Category Make

This long, enclosed and wearable towel is the perfect project to give new life to tired towels. Great for coming straight home from the pool or the beach without getting changed and ideal for when you need to discreetly change out of your bathers somewhere public.

Treat you or your family with a practical addition to the beach bag this summer that will both reduce waste and save you money. Using the towels from the back of your cupboard, or some bright-coloured or patterned towels picked up in an op shop, this wearable beach towel means the kids can stay in the water for longer. And with enough room to be able to get changed within it, accidentally exposing yourself is a thing of the past.

When it comes to fermented drinks, most people think kombucha or water kefir, but good old-fashioned ginger beer can be just as beneficial for gut health and really easy to make yourself.

It might seem unintuitive, but the link between fermentation and good health is bacteria. And they’re everywhere, from the start of a fermentation process to the insides of your stomach, and responsible not only for digesting things inside our intestines, but things outside them, too. Not content with breaking down our food for digestion, bacteria reduces it into molecules more easily absorbed by our bodies: this is called bioavailability.

Besides that, the microbial community makes vitamins, breaks up toxins and medicines, and strengthens our immune systems. All things which are a great advantage for our health and wellbeing.

For the love of good cutlery, we all need a hand-carved Swedish butter knife in our lives. And the best thing is you can carve your own smörkniv from trees growing in your garden.

Hand-carved butter knives are strong, sturdy and a work of art. They range from simple, elegant forms through to animal-shaped spreaders with matching dishes. They’re relatively simple things to make with a few low-tech tools and you probably won’t need to go any further than your garden to gather all the materials you’ll need.

Steeking may not only revolutionise the way you knit, but it also offers a great way to upcycle or reconstruct knitted garments, tailor them to your needs, and save them from landfill or eternal damnation in your darning pile.

What does ‘steek’ mean exactly? If you’re a knitter, you may have seen the word ‘steek’ used in patterns. The technique of steeking garments is not commonly practised in Australia. So it’s not surprising if Australian knitters feel a little bamboozled about its actual meaning.

Steeking is a very old tradition. It is believed to be the original way of putting knitted garments together; and it is still practised around the world, from Estonia to the Shetland Islands and many other places with a strong knitting culture.

What Is Steeking?

In modern knitting, steeking is the act of cutting a piece of knitting and then sewing it back together. Garments are knitted in the round – one tube for the body and two for the sleeves. Because there are no purl rows when you knit in the round, it is a fast and easy technique to create a garment. It also enables the knitter to create an

Macramé is making a resurgence. For some people, this may invoke cringing memories of kitsch décor of the 1970s: knotted hanging baskets and wall hangings made from gaudy-looking jute and twine. Other people may smile in memory of a bygone era. However you remember macramé, or whether you are new to the art of knotting cord, the craft is making a comeback.

Macram. is the art of knotting cord into decorative pieces where the square knot and half-hitch are the most common knots used. Macramé is believed to have originated with 13th century Arab weavers, from the word migramah meaning ‘fringe’. Another belief is that macramé, derived from the word makrama, originated in Turkey as a way of decoratively securing the end threads from woven fabric.

Any type of yarn, cord or rope can be used to make macramé – if you can knot it, you can macramé it.

Visible mending is trending at a time when there have never been so many clothes in the world. In the past two decades there has been a transformational shift in the way most people buy, use and dispose of clothes, leading to exploitation and waste, as well as a loss of skills and knowledge of how clothes are made. Because we know modern-day slavery and the increasing use of synthetic fibres derived from fossil fuels are the main reasons clothes have become so cheap, many are now looking for more thoughtful ways to dress.

Choose Natural Fibres

Long before sustainability became fashionable, HRH Prince Charles had been urging people to consider the environment when choosing what to wear. As patron of the Campaign for Wool, he promotes wool as a renewable and biodegradable resource and has expressed concern about the poisoned legacy we are leaving our children and grandchildren through the rise of synthetics.

Most people have a preference for either crocheting or knitting, so here’s a pattern for each. These are super simple patterns that will make you a beautiful woollen cowl to keep your neck warm in the cooler months.

These cowls can be made with any type of wool. Be on the lookout at op shops and markets for recycled or leftover yarn. Swap with friends or raid mum or grandma’s stash. These also suit homespun yarns if you are a spinner or if you know a spinner.

The green clean movement is big business these days, with microfibre ‘wonder’ cloths (often made of plastic and biocidal silver) peddled as an eco-solution to harmful cleaning chemicals while requiring virtually no effort.

When looking for sustainable alternatives, rags are a great way to use up old fabric scraps, but these often contain plastic materials (e.g. elastane) that mean their eventual landing spot must be in landfill. But fear not! For those of us with a teeny bit of crafty nous or gardening know-how, there are some very simple alternatives.

The two simple cleaning craft projects detailed here can be made from natural unrefined fibres, are completely biodegradable and are suitable for all compost systems at the end of their lives.

Celebrations often carry their own set of rituals and expectations. Many of these rituals can be unsustainable in terms of the increase in consumption and waste which is often inherent to them. Here are some tips to help you rethink your celebrations in order to reduce waste without reducing joy.

BUY ONLY WHAT YOU NEED

Food purchases go up by approximately 80% over the Christmas period. The sad thing is that not all of this food is actually consumed and much of it ends up in landfill. While everyone enjoys having delicious and ‘sometimes’ special food during celebrations, try to think about how much you actually need, and also where this food is coming from.

We know plants need water to grow, however understanding when and how much they need can seem like a mystery only ‘green thumbs’ can solve. Enter the wicking bed!

Wicking beds are an innovative vegie bed irrigation solution. They minimise the watering challenge by creating a water reservoir that sits underneath the soil your vegies grow in. A typical wicking bed has a waterproof lining in the bed, on top of which is a layer of small stones. The stones are then covered with water, landscaping fabric is laid on top and the soil goes on top of that. There’s an inlet pipe and a special overflow setup that prevents the water level from rising up into the soil, which would compromise plant health. The water below the soil layer literally wicks up into the soil, maintaining optimal soil moisture levels at all times (so long as you remember to occasionally top up the reservoir).

Wicking beds will typically have less complications than dripline irrigation, will lose less water to evaporation than overhead sprinklers, and take much less time to top up than it would to hand water the same size bed. Knowing when and how much to water is a breeze. All you need to do is simply top up your bed until water flows out of the overflow outlet.