How Not to Make Avocado Buttons
Or: “It all looked better on Instagram”. Sometimes I get nice ideas for craft sent to me by thoughtful friends. In the past week, both my teen and an Instagram friend sent me this reel, showing how to make buttons from avocado seeds. With avocados in the house, plentiful and cheap, I took this as…
Read MoreNew Pattern! The Near-Zero Waste Sunhat
Friends, it’s my pleasure to announce a new pattern that I’ve been chasing for over a year. It’s a sunhat with less than 5% waste. You’ll be able to try this pattern for FREE, as I’m presenting it at the Making Zen Online Retreat, 27th-31st May. Register HERE (this is an affiliate link). Along with…
Read MoreThe Handiness of a Tiny Pincushion, with Free Pattern
Sharp-eyed readers may notice some similarities between the covers of the books I’ve done: they all have sewing tools on the cover, and some tools feature on all three covers. In particular, The Dressmaker’s Companion and Zero Waste Sewing have a round blue pincushion (the free pattern for which is here). I was very keen…
Read MoreHow to dress a teenager
When I was a teen in high school in the 1980s, my dad decided that my sister and I should get an annual clothing allowance. Like almost all school students in Australia, we wore a uniform and school shoes, which our parents paid for, so the clothing allowance was for everything else. (Years later, on…
Read More6 Ways to wear a tunic dress
A Year of Zero Waste Sewing is now published, and I thought I’d show you some ways to wear one of the patterns in the book, the pleated top (which can also be made as a dress like I’ve done here). This pattern is still available on its own for the bargain price of $5AU…
Read MorePublishing Day! A Year of Zero Waste Sewing
Today is publishing day for A Year of Zero Waste Sewing, a book I started two years ago and experimentally published in instalments as zines. It’s now a proper book. It explores zero waste patterncutting concepts, making clothes for longevity, my own opinionated thoughts on various sewing topics, and stories from zero waste designers. Fashion…
Read More8 Glorious Years of Blogging
The Craft of Clothes blog has just clicked over 8 years. 375 posts, 666,379 views, 316,690 visitors and 2300 comments. My very first blog post had 6 visitors! I knew them all. They were: my mum, brother, best friend from high school, her mother, the website man and a family friend who I mentioned it…
Read MoreCreating the cover for A Year of Zero Waste Sewing
One of the really fun parts of independent publishing is making the book’s cover. The cover for A Year of Zero Waste Sewing was finished this past week. The cover was created by Stu Nankivell, who has done the covers for my previous two books, and styled by me. Several weeks ago, Stu and his…
Read MoreCrafting a Book: A Year of Zero Waste Sewing
Things are coming together as A Year of Zero Waste Sewing moves towards becoming a book. I thought I’d use this post to share the process of independently publishing a book. 10 years ago, I was determined I would never self-publish, but now I’m a convert! If you have something to write about, it’s never…
Read MoreHow to adjust a zero waste pattern
It’s not always easy to do an adjustment on a zero waste sewing pattern. This is because the whole cutting layout IS the pattern, and the shared cutting lines mean that if you change one piece, the pieces around it will be affected. There can be a hesitancy to make alterations because “it won’t be…
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