bip bop boo

About

Hi. I'm Boo, the designer & maker behind bip bop boo.

bip bop boo was born from my passion for textiles and design, nurtured over a lifetime.

Born to creative and resourceful parents, I was inspired from a young age to create. I learned to sew as soon as my toes could reach the pedal on the sewing machine. At the age of eleven, I made my first button-up collared shirt. From primary school onwards, I designed posters for local events. I got involved in school newspapers and tried every craft I could find the materials for.

Leaving the family farm at 17 to attend university, my studies have been broad-ranging. I've studied design, textiles, fabric design and printing. I've studied multimedia, creative and professional writing and both domestic and commercial sewing. Through it all, textile design has remained my favourite thing to do.

Never one to be without a space to create, I have created spaces wherever I've lived. I've printed lengths of cloth on a tiny kitchen table in a bush hut with no electricity. I stitched this into clothing on an old treadle machine with the help of an iron heated up on a wood stove. I’ve printed fabric on the sorting table in a shearing shed. (That's me in the photo below, hand painting over a print in the shearing shed ... my son Dorian, looks very excited. As an adult, he was my studio assistant for several years.) I’ve set up a sewing room in a garage in a northern Sydney share house. I've printed fabrics in the freezing cold basement of a stone house in a cherry orchard in the Adelaide Hills. I've printed clothes in the back room of an old suburban church. I did markets from Balmain to Byron Bay alongside full time work in New South Wales. Back in South Australia I had stalls at music festivals while I studied at university and printed fabric on the verandah of my rental property. 

Moving to Darwin made it difficult for me to handprint fabric in this kind of makeshift workshop. The constant heat causes ink to dry in the screens and even lino blocks get tacky and patchy. I had long dreamed of designing fabric on my computer. Finally, technology caught up. Digital fabric printing was born, and I couldn't wait to get started. 

Working around a full-time job, I started designing and printing small runs. I made buttons, bags, cushions and tea towels by hand. In 2011, I did my first Top End craft fair (see the photo below). 

By late 2015 I had undertaken a residency at the Territory Wildlife Park and had a solo exhibition. I quit my job to do a weekly market, working from a tiny standalone room called Nigel (it’s a long story…). I quickly outgrew Nigel. We bought an old post-Cyclone Tracy demountable for my growing business.

I currently sell my work in Darwin through The Local, which I run along with my son Dorian, and my partner, Orlando. 

My design inspirations draw on many sources. I have more ideas banked up in my head than I will ever be able to complete. Since moving to the Territory, I have embraced the flora and fauna of the Top End. I am immersed in a daytime world of burning pandanus and invading magpie geese. Quirky curlews and scuttling bandicoots populate the night. I absorb this world and reflect it through my work.

Lately, I've been spreading my wings and drawing on inspiration from my home state of South Australia. I look forward to incorporating inspiration from across all of Australia in future designs.

Working across a variety of mediums enables me to create diverse fabric designs. I dabble in hand painting, drawing, linocuts, digital drawing and collage. This gives rise to designs that defy rigid stylistic boundaries. Designs are worked into repeat patterns and feature panels. Digital fabric printing allows the freedom to faithfully reproduce designs created by hand.

Most of the fabrics are printed in Australia. I still do small print runs and make almost everything by hand here in the Top End.

Transforming the fabrics into finished items – carefully detailed bags, purses, clothing and furnishings  –  completes the design process. Imagined ideas become tangible objects, beautiful, useful and unique.

I hope you’ll find something in my collection to make you smile.

Boo