two fat quarters

Part of our anti-consumer challenge is to make clothes, or refashion existing items, rather than purchasing mass produced crap made in china and sold in target/myer/etc.

So far this year, I've made the childrens quite a few items. I've made this really cool tiger dress and three pairs or pants.... oh and a woolen vest.

One pair of pants and the vest I made by chopping up a woolen jumper from St. Vinnies. The sleeves became the legs of the pants, the waistband became the waistband of the pants and the vest, and the cuffs and collar of the jumper became the sleeves and collar for the vest.
Check here for ideas on how to turn old jumpers and t-shirts into kids pants.

Late last year I discovered a great online store The Haby Goddess . It's a great place to find cute haberdashery items and funky fabrics. I highly recomend checking it out and signing up for the newsletter.

On Wednesday mornings, you can buy these surprise packs and they come with all sorts of cool goodies including a few fat quarters of fabric, elastics, buttons, toggles, thread...all sorts of things. Anyway, I LOVE a surprise and I love getting things in the mail and so I'm slightly addicted to the Wednesday haby pack :)


I've discovered that two fat quarters is the exact amount of fabric I need to make a pair of size 3 pants !! (well I don't use a pattern, I just trace an existing pair of pants and go from there). Here is a pic of two pairs of pants made from four fat quarters... from The Haby Goddess!




I've gotten quite a few comments from the peeps on the street too! A woman asked if I would make her a pair.... not sure how many fat quarters that will take tho :>

See... Hand Made, Home Made and supporting local business....so much nicer than stuff from the shopping mall.

hello from matt

Well here's my perspective on the whole thing.

Why work harder to buy stuff you don't need and end up throwing away (or in our case putting in the front room/shed).

Grow food, be thrifty and be able to work less and spend more time at home schooling the kids.

the anti-consumerism challenge

And away we goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...

Happy New Year!

Well it's the start of a new year and even though in the past I've made resolutions... they were all pretty half arsed...stuff I obviously didn't really think about that much or care about that much...BUT this new year.... I have something I DO care about. I care about it very much actually.

We, as a family, are taking an anti-consumerism challenge in 2009.

We are going to attempt to not buy stuff :P

Instead of listing the things we aren't going to buy, I will list the things we can spend money on:

*food
*items for health and safety - toiletries, bike helmets, bandaids etc
*shoes
*supplies for growing our own food - seeds, soil/compost, garden tools, etc
*items to make or refashion clothes - fabric, op shop or ebay clothes, haberdashery, yarn etc

Those are the basics, but for things that come up along the way, we are going to try and purchase items second hand from ebay, op shops, swap meets.

I am allowing the luxury of books. We can buy books for ourselves and the childrens unrestricted. Whether they be new or used.

The most important part of the challenge is to avoid spending money at the big chain stores and where possible, we want to support small businesses that exhibit Earth friendly philosophies.

I'm really looking forward to the challenges. I know I spend way too much money on all sorts of crap we don't need. I think that at the very least it will force us to think more about the things we buy and why and where they came from and the resources used to make them.

should be fun!