If you’ve ever sewn from a PDF pattern, you’ll know the moment I’m talking about. You hit print, the pages keep coming… and coming… and then you’re on the floor with a roll of tape, trying to line up dozens of little triangles. Years ago I used to offer large format printing myself – we had a big plotter in the studio printing patterns onto rolls of paper – so I know first-hand how much easier it makes things. Taping works, and lots of you love it – but there’s an easier way.

What is large format printing?

Every Megan Nielsen PDF pattern comes with large format files (sometimes called “copyshop” files) as well as the print-at-home pages. Instead of tiling the pattern across dozens of A4 or US Letter sheets, the whole pattern is laid out on big sheets, ready to cut. They come in two sizes:

• A0 (about 84 × 119 cm / 33 × 47 in) – the international standard.
• US 36 × 48 inch – made to fit the 36-inch rolls most US print shops use.

Depending on the pattern and the size range, that’s one sheet or a few. You simply send the file to a printer, and your pattern arrives at full size, ready to go – no tape required!

Our big list of printers

The new page lists 72 printers in 11 countries – the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, New Zealand, Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Most of them (68) take orders online and post your pattern to you, and 29 have a shop you can walk into. You can search by name or place, filter by region, and choose online or in-store.

One thing that makes this list special: every printer on it specialises in sewing patterns. They print at true 100% scale, keep your size lines crisp, and know the paper and folding that make a pattern easy to work with. We deliberately left out general copy shops – not because they can’t do it, but because they vary so much.

Find a large format printer near you

My top tips for printing large format

Always print at 100%. This is the big one! Your pattern needs to print at actual size – never “fit to page”. A pattern that’s been shrunk to fit the paper won’t sew up correctly.

Check the test square before you cut. Every pattern has a test square on it. When your printed sheets arrive, measure it first – it only takes a second and saves so much heartache.

In the US? Use the US 36 × 48 inch file. Most US print shops run 36-inch rolls, so hand them the US file rather than the A0 – it’s made to fit their paper.

Using your local copy shop? Plenty of everyday print shops and office supply stores can print large format files too, and it’s often the quickest option if you have one nearby. Just ask before they print: can you print this at 100%, actual size?

Prefer to print at home?

That’s completely fine too – sometimes you just want to start sewing tonight! You can print any of our PDF patterns at home on A4 or US Letter. We have a video walkthrough and a step-by-step guide to help you print at the right scale and piece everything together.

Know a printer we’ve missed?

This list was put together for our sewing community, and it’ll only get better if we build it together. If you love a large format pattern printer that isn’t on the list – or you run one – send us an email and we’ll take a look.

Happy sewing!

Meg xo

The post Where to Print Your Sewing Patterns: Our Big List of Large Format Printers appeared first on Megan Nielsen Journal.

The first attempt I made was using my ruffler foot. The sample on the right is the tulle plus the satin underskirt basted together and then ruffled. The sample on the left is the tulle ruffled onto a flat piece of satin. I love my ruffler foot and I was really confident in this solution until i realised that the skirt sweep was going to be a little too small for comfortable walking and dancing.

My next attempt was using one of my favourite methods – gathering with cord. This is a great method for gathering bulky fabrics that are hard to machine gather, and is quite simple to implement. Using this method I was able to gather up the tulle and satin as one to the correct width – however it was almost impossible to sew onto the bodice with my sewing machine.

The next method I attempted was cartridge pleats (or gauging). This is a method that has been on my radar as it is a historical sewing technique that allows you to gather very large quantities of fabric into a small waist. The most ready examples are from the Victorian time period with their large sweeping skirts and tiny waistlines. Cartridge pleats are done exclusively by hand and are quite time consuming. They are made by sewing two or more even rows of basting stitches. The tails are then drawn up to create very even neat pleats that are tightly packed together. The basting threads are knotted and the basting remains on the inside of the garment permanently keeping them in place.

The cartridge pleats are then whipstitched to the waistline of bodice, or the waistband of a skirt. The interesting thing about cartridge pleats to me, is that the internal intake of the pleat either collapses slightly against the body for a light fabric – or protrudes outwards for a stiffer bulkier fabric.

