About

Hello and welcome!

I’m Liz Haywood. In my blog I hope to share, inform and entertain on all things about sewing, fashion and zero waste patterncutting.  I post weekly on Mondays, but occasionally Sundays and sometimes Tuesdays.

It is she.

About me: I trained as a clothing patternmaker in Adelaide, Australia in 1990/91, but started my career as a junior cutter in a Cut-Make-Trim (CMT) factory. I worked as a patternmaker and/or cutter in the fashion industry in Adelaide, doing active/swim wear, school and corporate uniforms, bridal, fashion ranges and various freelance jobs. I worked in London as a temp patternmaker during the Cool Britannia era of the late 90s. I’ve also worked as a sewing teacher and knitting pattern writer.

In 2010 we moved to the country, South Australia’s Clare Valley, with our very young family, and so I no longer work in industry.

In 2016, when the babies had started school, I started this blog and almost at the same time read about zero waste patterncutting. I gave zero waste a try as I was curious to see if it was difficult, and immediately clicked with it. I enjoyed it far more than regular patternmaking. At the beginning of 2020 I went hard core and decided I would only make zero waste patterns from now on.

I’m the author of The Dressmaker’s Companion – A practical guide to sewing clothes (2017), Zero Waste Sewing – 16 projects to make, wear and enjoy (2020) and A Year of Zero Waste Sewing – A year of exploration, making and musings on zero waste patterncutting and clothes (2024), which was experimentally published in instalments as zines, and is now a proper book.

Yes, I’m doing smaller and smaller sized books!

I also publish pdf zero waste sewing patterns.

As well as this blog, I write a monthly newsletter on anything I’ve found interesting in the sewing & fashion world that I think you would like too. Subscribe here. All the back issues can be read here.

Recovering from Long Covid since June 2022.

Thanks for dropping by 🙂

Feel free to contact me by email on liz@lizhaywood (dot) com (dot) au. I always reply – it’s just me here!

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