Handmade Canberra stallholders value ethical and sustainable fashion methods of production when creating their products. The following featured members of the Handmade Community have a strong focus on upcycling and re-purposing pre-loved items.
Sustainable Fashion
Two Threads’ focus is on sustainable slow fashion, small runs and creating long lasting sustainable effortless garments with everyday use in mind. Melbourne based, they aim to dress ageless modern women who choose quality over quantity. Making clothes that are as easy to care for as they are comfortable to wear. Clothes you will fall in love with and stay in love with because they’re made to last.
Kimono Yamamoto brings Japanese textile artistry to life, handcrafting one‑of‑a‑kind bags from kimono fabrics. Owner and maker, Fusae, brings her Tokyo heritage and background in design and patternmaking to thoughtfully design and celebrate the unique prints, textures, and history of the fabric. Rooted in a love of traditional textiles and sustainable making, Fusae carefully sources and repurposes authentic kimono fabrics, giving new life to materials that would otherwise be unused.
For the practical, conscious consumer and self expressive folks – look toward Spunky Bruiser for a full inclusive range of off the rack pieces, or have something custom made. With over 15 years experience, their broad range of multi-seasonal offerings are all made in their Eora / Sydney studio from locally sourced recycled materials – they can even include your sentimental textiles in a custom made garment and offer made to measure services too.
Sustainable Homewares
Matt Dwight creates functional homewares, furniture, and sculptural pieces from salvaged, recycled, and renewable timber. Working from his bush-backed workshop in Thornleigh, Sydney, he blends traditional and contemporary furniture-making and woodturning techniques. Every piece is thoughtfully designed and crafted for everyday use.
Upswitch creates imaginative lamps and lighting using recycled objects. Reimagined items include science laboratory equipment, cameras, vintage jars, books and anything in between are re-purposed into modern, functional art pieces that inspire and illuminate. Each piece is individually hand-made, its design informed by the original use and its own distinct character, giving old disused objects a new life.
A Fiery Heart is the expressive endeavour of glass artist Gisela Spallek. Featuring a range of sculptures, homewares and jewellery that vividly reflect Gisela’s devotion to the process, it is the mission of A Fiery Heart to empower individual expression with distinct high-quality, well-crafted glass products that dance with the light.
Sustainable Gifts
Funkyjournalsis about creating products through a mantra of RE-Use RE-Love and RE-Cycle. They turn old books and records into handmade notebooks to give items destined for landfill, a second life. Combining nostalgia with sustainability, each notebook is a functional work of art.
Lil Gas Urban Bowls are created with love in Bayside Melbourne. Discarded, rusted, scratched and dented gas bottles are reincarnated as funky industrial planters and bowls sitting pride-of-place in beautiful interiors and gardens.
I Am Someone creates beautiful, recycled timber photo blocks. Each block depicts images from charity founder and photographer Steve Argent. The stunning photographs have been taken on location at one of their inspiring children projects or discovered on a wall on Steve’s journeys.
