Over the past few weeks, you will have most likely seen impacting images of the devastating fires currently raging in Australia. Many people and animals have been greatly affected, and for native Australian wildlife, wide areas of their natural habitat have been completely destroyed. The present situation for Australian wildlife is rightly described as horrific, with hundreds of thousands of koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, birds and other endemic creatures killed. There are of course lots of animals in dire straits, too: injured, strayed, unsheltered, hungry and thirsty. Charities like Wires and the Red Cross are working hard to rescue and take care of them, and raising funds to help.
To try and offer at least a little help, we participated in a sewing event here in Hong Kong, held this past Saturday at the Ensemble Co-Creating Space. Sandra attended and donated lots of our fabrics so that volunteers could sew rescue pouches for small animals. Check out the pictures below for a look at some of the events’ photos, and a sample of these fabric pouches, which will be sent to Australia shortly. They are called Joey pouches, and are pretty easy to make as you can see in this video tutorial.
According to this information on Wires’ website, pouches and lining are always welcome, as long as they come in natural fiber fabrics, not synthetic materials. Therefore, you too can participate in this animal pouch sewing initiative. We encourage you to join in, if you like sewing and/or have spare fabrics around.
Volunteers hard at work
Ensemble Co-Creating Space provided sewing machines for people to sew pouches
Some of the fabrics given to help out
Volunteers sorting through the fabrics
Patterns in different sizes to create pouches for different animals
One of the completed pouches