Sitting beside my mum, Connie, I watched her thread the fabric through the sewing machine.
“Please can I have a go?” I begged. “I promise I’ll be careful.”
It was 1973, and aged seven, I wanted to be a dressmaker, just like Mum.
First, she taught me how to make dresses for my Barbie dolls before we progressed to more complicated designs
Mum taught me everything she knew.
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When I left school, I worked in a bank and did dressmaking as a hobby.
But after I married my husband, Rod, in 1994, and we had two daughters, Lacy and Jess, I started my own dressmaking business, Jacky Ayres Designs.
As Lacy and Jess grew up, I taught them how to sew and stitch, just as my mum had done with me.
Then, when Lacy came to the end of her Year 12 at school, she had a request.
“Could you make me and my friends outfits for schoolies?” she asked.
Schoolies was the graduation event, where students cut their uniforms in half, before signing them and decorating them with puff paint.
But Lacy wanted something more special.
Sitting down at the kitchen table, we came up with some ideas.
I then got to work, tailoring the top to give it more shape, then adding a waistband and decorating the dress with lace.
“Ta-da,” I said, showing Lacy and her friends the finished design.
“I love it,” Lacy beamed.
Two years later, Jess wanted the same treatment, so I made a two-piece tailored outfit from her old school uniform.
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“All my friends were so jealous,” she told me after.
With both of them graduated, I thought my uniform fashion days were over, but they’d only just begun.
After seeing Lacy and Jess’s ensembles, calls and texts began pouring in from students looking for a unique outfit to celebrate their school years.
Now, when I’m not making wedding and formal dresses, I’m surrounded by a pile of old uniforms from schools all over Australia.
Each piece takes three hours to make, and I keep the price as low as I can.
This year, I broke my record and made 90 outfits for schoolies. I’ve even hired a friend to help out.
“I’m getting too old for this,” I laughed to Rod, 63, when the orders started racking up last year.
I never expected a gift for my daughters to become such a popular trend!
Lacy, 27, and Jess, 26, now work in clothes design, and I couldn’t be prouder.
Jacky’s designs can be found on Instagram, @jackyayresdesigns
