Creating in Limbo

As I'm writing this I'm currently in another lockdown in Melbourne, Australia, so far this is the 4th one in the past year. In 2020 we were in lockdown for 8 consecutive months with various restrictions put on us such as a curfew, traveling no further than 5kms from home. Basically the harshest lockdowns other than Italy.

It was one of those times where you really go "blerg" and like a lot of people I did. But thankfully it only hit every now and then, where I would netflix and chill for a few days. The entire time over the past 15 months has been absolute limbo.

A bit of insight into my background - I grew up in regional Victoria in the late 80's early 90's where we had no electricity unless it was supplied by a generator and very little money. This was a completely different environment from what my mother was used to and so she made the best of a very strange situation. She would sew during the day creating clothing for my brother and I. Playing in fabric scraps was where I first started to get interested in sewing.

Life changed a bit and it went from playing with fabric scraps to collecting all the foil from our chocolate easter egg wrappers to create outfits for my toys, always gowns and coats because sparkle and shiny things were all the rage in my little brain. What wasn't all the rage was borrowing Mum's favourite fabric scissors that she had saved for and cutting up the foil, thankfully it gave them a good sharpen. But boy did I start to understand how special scissors could be.

I still remember the times where Mum would take us to Melbourne to see her family on the train and our first stop in the City was always David Jones, they had the best toilets and they also had an evening gown area. Mum always took me here and it was one of those things that were just a habit and a bonding thing for us. But it made me fall in love with gowns.

Hop, skip, and a jump I'm 25 working in a big city law firm, had just gotten engaged to a man who was based in Darwin 3000kms away from me, Dad was still alive and still sick at the same time and I was 4 years into law by correspondence and had just dug out my mums first sewing machine "the beast" an Elna Compressa.

I can't remember why, but I had carted that machine from place to place and hadn't touched it since high school, where I nearly failed my home economic course at 16 because I had moved out of home, was working nights in the kitchen of a pub and doing very little work in class but was creating these beautiful beaded pieces at home. My teacher wasn't seeing enough work from me during class hours. For some reason, I possibly felt like I just was going to need it one day.

Pulling that machine out was the start again of me finding my groove again with creating. It definitely evolved after a long break but it was kind of like riding a bike. It started with a garter and then moved onto children's clothing, and pettiskirts. I was by myself a lot as the future husband was in the Military and I had to stay in Melbourne to help my parents out when Dad had medical appointments. So I created... a lot!

Sewing during this time and again in the past few years allowed me to relax and step out of the busy world of chaos, it allowed me to tap into my beta brain and imagine things that I wanted to create. I didn't have a direction of what I wanted to do, I just did it to feel good, to feel like I was accomplishing something. I could see the progress physically in front of me.

I even opened up a sewing school to teach kids and adults how to create simple things with felt through to quilts. I wanted to pass on the joy that I got from creating something out of nothing. I taught them the basics and then they would go on to teach others. It's that whole thing of "give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach a man to fish he eats for life". Well, in my mind it's teach a person to sew give them a hobby and skill for a lifetime.

I may or may not have gone through a quarter-life crisis and decided nope, not doing Law anymore and instead went on to study Couture in the evenings after work. So there was a little bit of insanity thrown in there.

The first time I went "that's it, that's what I want to do" I was sitting at my office desk and it literally just hit me. I wanted to make people smile, I had already aimed to do that most days, be it with a compliment or a joke. I wanted to allow people, all types of people to smile at what they were wearing. I wanted them to do happy dances at the alter (yes I did this). I wanted them to feel comfortable dancing and confidence to look and feel like a queen. It all came back to Mum and I going to those evening gown department stores to look and touch dresses. I decided I wanted to go into wedding gowns, mainly because evening gowns weren't a massive requirement all the time over here. But weddings were the time where people would usually put on a gown for their day.

The second time it hit me was when I was interning with Jason Grech for his 2017 VAMFF collection and I still have that moment on video. They were shooting the collection and it was a stunning french lace mini with bell sleeves with touches of velvet ribbon. It was peach and I had helped out with the millinery on it. The completed look just instantly made me smile, the model was dancing away, having fun and I just stood there jaw open, shivering with excitement over it all. It just felt like pure joy.

After my dad passed away I decided to take a risk and jump, I wanted to create a collection of my own. I had left law at the same time he passed away and had started working in an Environmental Department as an admin. I was working through my grief with a millinery piece that turned into over 1000 hand-sewn pearls onto a crown. It helped me get my mojo back and allowed me to think about what I wanted to do. The Environmental area that I was working in opened my eyes up to how much waste there is in Fashion of any type. Couture tends to have a lot of wastage as they are one-off pieces that can create a lot of scraps.

I started to research sustainable fabrics and found that this was something that was becoming more available in places like the UK and America but only a few fabric shops offered it in Australia. We had no money to do it other than the basic fabric purchases that I had made when items were on sale (fabric in Australia, is expensive. Rarely is there fabric for under $20 pm).

Then panorama hit and after that first initial WTF days. I went this is going to be fantastic for creating. 2 weeks of lock down turned into 4, 6, and then 8 months, and sometimes I couldn't quite work out how I was going to release it. Then the mask mandate came in and I put my skills to use, we created, sold, and donated over 1000 masks during this time. I say we because Damian kept me fed and watered during those very crazy weeks. He learnt the difference between a blunt pair of kitchen scissors and my lovely collection of fabric scissors and why I scream murder if he goes to use them on anything other than fabric.

But that extra income gave me the opportunity to purchase some fabric for samples from a small local fabric store that stocked fabric made from recycled bottles. I sent some items up to Byron Bay to have a shoot as they weren't in lockdown and I had connected with a sustainable motivated content creator who were helping out small businesses doing it tough and they got lost in the post, for a month!! We got there, eventually.

We had a few more hiccups with attempting to shoot the campaign for the collection that consists of 14 different designs all made from sustainably source fabrics

One of the final pieces to this collection was the image above, its my favourite piece I have ever created and I felt it again, that pure joy moment when I saw it on the model for the first time. This piece took over 100 hours to create, it involved math (not my favourite thing), old couture techniques and all my best forms of cutting equipment, from scissors through to my rotary cutter. I filmed the process so people could learn from it. I love the feeling that creating gives me, it's seeing something come to life out of my imagination. Seeing that puzzle that I would put together and pull apart in my head, is there in real life.

The fact that I've been able to continue to create and improvise during a time that has been full of unknowns and uncertainities has kept me going, it's kept me sane. It's the constant in a world full of change. That constant is, that if I find a piece of fabric I love, I can cut it up, sew it and make it something beautiful. Something to make me smile, as well as others. Something to make me feel confident about myself and do random happy dances on photoshoots.

I've been lucky enough in this life to be able to create magical pieces and I want to share them with the world. Find something that allows you to make the world better than it was in any way possible.

That my friend is the end of my ted talk...