Sewing Couture Style Dresses From Waste

In this video, Melinda shares her inspirationally creative Waste to Art story on sewing couture style dresses from waste. This story is a beautiful example of showing how you can make something beautiful and spectacular from things that other people have thrown away.

Melinda gives us greater insight into the background, inspiration and process of creating these dresses in her written story Blue Wrap Couture.

Watch the video here or read the summary below.

Sewing Couture Style Dresses from Waste (Video)

An Overview of Sewing Couture-Style Dresses from Waste

Exhibiting each year in the Lake Macquarie Sustainable Neighbourhood’s Waste to Art Exhibition, Melinda’s story will encourage you to start creating!

Melinda is a registered nurse with a passion for sewing. She started making these couture style dresses in 2014, using waste from hospitals, waste from households or other things that people consider garbage.

Clean hospital waste would usually get thrown into the garbage bin, destined for landfill. The creative seamstress feels “it’s a little bit satisfying to know the blue wrap waste has another purpose – to make something really beautiful”.

Op shops, her hospital workplace and people in the community familiar with Melinda’s dresses are go-to places for materials. She aims to reuse fabric and resources already in circulation. One of the couture style dresses seen in the video needed 40 to 50 metres of fabric! This amount of material would be an impossible, out-of-reach costing for a hobby sewist if Melinda bought brand new fabrics.  

Making something beautiful from waste is a process that evolves with time. It’s an incredible journey of looking at problems with different perspectives to create something quite spectacular from things that other people have thrown away.

Enjoy the visually delightful story about Sewing Couture Style Dresses from Waste here. Read Melinda’s complete story about Blue Wrap Couture here.

Waste to Art Exhibition

Sustainable Neighbourhoods Waste to Art Exhibition

Lake Macquarie Sustainable Neighbourhoods are challenging the way we look at waste with the annual Waste to Art exhibition. Find out here how we can see waste differently (video)…

The exhibition is open to everyone in our community – artists, creatives, community groups and schools – and are invited to take up the challenge to create a new life for materials that will otherwise be thrown away.

Where will you find your inspiration? Check out the Exhibition Guide for an artist overview from 2020

To register your interest, visit Sustainable Neighbourhoods.org.au or go straight here for more details.

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