Before she was even walking Melanie Steadman was obsessed with colour and this obsession has grown into a healthy penchant for making beautiful accessories from vintage fabrics. We caught up with Melanie after she was announced the state winner of Spotlight’s dressmaking competition in October to have a chat about custom textile design, clothes with stories and if sewing is so old fashioned after all.

 

I reckon I started drawing before I could walk. I started recognising colour before most babies so basically when the nurse came round to the house and I was grouping these coloured blocks together, she said, “Oh she’s grouping her colours together” and mum said, “oh yeah, she’s been doing that for ever…” I don’t think she realised how advanced I was but since a young age I’ve been obsessed with colour.

 

 

I was more focused on art all throughout my schooling and up until high school, until I did textiles at school in year 11. I was really crap at sewing, I mean I was pretty bad to start with. It was just something that is a natural extension, everything creative is linked. My first project was I made a skirt out of men’s ties, recycled fabrics etc. And ever since then I’ve liked using recycled fabrics with different textures. I like the idea that something old has a story and you can bring that to the new garment. I feel like when you go into stores, lots of those things might look pretty but they’re soulless, they’re lifeless, and I like things that kind of tell a story or that are a bit precious.

 

 

I’ve found a few sort of interesting things at antique stores and things like that, one of my favourites I found in Sydney.

 

For ages after Tafe, you just have so much. You’ve got all these projects on the go, it’s quite stressful. The fashion industry is really stressful because you’ve got deadlines and all this pressure and I’m an overly ambitious person so I’ll design something that’s got like a million different features that are all complex and interesting and not knowing how to do it. So every time I go to make something it’s a process of discovering how to do it as I’m going along. I kind of underestimate the time it takes to do these things. So I thought, “OK what’s something that I can do that won’t take that long and still kind of gets across my love of these vintage fabrics and things like that so I just came up with this little design. I saw a leather purse from the 1920s in this kind of shape, so I just took that shape and re-worked it.

 

I didn’t really have to work it out because I’ve got the pattern making background so it was easy. So I made my pattern by just drawing a picture of it flat on a piece of paper, how I wanted it to look and traced off all the pattern pieces. It’s basically like making a puzzle.

 

 

You get satisfaction from it. When you finish something you can look at it and go, “oh yeah, that looks alright”. The good thing about making one offs, is that each thing you make is a separate piece of artwork. So I don’t like the idea of mass-production. I like the idea of everything being its own piece of art.

 

Well it's always going to be different and unique. That's one of my driving reasons for doing it myself, is that I always get this stream of ideas running through my head and there's never enough time to make everything. I want to but I think having a point of difference and showing your ingenuity is good.

 

You can buy Melanie's designs from the vintage store in Adelaide: Pipsqueek in Saigon. Shop 1 Number 1 Payneham Road, College Park. Ph. 8363 9577