The Tragedy of Harmony Day 2024

Usually on Harmony Day, I just bust out a yukata or kimono. It's easy, it's beautiful and I love it. This year, I felt I wanted to do something a little different. The school I'm at has a largeish population of students from India, so I thought it would be cool to wear a saree. 

I've got a saree, which I've worn before (see here), but it's very sheer, so not really 100% suitable for a school. Also, I've since learned that red is a very "bride at a wedding" colour and now that's mostly all I hear this saree screaming at me when I take it out. I'm hopeful I'll wear it again, since it is beautiful, but not really right for Harmony Day. Luckily there is someone in Salisbury selling saree and I was able to get a lovely cotton/silk blend one. 

When I bought it, I did ask if it was ok that I would be wearing it, wanting to be respectful to other cultures. The lady I bought it from assured me that anyone seeing me wear it would just think it was beautiful and be happy that I had taken the time to wear it. She did also check that I knew how to put it on properly. 

The most exciting thing about buying the saree, was when I found that the length of fabric actually comes with a section that is designed to be cut off and made into the blouse to match. So cool. My original plan had just been to wear a t-shirt underneath, but I came home more delighted than ever knowing that not only did I have a beautiful new saree, I also had one that allowed me to do some sewing. 

I watched a few tutorials on saree blouse sewing on YouTube and examined the blouse I already had before making up a pattern and giving it a go. I was pretty happy with how it turned out, though I could have cut the neck line at the back slightly lower. 

Then I practiced putting it on. Just like with my yukata and kimono, wearing a saree takes practice. Once you've got the hang of the pleating, most of it is very straight forward. This saree has a beautiful hand painted section on the palla, which if I were wearing it the ordinary drape style, I could have loose on my arm for people to see. Even with it wrapped around, it's beautiful. 

For those still bothering to read this (somewhat long and uninteresting post), I'm wearing this in a reverse mermaid style drape. It had the most coverage and was most practical for a full day of teaching. 

Fun times!

Rachel actually helped me take these photos and she amused herself in between taking photos of me by taking selfies and then photo bombing every chance she could. 

Kids! 

Now that you've read all this way, I bet you are thinking "where is the tragedy?" and getting ready to accuse me of misleading click-bait-esque titles. Stay with me friends, the tragedy is that I did not get to wear this beautiful outfit on Harmony Day this year. Despite my organisation, I was pretty terribly sick come the 21st of March and I spent the day (as I had the previous day) lying around the house in pain. I'm glad I had practiced wearing the saree and thus have these photos, but actually wearing it to an occasion will have to wait for another time. 

Greek Heritage

Harmony Day, celebrated in March each year, is when schools encourage their students to celebrate their heritage. It's about recognising we are different, but that together we can all be a part of the same community. I love it. It's a glimpse of the world that God wants for us - every tribe, every tongue, every nation, coming together. 

Previously, the girls have worn yukata since I have so many on hand, but this year they wanted something a bit more about who they are, rather than just another culture that we also love. Luckily we have Greek heritage, and the girls (particularly Sophie) are super into Greek myths and legends, mostly thanks to the Percy Jackson book series. 

So I offered to make them a Greek costume, and when I stumbled across this post/tutorial on Make it Love it, the girls were on board. I did specify that I was probably only going to make the dress, though they still have dreams they will get a cape, bow and quiver too.

To the cupboard and the plethora of bedsheets I've been given to find what would suit a Greek costume. Turns out I had plenty to choose from and quickly transformed them into some flowing gowns. The girls chose the trim from my stash so no purchasing anything for this project. 

After we were finished though, Sophie told me nervously that she wasn't sure she wanted to wear it after all. Not that she didn't love it, but talking with kids at school, she'd noticed that many of them weren't going to bother dressing up. While I'm sad about it, I know the reality that when kids get to grade 5 and 6, they are somewhat less excited about things that could bring potential embarrassment. I did however, specify that since I'd made this costume, if she wanted something for halloween, or book week in August, that this was likely to be it. Sophie was happy with that and hopefully some of her friends will decide that costumes can be cool so she feels comfortable wearing it then. We shall see. 

