About My Handmade Heart

Describe My Handmade Heart in a sentence
My Handmade Heart is just a little something, not much at all but enough. My Handmade heart is rough around the edges, worn with love and care, a few threads loose, torn and mended many times

Tell us about what you sell.
I create one off individual gifts, toys, and home wares for BIG and LITTLE people.
Items I make range from soft toys and quilts to origami paper mobiles, garlands and miniature paper clothing. My signature piece is the Baby Bird Mobile which is a beautiful handmade mobile with soft miniature fabric birds and natural embellishment.
My products are made using mostly Upcycled and Repurposed materials, which means they are almost totally sustainable and healthy for the environment. All products are hand sewn and worked on entirely and only by me

What else goes on there?
My Handmade Heart is run from my home studio/workshop in Sydney. Here is where you will find me most evenings and weekends cutting, pasting, folding, sewing and playing with colours and textures, while my rabbit runs around my feet and my husband plays guitar and amuses me with endless jokes.

What is the story behind the name?
The name My Handmade Heart, came from my love of handmade and sustainable living. I come from a family of creatives and have always had the blanket that Nanna knitted or the dress that mum made me as a baby around to admire. I wanted create heartfelt one off designs that I loved and that evolved naturally rather than mass produced identical pieces.
I have always felt that my own heart was a little like the handmade creations I make……not quite perfect, with beautiful little faults and fractures, a wonky stitch here or a folded crease there………..and out of this feeling My Handmade Heart was born!

How did it all begin?
Instinctively drawn to the creative arts, I have been creating artworks and “making” since early childhood. Passionate about colour and with an eye for design, I have stitched and folded, cut and pasted my way through life; preferring to make than buy, to recycle, reinvent and re-use, to ‘mend and make do’.It was this creative ethic and understanding of how special a handmade item can be that lead to the creation of my unique, handmade products
I have always been a maker since early childhood, but My Handmade Heart really began its life with an ending of another. When my Grandfather passed away in 2009 I wasn’t happy with the idea that all his clothing would be thrown out or donated to charities. He had always taken pride in his appearance and had a wonderful collection of patterned button down shirts in crisp cotton. I decided to save his best shirts and reuse them in a series of small hand sewn “memory” quilts for myself and my Mum and Aunty (his daughters). I enjoyed the process of reinventing the shirts into quilts so much that I just kept making stuff, when I ran out of the shirt material, I found other sustainable and reusable types of fabrics, from skirts, shirts, knits, bed sheets and blankets.

What do you love about what you do?
I love having the freedom to create one off pieces and try my hand at new ideas whenever I feel like it. My Handmade Heart is constantly evolving and not creating the same items over and over allows me to explore and expand my creativity. Every piece I make is such a pleasure to create and I enjoy being able to customise and make every item individual and unique for every customer.

Where do you get your inspiration from?
Mostly I find inspiration in the beautiful things around me and the people who are close to me. Most of my products have started out as one of designs as gifts for close family or friends and developed into more after requests and encouragement. My designs are made with love and I find having that intention behind any design produces the best results for me. Most recently I completed a hand stitched “Poem Quilt” for my baby niece and plan to make more as I loved the process so much!

All my products are handmade using recycled, vintage and new materials, I try to be as environmental and sustainable as possible with my products and take inspiration from the detritus that washes up on local beaches and the relaxed Australian lifestyle and beautiful environment