In an attempt to fulfill Bunny’s wishes of gathering the satin and the tulle together, I overlocked the two together before sewing my basting.

The folded in edge is usually much wider for cartridge pleats, but as I had already cut my fabric out with a standard 1.5cm (5/8″) seam allowance, I was stuck with this, and had to be quite careful with the placement of my basting, and was only able to fit in two rows.

It was quite a long process, but it was so satisfying and I found myself really falling in love with cartridge pleats. Unfortunately when Bunny tried the dress on the weight of the skirt was so significant that the internal edge of the pleats was being pushed into her stomach and made her quite uncomfortable. This is when I realised that a Victorian corset would have extended to the hipline – but because my corset bodice ended at the waist, there was no protective structural layer between the body and the heavy skirt.

So now that I was out of ideas I did the only logical thing – i unpicked it all and started again.

My original plan had been to sew a half circle underskirt to reduce bulk, so I recut the satin as a half circle and attached that to the bodice and the waist stay.

I then applied organza ribbon to the top edge of the embroidered tulle as a facing and to provide me with a stable but unnoticeable base for basting. I also used the organza ribbon as a facing on the centre back of the skirt, to allow me to leave a centre back opening for the zipper. In my experience tulle and zips are not good friends – so I installed the invisible zipper on the satin underskirt only. The tulle skirt has an opening over that area, and the rest of the tulle skirt centre back seam is separate from the underskirt as well. Allowing them to flow and move freely was a good decision and i’m really happy with it.

I then repeated the same process of cartridge pleating – sewing two even rows of basting stitches, dividing the skirt into quarters to control the volume, and then whipstitching the pleats to the waistline.

Everything I’ve read recommended whipstitching the cartridge pleats to the waistline – but after doing this twice I found that whipstitching twice was much more secure and necessary.

I’m so happy with how this turned out and funnily enough I now want to do cartridge pleats on everything. Even though I was exhausted and my fingers hurt from all the hand sewing of heavy fabrics, I was just incredibly satisfied.

To hem the satin underskirt I used a 10cm wide horsehair braid to give to more body and help it to sit away from the body. This worked really well – but unfortunately also had to be hand sewn twice. The first time was when I tried to cartridge pleat the satin and tulle together and the satin was a rectangle. The second was after I had recut the underskirt to a half circle. If you’d like a detailed tutorial on how to sew horsehair braid hemlines, you can find that here.

I really hope you enjoyed this video and the process of sewing a cartridge pleat skirt for Bunny’s dream prom dress. I can’t wait to share the next stage with you!

The post Sewing a Cartridge Pleat Skirt appeared first on Megan Nielsen Journal.

Find Sewciable on the App Store and Google Play store.

The post What Makers Are Saying About Sewciable appeared first on Megan Nielsen Journal.

We’re bringing back the magic of the early days of sewing blogs and social media, when the focus was on helping each other, encouraging each other and making real connections. The feedback from our wonderful beta testers has been incredible, and it’s been so heartening to see how joyful this community already is. Sewciable has been built to be different, on purpose, and we really hope you enjoy being a part of this special community as much we do!

It’s available on the App store and Google Play now.

Join Sewciable on the App store and Google Play now.

The post Introducing Sewciable appeared first on Megan Nielsen Journal.

A crinoline is essentially a structured petticoat that would sit under a petticoat in traditional clothing to hold the skirt away from the body and achieve the desired shape. Historically these have been made lots of ways, but I think most people associate them with hoops, which isn’t always the case. Bunny quite definitely did not want any kind of hoop under her gown, and wanted a soft feeling when she sits. Which works for me, as I did not want to sew hoops, and honestly I haven’t seen many examples of modern crinolines that include hoops.

The skirt of her gown essentially requires four layers. The outermost layer being the embroidered tulle, the second layer being the sage green satin that is the base of the gown skirt, the third layer is the structural support layer aka the crinoline, and the last layer is the lining that sits against her skin. After a lot of research and planning I decided to combine the lining and crinoline petticoat into one to simplify things. My sewing philosophy has always been and will always be: simplify, simplify, simplify.

