When we lived in Bunya during the millennium drought, we fed the beautiful white cockatoos on the deck. Until they woke us up at the crack of dawn one summer morning: a flock of over 20 cockatoos screeching, carrying on and biting every little lamp off the xmas fairy lights we had hung the day before.

In Mitchelton, the ubiquitous Australian cockatoos are still around, but they tend to fly over, screeching, rather than land in our wilderness garden. They prefer open woodlands like that surrounding our place on Mailmans Track in Bunya. In spite of their noisy and rather destructive habits, I love the cheeky large white birds and wish they would visit.

When my friend, Nonie, suggested I should try my hand at screen printing a black cockatoo, I was inspired. The yellow-tailed black cockatoo is more elusive than its white cousin, but still hang around in the she-oaks down by Kedron Brook. However, I realised I only had crappy photos and even crappier ones of the threatened glossy red black cockatoo from a show at Australia Zoo. But thanks to the friendly white cockatoos we fed in Bunya, I had stacks of great photos of them.

So I worked up three birds, a grevilla leaf and flower for screen printing.

My bucket of emulsion had been sitting in the fridge for near on 18 months, with recommended lifetime after mixed about 9 months. Unperturbed I set to cover 80T screens, and expose them with my drawings.
Some failed, especially the very fine detail, and the times I put the emulsion on too thickly and the exposure failed to wash out or washed out the supposedly exposed emulsion.

In the end I had a patchwork of workable imagery across six screens that I could put together complete birds.

I found a sewing pattern in Mitchelton Library’s generous collection of Love Sewing magazines (thank you, awesome librarians!)

I had an umber-coloured piece of the now phased-out Vintage Finish Linen from the Fabric Store. I cut the pattern pieces and zig zagged to prevent fraying. I then printed a pattern of sorts, with yellow grevilla flowers and dark green grevilla leaf, and using white, yellow and a mixed grey for the birds.

I then assembled the relatively easy blouse, my only challenge being entirely self-made: I forgot to set the machine to long stitches when basting the neckline and had a really hard time unpicking the narrow stitches of contrast coloured cotton.

I love the result. The sleeves are airy and flowing and the gathered neckline resembles what in Danish is called a ‘bondebluse’ (does it translate to ‘peasant blouse’? I am not sure).

The cool linen fabric makes this a perfect summer top for the Queensland heat.
