Lisa started Forage SlowStitching in 2017 producing patterns and teaching workshops for her designs using vintage textiles and foraged treasures from around the world.  The business grew quickly to include an online store and boutique textile tours of Paris. The School of SlowStitching, featuring a range of online virtual classes, was launched after she and Lara met in 2021 and their friendship and professional relationship began.

The collaboration between Lisa and Lara has evolved and grown through a range of projects resulting in the pair becoming business partners in Forage in August 2022.  They’re now focused on having fabulous fun and providing their clients with exciting experiences through their online Boutique, School of SlowStitching, personalised International Tours, exclusive Australian Workshops and ‘money can’t buy’ Luxury Retreats and experiences.

 

Lisa has had a long and varied career in the creative industries. She has gathered expertise as a workshop facilitator, textile artist, florist, food stylist, and visual merchandiser. She has owned two businesses; an upmarket florist and homewares store, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and now channels her passion for creating and sharing into “FORAGE Slow Stitching”. FORAGE enables Lisa to combine her long-standing passion for vintage and reclaimed fabrics and stitching, and share them with others in the workshops she runs both in Australia and internationally.  

Lara has had a lifelong passion for creative and textile arts with her early life spent painting, stitching and sewing with her late grandmother and mother.  She enjoyed a successful career in television and radio production before taking time out to raise her three children. It was during this time she renewed her love of textile arts, sewing, painting and music. She discovered and fell in love with quilting and SlowStitching, embracing and becoming involved in the Australian community of quilters, stitchers and textile designers. During the pandemic she has combined this passion and her production background, producing live and recorded online classes for some of the industry’s biggest names.She is now thrilled to be working with Lisa in the business they both love!

Our Inspiration

Slow stitching centres around the “make do and mend” and “waste not, want not” ethos of yesteryear. It is a nod to the generations that came before ours in which reusing and recycling were necessary and admirable. This is not a complicated process which relies on numerous fancy, perfectly executed stitches and fastidious neatness. Rather, we embrace the timeworn nature of our materials, and the individuality of our stitching methods. Simplicity is key. We are passionate fabric lovers, and we have a stash of “just because” pieces we’ve found along the way to prove it. We love to hunt at flea markets, charity stores and church fetes for the cloth treasures and embellishments we will repurpose. Oh, so many possiblities!