I had originally drafted a half circle skirt for the lining, and decided this was still a good base to work from. I purchased dress net fabric – which is essentially a very stiff tulle for creating structured underskirts. I’ve seen this called many things, and have also seen it advertised as crinoline fabric if you’re looking for it yourself. Dress net or crinoline fabric, is incredibly stiff and stands up on it’s own, so I did not want to make the entire crinoline petticoat out of this.

What I decided to do was to cut a half circle lining and a half circle out of the dress net and then sew the two together. The reason for this was simple. The dress net will on it’s own, stand out slightly from the body due to it’s structure, the lining however, has a tendency to cling to the body. When you are wearing many layers of fabric anything that clings is very uncomfortable, so I wanted to make sure this didn’t happen to Bunny.

By combining the lining and crinoline I was essentially forcing the lining to sit away from the body as the two fabrics will act as one. To achieve this i cut the three panels of the half circle from the lining and the dress net, then carefully pinned each panel together. I sewed from the waist down to the hem in a number of locations across the waist, always radiating from waist to hem. Once the panels were joined well i sewed the half circle petticoat together treating the lining as the ‘right side’ of the garment to ensure no dress net would touch her body. I hope it’s easy to see in these photos how the dress net natural sits away from the body and creates volume.

Once this base was complete in order to include additional volume I purchased 10m of tulle in the same sage colour as the lining. I cut the tulle into strips and four different widths so that i could sew them at different levels up the skirt hem to lay on of each other and create volume at the hemline – which is where we want most of the volume in this dress.

My ruffler foot was essential to this process and I was so glad that I took the time to purchase and test it early on as it saved me so much time. I joined all the pieces of tulle that made up each of the four layers, so that i had four long strips of tulle. I then simply fed each one through my ruffler foot and once they were gathered I sewed them directly onto the petticoat. There are a lot of ways of using tulle for volume in a petticoat, but this method was preferred by me as it allowed me to add layers of volume incrementally. I also like that it resulted in a very pretty underlayer hem that pokes out when you walk.

If you would like more details of the process and method for constructing this voluminous petticoat, I’ve got a video up on Youtube now that will take you through everything I did.

As a last note I will say that the weight of the gown itself will compress any petticoat crinoline that is underneath it somewhat, so i have found that it is necessary to make the petticoat more voluminous than you wish the final garment to be. That way when the gown and petticoat are combined the weight of the gown will somewhat compress the volume of the petticoat, but the petticoat will still have enough structure left to hold the skirt in the appropriate position.

Now that voluminous tulle petticoat crinoline is complete and I’ve created the volume that Bunny wants for her skirt, I can now move on to making the final skirt! I really hope you are enjoying following along with this process. I’m certainly learning a lot and enjoying myself! As always if you have any questions or tips let me know in the comments.

The post Sewing a Voluminous Tulle Petticoat appeared first on Megan Nielsen Journal.

MAKE IT LOOK INTENTIONAL

My first tip is to always make it look intentional. The winning strategy when mending is to fix it in a way that looks like it could have been a part of the original garment. You’re looking to improve the garment, not just mend the hole as quickly as possible. I believe this is the key to making sure that your mended garments actually get worn. A poorly mended garment is not going to be worn – but similarly, neither is a garment that was mended in a way that makes it look less stylish. So whenever tackling mending, I recommend always trying to mend in a way that adds beauty to your garment as well as function.

For these leggings that I mended for Birdie way back in 2017, I hand sewed two layers of jersey at the knees using a contrast thread and blanket stitch. As these were a ready made garment that I didn’t want to take apart (does anyone actually like unpicking overlock?) I hand sewed the patches to cover where she had blown out the knees crawling around. We managed to get a whole season out of these and i’m so glad that they were still cute enough to pass on to our neighbors for their little girl

MACHINE SEW PATCHES FIRST

My preference is always for machine sewn patches where possible because i think it makes the patch visually blend better with the original garment than a hand sewn patch. However this isn’t always convenient. I like to machine sew patches on all pants sewn for small children as a precaution. This is why you’ll find knee patches come as an option in my Mini Virginia leggings pattern. The benefit here is that the patch will take the wear first, making it easy to remove the patch later, and add a new one, while the original pants remain intact.

