Advertorial 6-min read  ·  By Fiona McRae  ·  12 October 2026

“They sold the ground out from under me. I’ve got weeks, not months.” — Narelle (71) is letting the last of her handmade baskets go at 55% off before the workshop comes down.

The old weatherboard shopfront that used to be the town bakery is nearly packed up. Her mum’s 1969 Singer — the machine Narelle learned on — is wrapped and waiting by the door. The bolts of sage, cream and cornflower-blue cotton that lined the back wall for thirty years are going into boxes, one at a time. The last things she finished here weren’t quilts or table runners. They were baskets.

“I’d been sewing them in the quiet hours all winter, sitting by the wood heater,” she says. “When my eyes got tired of the fiddly work, I’d switch over to a basket. I didn’t set out to make them the last thing. That’s just how it turned out.”

The block changed hands back in autumn. A developer bought the lot — Narelle’s workshop, the newsagent next door, all of it — and the council has approved the DA. The plan is simple: the whole row comes down. Where her workshop stands, there are drawings for a row of townhouses.

She didn’t let it go without a fight. When the letter came, she wrote back. She put in a submission, then went to the council meeting and stood up to say her piece. More than once she asked the developer’s people whether the one old shopfront might stay — she’d keep renting it, keep it exactly as it was. “They were nice enough about it,” she says. “Nice enough, and then it was a no, every time. To them the whole block is just a line on a map. Not one of them has ever sat down at a machine and made a thing with their own two hands.”

“You can’t quilt in a building that isn’t there any more,” she says, and there’s no heat left in it now. “I’m seventy-one. My hands still do most of what I ask of them. But the twelve-hour days are well behind me. Truth is, this was coming either way — the demolition crew just picked the date.” She looks down at her knuckles, thickened from fifty years at the machine.

A little country town in the Southern Highlands. Early spring. The workshop smells of cotton, old timber and the last of the winter’s firewood. What’s left along the side wall are the baskets, stacked in careful rows — every one quilted, every one with a design of its own. “These I made because I wanted to,” Narelle says. “I can’t take them with me. They ought to go somewhere they’ll get used.”

Fifty years at one machine — and the baskets she almost kept to herself

Narelle has been quilting since she was in her early twenties. Her nan taught her as a girl — how to take a pile of scraps nobody wanted and turn it into something that lasts a lifetime. The baskets came later. She started making them about thirty years ago, one at a time, for people she knew. She has made close to four thousand since. Every single one passed through her hands. Not one of them was ever sold.

It started with a woman at the local show. She stopped at Narelle’s stall — there were quilts and runners out, never baskets — and asked if Narelle could make something for her laundry. “Reckoned her washing basket was the ugliest thing in the house,” Narelle says. “She wanted something that looked like it was meant to be there.”

Narelle went home and made one. When the woman came to pick it up, she stood in the doorway and went quiet for a moment. “She said, ‘I don’t think I want to put washing in this. It’s too pretty to shove in a corner.’ I’ve thought about that for thirty years.”

She never took finished baskets to the shows to sell. She made them quietly — for neighbours, for her kids and grandkids, for the friend who admired one and went home with it under her arm. “They got around by word of mouth, same as everything else I’ve made,” she says. “I never once advertised them. They found their own way to people.”

Until now. The workshop is coming down. These are what’s left. And for the first time in thirty years, anyone can have one.

What makes Narelle’s baskets different

What sets these apart isn’t only the designs, lovely as they are. It’s how they’re made — the same way Narelle has made every quilted thing she’s turned out since the seventies.

Each basket is a heavy cotton-poly blend wrapped around a firm wadded core, then run through the Singer in her quilting pattern. The quilting goes the whole way round the outside, which gives the basket a real weight and shape you can feel the second you pick it up.

The designs aren’t a flat print. Every shape — every bird, animal, leaf and petal — is cut, layered and stitched onto the quilted ground one at a time. The motifs sit slightly raised off the surface; run your fingers over one and you can feel it. “They won’t crack, peel or wash off,” Narelle says. “They’re sewn into the cloth. They’re part of it. Fifty years on, my hands still do it without me thinking.”

“It stands up straight in the corner on its own — empty or full. No wire ring. No plastic frame. The quilted walls do the work.”

