By Melissa Meehan
Life as a single parent has its challenges.
And when Madeleine Lancaster suddenly found herself as a sole parent with a young baby moving home to Melbourne from Sydney she knew she needed to be resourceful.
“Realising there was no longer two incomes I started making my daughters clothes,” Ms Landcaster said.
“And I was getting stopped on the street with people asking where I got such cool clothes.”
Finding it too difficult to work in the city and rush back in time to pick her daughter up from childcare, Madeleine turned her hobby into a form of income.
Using what she had learnt while working at Lincraft and what she describes as an innate feel for fabrics, Madeline was making pants, playsuits, tops, overalls, dresses and shirts.
She sold some to her own mothers group and then to others as word of her talents spread to other local groups and she was able to sustain an income for about five years.
All made in what she describes as her tiny kitchen using her dining table as a place to cut the fabric.
“They were all my designs – I have absolutely no formal training in pattern making. It was just innate that I knew what colours went with what,” she says.
“I tried to use interesting trims and used some of my grandmother’s fabrics too.”
When her daughter started school, Madeleine started selling her wares at markets, including the Hawthorn Craft Market, and did that for over 10 years.
But she soon found another niche in the clothing market after making her daughter some leggings for school.
“My daughter hated those school track pants, so she just wore shorts or a dress to school – even in winter,” she said.
“I’d never sewn stretch fabrics before but drafted a pattern and made her a pair of leggings and within a week we were walking home and this lady stopped me and asked where I got the leggings from.
“They were yellow because my daughter went to Deepdene Primary School and it just went from there.”
Soon enough Madeleine was getting request from parents who had kids doing ballet requesting all kinds of colours.
And then she started a school range – which took off, especially after they were picked up by Hawthorn West Primary School.
“The actual girls wear and boys wear got pushed to one side because I got so busy making the leggings,” she said.
Years later, Madeleine still makes all of her leggings at home. But now she has an industrial sewing machine.
During this very interview she was finishing off 20 pairs of leggings – and her story proves that what may start off as a way to save money could very well become something that makes you money in the long-term.