When adding a patch to an existing pair of pants I also like to do it by machine when possible. It’s obviously incredibly fiddly to do this on every garment, so I only do this on garments where I can easily unpick the inseam and side seam in the knee area. Here are a pair of Buddy’s pants from when he was little that I patched. He had ripped a big tear in the knee. So i unpicked the side seam and inseam of the knee and first zig zag stitched the tear closed. Then to make the repair look intentional, i cut two symmetrical patches, and added them to both knees (even though the right knee was intact). I used a twin needle for consistency with the rest of the garment, and then sewed the side seams back up. These track pants ended up lasting him the rest of the season, and even went on to be worn by my friends kids.

VISIBLE MENDING WHERE THE VIBE MATCHES

I love hand sewing, and I love hand sewn patches – but they have their place. I recommend only hand sewing patches where it matches the overall feel of the garment or where it’s not physically possible to sew with a machine.

For example an obviously hand sewn patch can look out of place on a very structured tailored garment, but look right at home on a pair of Sashiko jeans. If you need to hand sew a patch on a garment where visible stitches won’t be consistent with the feel of the garment, you might need to switch to a stitch that doesn’t show on the right side of the garment.

IRON ON PATCHES NEED TO BE SEWN TOO

No-one wants to hear this – but iron on patches need to be sewn too. Iron on patches are a wonderful quick fix and you can often find packs of iron on patches in sewing stores. Particularly for denim. These are so convenient as you can quickly iron them over your holes and you’re good to. However as a long term solution I would suggest sewing them down as well. I know that is extra work – but I know from experience that they never last with just the glue provided.

These jeans are a pair that I ripped a hole in back in 2012. At the time I purchased iron on denim knee patches from the local sewing store near my house and ironed them on. They looked great and I loved them, but not even a year later they started peeling at the edges and fall off despite very gentle washing and a lot of care. So I sat down with a rom com and hand sewed them down. They lasted many years after that.

FUTURE PROOF YOUR MAKES

Lastly, i think it’s worth remembering that there is value in future proofing your handmade clothing, especially if you know it’s going to wear in obvious places. When making clothing for my kids I will often add knee patches at the very beginning in the construction phase, which makes the knees much sturdier and means that if holes do develop, they develop on the patch. That was the method I used for these jeans I made for Buddy when he was a toddler. I cut up a pair of Chris’ old torn jeans to remake them into these pants and added leather knee patches to prevent wear.

This is helpful because the patch is usually made of a sturdier material, but also because patches are replaceable. When they do wear out they can be removed completely, or removed and replaced by a new patch. It’s about being proactive rather than reactive.

BONUS TIP – PREWASH YOUR PATCHES!

And as a small bonus tip about patches – please make sure that your patches are prewashed and preshrunk. The way I remember this is actually really a bit silly. There is a Bible verse where Jesus is using old wisdom to make a point:

No-one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on to an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse
Mark 2:21

I’m using this out of context – but the thing i love here is that 2000 years ago it was common knowledge that you should always preshrink your patches. So friends – please don’t forget to prewash your patches!

Some of my favourite patched garments

Children's

Birdie’s Giraffe Mini Jarrah Sweater Dress

19 January 2021

Children's

Gifts for My Tiny Fit Models

16 February 2016

From The Workroom

The Mini Virginia Leggings

16 December 2015

Children's

An Accidental Perfect Fit

11 September 2014

Handmade Wardrobe

Grown Up Knee Patches Revisited

19 April 2013

Handmade Wardrobe

Tutorial: Grown Up Knee Patches

24 July 2012

Children's

Adding Knee Patches to Toddler Pants

19 January 2012

Children's

Bunny’s Little Heart Knee Patch Pants

17 November 2011

The post 5 Tips for Mending With Patches appeared first on Megan Nielsen Journal.

I think that’s what I love so much about mending with embroidery – the fact that you’re taking something that is “ruined” or “damaged” and improving it. Putting time into it to make it better than before.

Let’s take a look at some of my favourite projects! 