These were very straight forward to sew, Rachel's was trimmed with some random satin bias binding in my stash from who knows where, and Sophie was trimmed with self made bias tape left over from my tragic Harmony Day costume. You'll have to come back another day to read about that. I'm not over it yet. 

Majikarp Bag

Sometimes and idea is kicking around for a long time before anything happens with it, and such was the case with this Majikarp Bag. Sophie's birthday was coming up, and I had leftover orange fabric from making my jumpsuit for Steve's office Christmas Party. Perfect timing. 

I'd actually wanted to make Sophie this bag for a while, knowing she'd love it. Additionally, she often needed a bag for jiu-jitsu, but I put off making it, since I didn't have the right fabric on hand. 

All that had changed after the jumpsuit, and so with, I think, two weeks to go before the birthday, I set about making the bag as stealthily as one can. 

The bag itself was just a very simple drawstring situation, though I wanted to line it so the inside looked every bit as beautiful as the outside. I looked at a few reference images of Majikarp Pokémon online and then did a bit of sketching and planning. I used leftover orange fabric (from the aforementioned jumpsuit) some random white which was a bedsheet and yellow fabric that was still remaining from a friend's wedding table cloth set (that they gifted us before 2010 when I used them as impromptu curtains after we first moved into our house and in other places like these Madeline Costumes in 2016!).

I padded the fins to give them a bit of structure and then put all the pieces of the outer bag together. Just had to sew some fin details on in black before sewing the whole thing up. 

I was lucky enough to have the cord for the drawstring in my stash thanks to random donations from people over the years, so I didn't even need to go to Spotlight for anything. Very happy with the end result, which I photographed late at night when I finished while Sophie was asleep. 

Sophie loves her Majikarp bag and now uses it regularly as her jiu-jitsu bag. It's big enough to fit her water bottle, snack and book easily. 

Bean Bags

Teaching Japanese this year, I wanted to promote this relatively new subject with an all grades cultural festival day. I had been planning it for term two, but the deputy organised for a group of Japanese students to visit the school in the last week of term one and asked me to move it forward. 

So I did. With Japanese students here, it made sense to make it a mixed Australian and Japanese cultural day. This worked well, because it meant that for a first time event, teachers weren't being asked to do completely new things all day, but a mix of things they were familiar with and other new things. 

Anyway, one of the activities I have planned is a Japanese game called たまいれ (tamaire) which translates as "ball in". It's a game where you have a basket on a pole and then the kids throw bean bags in. The team with the most bean bags (or the team that does it in the shortest amount of time) is the winner. You need roughly 100 bean bags per team, so I asked the sports teacher how many we had. 

She said we had about 25 without holes in them, so I asked if we could order more. I was relieved that she ordered them early, because I'm an organised person and it makes sense to me to have everything ready to go three weeks in advance. I was less relieved when she told me she'd ordered 50. This was a fair bit short of the minimum of 100 I had said we needed, but unfortunately those 50 bean bags had cost $400, so there was no way to order more and still have any money left for the rest of the year. 

What is one to do, but solve the problem with sewing. 

I looked through the material I had in my stash for something sturdy enough to become bean bags and found two of the blue stripe curtains that I'd made when we first moved into the house. You can read about them here if you are really interested. These were not in use anymore, so I figured they would make great bean bags. 

Cutting them out was incredibly satisfying, because I could snip and rip. I watched/listened to the Emma miniseries while I did it and ended up with 240 squares of fabric to make into 120 bean bags. It took somewhat less time than I anticipated to actually sew the bean bags, and I did bother to snip the corners to make turning them out easier. 

Both girls helped me to turn the bean bags, and I did a huge chunk of them in church listening to the sermon one Sunday morning. Then I came home and filled each one with 80grams of rice which happened to be on special at Coles that week, making it the most cost effective thing to fill them with. 

Ten hours of work and $20 in materials (only the rice, since the material was recycled), and I'd estimate that these would have cost $300, which is considerably cheeper than the 50 we ordered for school. Mine are also environmentally friendly, since both the cotton fabric and rice inside will compost when we are done with them. 

Not a bad effort for one weekend and now, I can rest easy knowing the bean bag toss station on the cultural festival day has more than enough bean bags to function as it should.