Our Story

Hello and Welcome to The Clothesline.

The Clothesline was born when 2 friends, Andrea & Maria ran out of children to make gifts for!!

As very young girls, we learned to sew, quilt, crochet and create from our own mothers and grandmothers and we have never stopped.

Andrea is a mum and primary school teacher who sews and quilts in her spare time and has always loved coming up with new and fun ways for children to learn. Maria, also a mum, has travelled the world for work and pleasure, always carrying her crochet hooks and balls of yarn long before crochet became ‘fashionable’ again.

So from school, to Uni, husbands and now children …. our crafts have always been there for us, our friend … our sanity.

With 6 girls and a little boy between us we love shopping for interesting fashion, especially if it is uniquely handmade – without paying designer label prices. After buying a few special pieces here and there (which we still do) we realised that we had all the ideas and skills needed to make our own little designs. We started out with plain t-shirts and singlets, coming up with different ways to brighten them up so that they were still great for getting down and dirty, but the kids looked good while doing so. Our girls loved them and so did our friends. So, we started making more and more, for birthdays and Christmas … until … as we said, we ran out of children!

As our confidence grew and we discovered new fabrics and materials from around the world we started experimenting with new designs and ideas that we thought would be useful and practical for other mums and kids out there. Our Pjs, Toy Organisers, Craft Packs and Sleepover packs were all born from our own shopping experiences … after all, there is only so much Dora the Explorer, Thomas and Wiggles merchandise we could handle!

Being mums, we obviously have very limited hours in the day to dedicate to our crafts and to this website so you may notice that our product range has started out small. However, we have a book full of product and design ideas that we are BUSTING to make!! We are also excited to have welcomed some very creative friends to sell their handmade items in our store. They include Beri-bloom, love-janie-lou, little jellygnite, red raspberry, princess essentials, mavis and me, nad nanny jan.

Thanks again for visiting our site, we hope you enjoy shopping with us!

Please feel free to contact us anytime with your comments or ideas at maria@theclothesline.com.au.

Sincerely

Maria & Andrea

(adamae & Ani's House)