Nullarbor Nights Knitwear
Website: www.nullarbornights.com/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nullarbornightsknitwear/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nullarbornightsknitwear/ Email: alice@nullarbornights.com How long have you been making your garments? I have been making Knitwear for approximately 30 years. How did you get started? I bought an old Toyota knitting machine for $80 and started creating Art To Wear garments for a couple of Exhibitions in Victoria, this was prompted by a certain heart-felt anguish that I had not achieved “anything of worth” and was about to turn the ripe old age of 30!! The Exhibitions were greatly encouraging as it showed me there were customers prepared to pay for my designs. I then had to think of ways to create garments that did not take weeks to make and were not prohibitively expensive. What is your greatest inspiration? My love of line and fibres, and being able to translate this into actual products that make customers happy What is the greatest challenge to owning and operating your own business? Definitely the greatest challenge to owning and operating my own business has been riding the seasonal fluctuations and more recently losing all my outlets, including markets, due to the challenges of Covid 19. What is the best thing about owning your own creative business? There are so many wonderful things to owning my own creative business, eg the people I have met over the years, marvelling at the constantly-renewing faith in myself to continue when things looked bleak; which surprises even me (!!), feeling the joy of receiving a new parcel of Yarns from some faraway place, experiencing the travel to sell my garments around the world and to markets around the country, the camaraderie between marketeers, and of course seeing customers happy! |
Hi I'm Alice and I started Nullarbor Nights Knitwear during a 5 year stint living in the Nullarbor Desert in my early thirties.
This phase started in 1991. I had moved there from the hustle and bustle of Melbourne where I had studied at RMIT and Melbourne College of Textiles. The desert Studio and Workshop was situated in a small hand-built stone house tucked away in a secret valley of the Escarpment, near Eucla. Solar power and a small generator created electricity for the sewing machines and my Knitting machine motor. I started selling by ordering telephone books for all major regions throughout Australia and sending knitted and hand-dyed Scarf samples to Galleries around the country. In time I started attending Craft shows which helped to increase the number of outlets for my products. Soon after leaving the Desert I took my Scarves to the San Francisco International Gift Fair, under the auspices of Craft Australia. This was an opportunity to generate many wholesale orders, including to stores on Rodeo Drive. I had a notion of exporting and of taking the Scarves from one of the most remote areas on the planet to selling them in one of the most populated cities. I subsequently took them to New York in 2005. Since then the Scarves have sold in many galleries across the US , Canada, Switzerland, Sweden and of course in galleries through Australia. I now live and work in Queanbeyan NSW and make primarily bespoke garment orders for clients, as well as the signature range of Hand- Dyed Merino Wool Scarves and Wraps . I use mostly natural fibres, Wool, Cotton, Linen, Silk, Alpaca, Mohair and Hemp. The priority has always been to create timeless products, which are flattering to the figure and which wear well. Larger sizes are a specialty. I also make a range of Brooches, Knit Fasteners and Jewellery |
