About
Hi. I'm Boo, the designer and 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. I fell in love with screen-printing on a school trip to the Adelaide hills in primary school. From late-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 studied design teaching and textiles at the University of South Australia, trying my hand at many aspects of textile art. Years later, I studied fabric printing and design at Grafton TAFE. I've also 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 old grainy photo, hand painting a screen-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 my day job 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. Over the years, my stall and my business steadily grew ... the photos show my first stall In Darwin - and my last market stall in 2024.
In 2015 & 2016 I undertook a residency at the Territory Wildlife Park. In 2015 I had a solo exhibition based on the first year of this experience. 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. This studio – Susurrus Studio – is now the hub of my business. Located on our bush block an hour south of Darwin, it’s where I design and sew today.
About the process
I began my textile adventure lino printing, screen printing and hand painting fabric.
My textiles are now digitally printed. Digital fabric printing allows the freedom to faithfully reproduce designs created by hand. All designs begin as sketches. Developing these sketches 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.
I use Adobe Photoshop and CORELDraw to turn my sketches, prints and paintings into fully realised designs and repeats.
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.
Most of what I print I set up as 'cut and sew' patterns. This involves applying the designs to pattern templates in my computer and then arranging all the pieces into one large file to print. This ensures that the print ends up exactly where I want it on the finished item. It also reduces waste - by a lot - which is something I strive to do in all aspects of my work.
My amazing printer can now laser cut, so some of my fabric now arrives cut and boxed. Other items are too fiddly and it's still best for me to cut them myself. I have a large cutting table and use a hand rotary cutter to cut each item individually. Items then need to be interfaced, pressed and linings cut before stitching begins. Once the sewing assembly has been completed, cushions need to be turned the right way out and bags need straps constructed, bases installed, feet and buttons attached.
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.
Inspirations
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.
In 2015 and 2016 I undertook an artistic residency at the Territory Wildlife Park. This gave me an incredible opportunity to see amazing critters up close - to become a piece of gym equipment for a sugar glider, to feed a river ray, to spend hours up close and personal with a small family of bobbing curlews, a peregrine falcon, a wedge-tailed eagle, a rufous owl, a pair of feisty red-tailed black cockatoos.
Living on a bush block affords me an enormous amount of local inspiration too. If I see a bird on our block, I want to design a fabric in honour of that bird. I haven't gotten to them all yet, but I'm working on it.
I've also been finding inspiration in the incredibly diverse mangrove environs around Darwin.
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.
Where to find me
You can find my work at
The Local
Shop 6
36 Parap Place
Parap Village Shopping Centre
PARAP NT 0841
I have a large range of work in this store, which is managed by my son Dorian and co-owned by Dorian, my partner Orlando and myself.
The Local showcases the work of close to 50 other Darwin local artists, making it a fantastic place to add to your itinerary if you're visiting the Top End - or if you're a local looking for a gift for someone (including yourself!).
Events
Occasionally, I pop up at an event. Usually in Darwin, but hey, you never know.
If you'd like to stay up-to-date on any events I'm planning on attending, sign up to my newsletter below. You won't get loads of email from me, promise... I'm too busy designing & sewing to bother you with spam!