

Leadership study last year heightened my awareness that the world is drowning in clothing, with cheap and cheerful ‘fast fashion’ feeding society’s over-consumption of textiles – many being synthetic fibres that lead to disposal issues. Books by journalists such as Lucy Siegle in the United Kingdom To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing out the World and Elizabeth Cline in the United States Overdressed: The shockingly high cost of cheap fashion have articulated these problems well. Continue reading →

Sew 91 – Small actions feed big picture

In a variation from my usual clothing-to-clothing upcycling, Sew 91 is a strappy dress recast as a carry-all bag.

Reducing consumption by reusing stuff that already exists in the world is something we as individuals can do in response to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Although I live with geologists who have a long-term perspective on climate change across millennia, yesterday’s IPCC report presents a compelling compilation of 1729 expert and government reviewers distilled by 436 contributing authors.

Their considered view is that the effects of climate change are already occurring on all continents … the world is ill-prepared for risks from a changing climate … but there are opportunities to respond to such risks.

In an ABC 730 interview last night with Sarah Ferguson, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group II Dr Chris Field said: “The impacts of changes that have already occurred are widespread and consequential … and the risks of impacts that are severe, pervasive and irreversible is much greater if we stay on a path of continued high emissions.” Continue reading →