Covering up a bleach stain

Many years ago after our Dawn jeans photoshoot, I realised there was tiny little bleach spots on the back of the shorts sample. I was absolutely heartbroken! But never fear friends – this was the way I discovered my favourite way to sort out bleach stains…embroidered flowers!! 

Check out the blog post to read all about the story of the Geraldton Wax embroidered Dawn shorts!

Sashiko Ash Jeans

When the denim on my favourite pair of Ash jeans started to get a little too worn, it was a perfect opportunity to try out a new technique for me…Sashiko mending! Check out the blog post here for the journey!

When it comes to supplies for this project i bought the book Simply Sashiko which is full of lots of Sashiko designs with very clear instructions and measurements for how to transfer them to your fabric. 

Bleached Flint Flowers

Ok friends, this is absolutely one of those fixes that has made me fall in love with the make even more. Does anyone remember these gorgeous mauve Flint shorts? Well, I made the grave error of wearing them on the incredibly rare occasion that I had bleach in the house. I was so sad when I saw the damage initially…but now…it’s all coming up ‘hand stitched pink and purple’ roses. 

Check out the video below to see how I turned my little bleach blunder into the cutest embroidered flowers. 

Sashiko T-Shirt Repair

I’m so grateful my kiddo’s let me practice ideas on their clothing! Especially when it becomes a favourite piece in their closet.

After a dramatic fall on his bike, Buddy’s favourite t-shirt sustained a bit of damage (more than he did thankfully!) and rather than turn it into a rag…I thought I’d try out some mending using Sashiko and patches! I was so thrilled he loved it, and wears the shirt more than ever.

Have you used embroidery to cover up stains or fix parts of your clothes before? I would LOVE to hear (and see) all of your fixes, be sure to pop a comment below to let me know all about your favourite mending project!

Happy Mending! 
Meg xo

The post Mending With Embroidery appeared first on Megan Nielsen Journal.

For the fabric she wanted to choose a very busy Liberty print – which is quite different from the images she had found for me. Given this hack wasn’t something I had done before, or seen her wear before I thought it was worth making a test run that she could try on and see if she liked the style before choosing her final fabric. Whenever i sew a test run of any pattern i much prefer to use a fabric that isn’t valuable enough for me to feel worried about but is also nice enough that the garment could potentially be used afterwards. I just hate waste and this tends to be a real winning strategy for me with making sure i am careful with materials.

My absolute go to for making toiles is old bedsheets. I tend to keep a nice stash of thrifted bed sheets that I can use in my sewing. Some of the prints in vintage sheets are so cute that I wish i could get them again! I also keep any of our own sheets that have worn out, and my mom has passed on many pretty sheets to me that had seen the end of their life as linens but were perfect for test sewing.

So for this dress I turned to my stash of old sheets and pulled out this very pretty Tommy Hilfiger sheet which I must admit I have no memory of buying. It doesn’t match any of our sheet sets, but has been in my linen cupboard for as long as i can remember, so i have a feeling i thrifted it when we still lived in America. One of the things that is so incredible about using bed linens for sewing is their size. I got this entire dress out of a single flat sheet and still had fabric to spare. I thought the little flowers would probably help her decide if she liked the look of a very floral dress.

I thought that the rows of elastic casing would look so pretty with the contrast edging on the sheet so i carefully unpicked it and ironed it all out so that I could use it. The strips were very narrow- only 1″ (2.5cm) wide so i didn’t have a lot of seam allowance to work with, but I made it fit! The method here was incredibly simple. I sewed the entire Protea view C dress, but just did not add the waist tie channel.

After I was finished i took my my 1″/2.5cm strips and folded in and pressed 1/4″ (6mm) on the upper and lower raw edges. For the first row I carefully pinned the channel the entire circumference of the waistline, so that the bottom edge of the channel was aligned with the waist seam. I then top stitched it in place and left a gap to thread 1/4″ (6mm) elastic. The second row of channeling was placed 1″ (2.5cm) above the top edge of the first row of channeling and was attached by the same method.

I also decided to keep the original labels and add them in to the project too. This is a little thing I love doing with any old garment that I take apart and remake – it’s just so fun to keep a record of where my materials came from.

