Category Archives: COMMUNITY

Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do.   My name is Brooke Anderson and I live in Portland, OR with my pup, Leia, and partner, Emiliano. I work for a local underwear company called Thunderpants USA as the Operations and Marketing Coordinator – all the underwear is made here in the USA with certified organic…

Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do.  I’m Karlie Theuerkauf and I recently just started my sewing journey. I would consider myself to be a “confident” beginner as I’m new to the garment-making world but I’m definitely up for a sewing challenge! I recently got married in Alaska! My husband is a fifth generation…

“At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.” Toni Morrison There is a quiet, gentle determination wrapped up in beauty of the present, amongst her children and husband, that resides in the aura of Nastasia Morris. In her, gratitude for…

‘I’m an optimist. Because what’s the point of the alternative?’ Patti Smith What makes for an admiration is to encounter a person with harmony within. A quiet yet determined sense of achievement, not only in the realms of a career, but as a mother, a wife, an active member of her community, and an inspiration…

“…it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world. …” Mary Oliver It is also a serious thing to recognise the tools we have at hand to overcome hardship, stress, depression, sadness, loneliness to name a few. For everyone it is their own, for your neighbour it…

“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” African Proverb In Buddhist tradition it is believed that it is the mind that creates the illusion of separateness, but once the state of enlightenment is reached within an individual, the fog of illusion lifts and one is able…

Justice McNeil is the epitome of a modern renaissance woman. She paints, sings, sews, holds down a job she loves, looks after her cats and plants and plays the ukulele. Unlike the belief that you ought to take sides on whether you are for nature or technology, perhaps today where the most exciting change is…

When I first encountered Christina Alexander, what came to mind is a quote from Angela Duckworth’s book : Grit: Passion, Perseverance, and the Science of Success: “…there are no shortcuts to excellence. Developing real expertise, figuring out really hard problems, it all takes time -longer than most people imagine…Grit is about working on something you…

“If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” Mother Teresa Most of my grandmother’s contemporaries knew how to sew, knit and mend a pair of trousers, there was minimum waste as almost anything from a piece of wire to an old jacket would be reused over and over again, the…

At the beginning of the 20th century women were still not allowed to paint anywhere apart from their family homes, their male contemporaries were portraying a far wider repertoire of subject matter, from nudes in brothels to plein air landscapes, needlework and sewing however were very much the realm of women’s expected pass times. Emancipation…

Behind every person, there are stories to be told, a life lived sometimes not so very much unlike your own, even if you were born thousands of miles apart. Community bound by a common interest brings not only wisdom of experience to be shared or the joy for that interest, as this project slowly unfolded…

You can always spot a doer from afar. Katherine (Katie) Merisko is a doer, finding great joy and comfort in using her hands, whereby most of us might rest in a semi permanent state of procrastination when it comes to creative home solutions, Katie is churning out project after project and seems really rather quietly…