Shellharbour’s sewing classes stitch together sustainability and creativity for National Recycling Week

Learn to sew workshops are booking out in the Illawarra due to the rise in the cost of living, increased awareness of the environmental impact of fashion turnover and the benefits of creative pursuits on mental health.

Shellharbour City Council is hosting a workshop on the Japanese functional embroidery technique of Sashiko as part of its hands-on National Recycling Week activities from 11-17 November, which have included sustainability focused events from seed collecting for gardeners to making paper beaded jewellery.

However, the sewing workshop quickly sold out, along with another sewing workshop Mend & Makeover in December, facilitated by The Sewing Collective.

Due to their popularity, Shellharbour City Library staff are looking to include more sewing workshops in the library’s Create Space, which houses sewing machines available free to library members to enable people to learn skills more popular with earlier generations.

“With rising living costs and growing awareness of the environmental impact of fast fashion, these workshops empower our community with the skills, knowledge and confidence to repurpose items that might otherwise end up in landfill,” Shellharbour’s manager libraries and museum Margie Kirkness said.

The Sewing Collective owner Olivia Gobran said she had witnessed a shift back to physical crafts, not just sewing,

“I’ve seen lots of things explode in recent years and even months, like scrapbooking is back in,” Olivia said.

“Everything went online, and so young people especially want to do something with their hands, get that sense of making something and have that sense of gratification.

“I’ve also seen people drawn to it because of community and wanting to find community, especially post COVID.

“Then, of course, you’ve got people who just want to be more sustainable in their choices.”

She said it was sustainability that brought her to sewing in her early 20s and led to her starting her Wollongong-based business.

“I used to support some fast fashion brands and I didn’t think much of it,” she said.

Now as a full-time ecologist with a passion for the environment, it prompted her to go back to what she learned in school textiles classes and make her own clothes, which also gave her control over what she wanted to wear and how well clothes fit.

Olivia said through the business she started inviting people to project-based workshops, where participants picked up a pattern, learned it together and then took the finished product home.

She said due to demand she then offered a beginner sewing workshop, which was about building basic skills for things like mending.

“As I was talking to people, I realised that some people just really want to strip it right back and go right back to basics,” she said.

Shellharbour City Mayor Chris Homer said the focus of its National Recycling Week activities on things like sustainability measures and circular economies were enabling people to ease cost of living pressures.

“If you can mend a piece of clothing that you paid a lot of money for – and really Japanese embroidery is upcycling – it helps families out, because the big focus is on easing cost of living,” Cr Homer said.

“There’s the seed library, you’re learning how to mend clothes and you can go down to the Reviva Dunmore Centre and our tip shop to find things to repurpose.”

He said it was harking back to practices that were a part of everyday life for previous generations.

“My parents made my school clothes, because I’m the youngest of five,” he said.

“We’ve lost all that, because of the consumption culture we’re in.

“We all like TK Maxx and I’m in there too, but if you fall on hard times or one person loses their job and they’ve got a mortgage that’s tripled, this can help.”

He said rather than spending $150 on a new jacket, there were benefits in learning how to mend an existing one.

“That’s how I live my life and what I got taught by my English parents,” he said.

“I certainly don’t like wasting money that you’ve worked hard for.”

He said learning skills like sewing and gardening had the triple effect of benefiting mental health through mindfulness, helping families financially and allowing people to find more sustainable ways to live.

“That’s the positive loop,” he said.

Learn more about National Recycling Week activities in Shellharbour and Wollongong from 11-17 November.

The Sewing Collective, located at 44 Atchison St, Wollongong, has more workshops coming up, including making a T-shirt with stretch materials and Christmas-themed projects.