And lastly I added a little bow to the waistline. It has no function, i just like bows and thought it was pretty.

Now here is the funny part. I was starting to fall in love with this dress whilst I was making it, which is always a bittersweet feeling when you are making something to give away. When I had finished making this test dress, Bunny tried in on, developed a very worried facial expression and declared “I think this might be a little too cottagecore for me”. And I think she was right. This dress is a lot with all the skirt and sleeve volume and the little flowers and the contrast elastic channels.

In the end she decided she would like a solid colour linen for her final dress and wants to omit the skirt tiers so that her dress is above the knee length and not quite so voluminous. Given her tastes and style I thought this was a great choice, and I’m really enjoying seeing what fabric she chooses for it.

And of course, I cannot tell a lie – i was more than a little pleased to find that I had an excuse to welcome this dress into my wardrobe. So if anyone wants me I’ll be floating around my garden, cuddling my chickens and pretending that I live in the actual countryside. It’s amazing isn’t it to think that a dress made from a bedsheet could turn out so pretty?

I love how my cottagecore bedsheet Protea dress turned out, and I hope that I’ve convinced you to give a thought to using old sheets in your sewing. I think you’ll be really surprised what great materials you can find in thrift stores/op shops and even in your own linen cupboard.

Some of my other projects using sheets

Handmade Wardrobe

Cottagecore Bedsheet Protea Dress

14 March 2026

Handmade Wardrobe

Tie Front Protea Hack Tutorial

21 September 2025

Children's

Art Smocks!

28 February 2023

Children's

Birdie’s Vintage Sheet Mini Darling Ranges

16 April 2022

Children's

Bunny’s Vintage Sheet Mini Darling Ranges Dress

12 September 2020

Children's

Teaching Bunny and Flossy to Sew

29 May 2018

Handmade Wardrobe

Pajama Set From an Old Sheet

12 April 2018

Handmade Wardrobe

Matilda Dress From an Old Sheet!

23 September 2017

Children's

Bunny & Buddy’s Harmony Week Heritage Costumes

20 June 2016

The post Cottagecore Bedsheet Protea Dress appeared first on Megan Nielsen Journal.

One of the best ways we can all do a little more ‘making do’ and a little less ‘buying new’ (loves a rhyme ?) is to repurpose our materials – fabrics, notions, features etc.

Whether you have old makes that you want to refashion, if you use some old linens in the cupboard (sheets, table cloths, pillow cases…and don’t forget those quilts!) or perhaps you love op shopping for treasures that you can remake: there are endless options and beautiful makes just on the other side of a little inspo.

Shop the bedding aisle

When Bunny and Birdie felt the cold coming on last winter, they of course requested their own “puffer” Hovea Coat…which made me VERY excited! However, I was a bit apprehensive about quilting two jackets in quick succession. Winter doesn’t last very long here in Perth, so time was of the essence. 

So we had a look online to see what ‘quilted bedcovers/quilts/coverlets’ were available in our price range. The girls spotted these two gorgeous puffy bedspreads at Kmart (similar to Target) and off we went! I even had enough left over to make Anita’s little girl a puffy jacket!

There are many reasons why I love this idea: it’s affordable, you get loads of fabric, definitely more than you’ll need for your make; and all of the materials are already there for you. This way if you’re new to sewing or quilting it’s a great way to introduce you to the process!

Check out the video for the full story on this journey :)

Thrift store finds

Did you know that most op shops/thrift stores have little sections dedicated to sewing supplies? Sometimes you can even find meterage of fabric that has never been used. I always make sure to have a little squiz just in case there’s some treasure in there!

Another section I’ve started checking…the linen! You won’t believe the beautiful quilts and bedspreads people give away! Another thing to keep in mind is that op shops/thrift shops sometimes have brand new, unused sheet sets. So be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the gems!

Shopping your own linen cupboard

Protea

When Bunny got some gorgeous new mauve coloured bedsheets can you imagine my sadness (please note my saracasm here) when I realised they were too big for her bed! As a result – I was left with some off-cuts from the sheets, and just enough to make this beautiful tie front, puff sleeve Protea hack blouse!