That last part matters more than anything. Most soft baskets flop over the moment you take the washing out — the handles fall inwards, the sides cave in, and you end up with a sad heap in the corner. Narelle’s don’t. At 40 cm across and 56 cm tall, one swallows a full load of washing and still sits up straight when it’s empty. The handles are doubled canvas, bartacked at the stress points. “I bartack every handle the way I’ve done it for fifty years,” she says. “It’s the one thing I’ve never had a reason to change.”

• 100% handmade. Every basket is individually cut, quilted, appliquéd and finished by Narelle herself — no production line, no outsourcing.
• Real quilted construction. Cotton-poly face, wadded interior, quilting that goes the whole way round. It holds its shape — full or empty — instead of collapsing like a printed bin.
• Appliquéd designs, not prints. Every motif is cut, layered and stitched on by hand, raised off the surface. It won’t peel, crack or wash off.
• Self-standing structure. Stands up straight on its own, empty or full. No wire ring, no plastic frame — the wadded quilted walls do the work.
• Reinforced handles. Doubled canvas, bartacked at every stress point. Carries a full load of washing — or a heavy pile of blankets — without sagging or pulling loose.
• Roomy and easy to keep clean. 40 × 56 cm: deep enough for washing, blankets, wool or toys. The inside wipes clean.
• Narelle’s whole collection. Every design she ever made — chickens, sheep, a cat, an elephant, a river and wildflowers, sea turtles — quilted over her last winter at the machine.

One’s been in the same corner for eight years

Narelle doesn’t keep many records, but she remembers the people. There’s a friend a bit further down the road she gave a basket to years back. “It started out holding her washing,” Narelle says. “Now it holds her knitting, her good quilts and whatever the grandkids drag in. Eight years on, it’s the most-used thing in her house. Everyone who drops in asks where she got it. She’s the one who finally talked me into letting other people have them.”

“That’s all I ever wanted for them,” Narelle says. “Not something you tuck away because it’s too pretty to touch. Something you keep out because it works.”

That staying power isn’t luck. Narelle makes each one the same way — quilting the body, laying in every shape by hand, finishing the handles herself — across every design she worked up over the years. The final collection has all of them.

This is everything that’s left

The reason there’s a final collection at all comes back to the building. When the block sold, it was marked for demolition, and the crew set a date to clear it. At seventy-one, Narelle is moving in with her daughter in Wollongong at the end of November — there’s a room for her there, but no room for the Singer, the bolts of fabric or the quilting frame. “Some things you carry with you,” she says. “Some things you hand on.”

Most afternoons now go on packing — the patterns, the cotton reels, the photos off the wall. What she finished over the winter is all there will ever be. No more are coming — there’s no apprentice, the machine is being retired, and there’s no one she’s handing the pattern on to. “Nobody wants to spend thirty years learning to do this properly,” she says, not bitterly. “The quilts found their people. I’m hoping the baskets do too.”

A boutique in Bowral once offered to sell them on her behalf for A$175 apiece. She said no — it never sat right with her. Now, with a deadline set and a skip bin already booked, she’s done something she has never done in thirty years: she’s cut that price by 55%, down to A$79 a basket. “I’m not doing this for the money,” she says. “I’d much rather they went to good homes than out to the tip.” Her granddaughter Tahlia (20) is the one who got them online. “I’m hopeless with all that,” Narelle says, laughing. “She had it sorted in an arvo.”

What people say

Where to get one of Narelle’s baskets

Narelle’s baskets are sold only through Craft Folk, the small online shop run by her granddaughter Tahlia (20) — the one place you’ll find the real, handmade baskets from her final collection. They aren’t in the shops, and they never will be.

“Tahlia looks after all of it,” Narelle says. “At my age I don’t keep up with the internet. She had the whole thing up and running before I’d finished my cuppa.”

Payment & delivery: Narelle’s shop takes all major cards, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay. Orders are dispatched within 2–3 business days. Free returns within 90 days.

A word of warning: as word has spread, look-alikes have started popping up on Amazon and other marketplaces. They photograph the same. They are not Narelle’s. The real ones come only from her shop — each one made the way she’s made things for fifty years, with raised, hand-stitched appliqué instead of a flat printed panel.

The bottom line

This is the basket you won’t want to leave in the laundry.

That’s no accident. Narelle made them the way she made everything for fifty years: to be used every day and looked at while you use them. Soft to carry. Stiff enough to stand in the corner on their own. And every time someone new walks into the room, they stop, look closer and reach out to touch the design.

Thirty years she kept these to herself. These are the last ones she’ll ever make.

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