I wrote a blog tutorial post about it here and I even filmed a super simple video below to show you how you can make your own!

Mini Darling Ranges

We often use thrifted sheets to sew our toiles during testing, and I really feel like some of the most gorgeous prints are found in vintage sheets! Back when I was developing Mini Darling Ranges I was lucky enough to test out two Darling Ranges dresses for my little ones – from vintage sheets I picked up at an op shop years before! Check out the posts here and here.

Hovea Quilt Coat

Ok everyone…I think you should make quilted Hovea jacket using a pre-made bed spread or quilt and we have a blog post here and a video below that’s going to let you in on all the reasons I think it’s an awesome idea!

Remake unworn pieces

Whether it’s a skirt you don’t wear as much as you thought you would or Levi’s in your husband’s wardrobe that are never worn…if you are wondering whether you should remake a piece…let this be your inspo!

PROTEA SKIRT = MARRI DRESS

There was one Protea skirt I didn’t wear as much as I thought and I knew exactly what I wanted to make with it instead..a Marri dress!

There is a blog post coming for this one, but please enjoy the progress pic here, complete with my very apt label use (Panic Sewn ?) and my favourite straps to date – velvet ribbon!

LEVI’S to DAWN JEANS!

We have been inspired by Candice’s Dawn jeans crafted from Men’s Levis from the thrift store!  Check out her blog post here for all of the details on how she crafted her Dawn Jeans!

Some of my other projects using repurposed materials

From The Workroom

Repurposing Materials

12 March 2026

Children's

Art Smocks!

28 February 2023

Children's

Teaching Bunny and Flossy to Sew

29 May 2018

Handmade Wardrobe

Pajama Set From an Old Sheet

12 April 2018

Handmade Wardrobe

Matilda Dress From an Old Sheet!

23 September 2017

Children's

Bunny & Buddy’s Harmony Week Heritage Costumes

20 June 2016

Creative life

Thrifted Fabric

2 November 2011

Handmade Wardrobe

Yellow Forever

12 July 2011

Have you got any secret sources you love to check for materials for your sewing journey? We’d love to hear your tips and tricks for ways we can all save AND reuse/recycle fabrics!

Happy Mending! 
Meg xo

The post Repurposing Materials appeared first on Megan Nielsen Journal.

One thing I love doing is making sure my beloved makes are kept in a great condition. I’ve put so much love and care into making my clothing over the years it would break my heart to let something go because of a small rip or because my body has changed and it doesn’t fit me quite the same! 

This is not a new concept. For as long as garments have existed, so has mending. It’s even mentioned in the Bible! Which I have to admit always makes me giggle. As a child my favourite thing to talk to my Granny about was war rationing. She was born in 1908 and had lived through two World Wars, The Great Depression, and after all that moving from England to Africa with a small child on her own and starting her life all over again. Her stories of saving, remaking, reusing and frugality were the things I would daydream about. I truly believe that scarcity is the fuel of creativity, and it’s incredible how much genius has come out of tough times.

Even if you look at something as ubiquitous as quilting – that exists because of the desire to save fabric scraps and reuse worn out garments. An entire area of our beautiful craft, existing only out of a desire to be careful with our resources and not waste a thing.

About a decade ago i was really missing these stories of my Granny’s and I went on a hunt for the original Make Do and Mend pamphlets and stumbled across this gem of a book. I have loved reading it and flicking through the pages. The hardcover is now out of print and quite pricey but the Kindle version is free. There are so many incredible ideas and techniques which were not only relevant back then – but are still very relevant now.

I think we can all agree it’s been a really tough time for so many people financially, with the cost of living rising and things getting harder to keep up with. It can feel like our favourite stitching hobbies are only getting more expensive – in a time when everyone needs it. If there is one small change I can make that might make things a little easier on the hip pocket – that still helps me nourish my creativity and love for sewing, I’m there for it!

So for the month of March we will be putting together a series all about fabulous, simple and beautiful ways to mend your clothing and make the most of what we have or how we can be creative with sourcing our materials. I really hope you enjoy it and if you have any suggestions for how you Make Do and Mend – please let me know, i’d love to share them with everyone!

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