It’s cold, Jim is rehearing for a larger than usual local show tomorrow and I’m preparing an Expression of Interest for the Australian Fashion Council’s Clothing Smart Factory Feasibility Study. I’ve spent the week trying to remember when I first started writing about “making” and its connection to advanced manufacturing. Given that I’m not going outside today I went through my files and what follows is a fourteen year journey from coming back to crochet to smart factory ecosystems. I hope you find it useful.
The Beginning: Discovering the Power of "Critical Making" (2011)
It started with crochet. (Well, not exactly, I've been crocheting since I was 5). It was 2011 and it started with a question about how handmade design was being transformed by social media platforms like Ravelry, the knitting and crochet community site that was revolutionising how makers shared knowledge. In 2011, I was fascinated by how these online communities were creating what I understood as "critical making", a practice organised around making objects while sharing the knowledge surrounding their manufacture.
What I discovered in that early research was profound: traditional craft knowledge was being democratised and distributed through digital networks in ways that had never been possible before. A young crafter could learn techniques from master craftspeople across the globe, and communities were forming around shared values of ethical consumption and sustainability.
I was particularly struck by the story of "Handmade for Christchurch" where a group of women organised donations from the handmade community after the devastating 2011 earthquake, using Facebook as their hub and multiple blogs for distribution. This demonstrated what was then termed "DIY citizenship", that is, highly creative ways of participating and contributing to society that went far beyond traditional community structures.
But even then, I could see the tension. As I wrote about the Craftivist Collective and their train of bunting petition against fare increases in the UK, I realised that making wasn't just about individual creativity, it was becoming a mechanism for social change, community building, and economic innovation. I wrote about it in a book chapter “Coming Back to Crochet”, the pre press copy of which you can read here.
The Bridge: Mobile Makers and the Promise of Digital Fabrication (2014-2016)
By 2014, I'd been thinking deeply about how to bridge the digital networks I'd studied with physical making practices. That's when I proposed and received funding for Mobile Makers, traveling creative digital fabrication research laboratory. We designed and opened a lab with what were then, state of the art 3D printers, digital embroidery machines, and what I still think of as our crown jewel: an incredible 3D printed electronic circular knitting machine from Estonia, the first of its kind in Australia. (The makers of that machine went on to make Kniterate, one of my favourite crowdfunding success stories and the machine I will finally meet in Berlin at the end of the month).
Mobile Makers wasn't just about bringing digital fabrication technologies to regional communities, it was about testing theories of the nexus between craft practices and desktop digital fabrication as pathways to advanced manufacturing. Could we create the same kinds of craft-based knowledge-sharing networks around digital fabrication? Could traditional craft knowledge be enhanced rather than replaced by emerging technologies?
The answer was yes, but with important caveats. What I learned through touring Mobile Makers to Newcastle in 2016 was that people were hungry for this hybrid approach: they wanted to preserve traditional techniques while engaging with new possibilities. But they also needed genuine support, not just access to equipment.
Most importantly, Mobile Makers taught me about the economics of making. We were both facilitating creative expression, and testing new models of distributed manufacturing, micro-entrepreneurship, and community-based innovation. I started to see how the "participation inequality" I'd identified in online craft communities could be addressed through thoughtful infrastructure and education. You can view the 2014 Mobile Makers set up video here
The Evolution: From Craft Communities to Maker Spaces (2015)
In my research on "The Craft Economy" during this period, I was documenting how the commercial platforms that had emerged from the early craft communities were scaling up, and sometimes losing their soul in the process. Etsy's journey from artisanal marketplace to public company was a perfect case study. As they introduced Etsy Manufacturing and began allowing mass-produced items, many of the original community values were being compromised.
But I was also seeing exciting developments. The (then) rise of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter was creating new pathways for makers to test market demand and build audiences before major investments. Museums were beginning to function as creative incubators—the New Museum's NEW INC was showing how cultural institutions could support maker communities while maintaining their educational mission.
This research convinced me that the future of making lay not in choosing between traditional craft and digital fabrication, but in creating new hybrid models that honoured both. The key was developing what I called "collaborative making processes as sites of analysis for the sharing of knowledge." You can read a book chapter that I wrote exploring this in more detail here
The Turning Point: Post-COVID Realisations
When COVID hit, my dad passed away, my kids were interstate and overseas – and my house flooded, (what a great year 2020 was…). We ended up moving to the Fleurieu Peninsula and everything I'd been researching suddenly became urgent and real. Supply chains had collapsed. People were stuck at home rediscovering the value of making things with their hands. Local production wasn't just an interesting research topic—it was essential for community resilience. I started to write about it on Linked in but then the year came crashing down. (see above)
By the time things settled and we had been able to see the kids, get married and finish some large projects, I decided to restart my knitwear business, but this time it would be different. Fleurieu Made would embody everything I'd learned from years of research. It would use only vintage yarns, telling the story of their provenance to create what I'd learned to call "materialised narratives." It would combine traditional techniques with digital tools. Most importantly, it would be designed as a testing ground for circular economy principles.
The decision to work exclusively with vintage yarns wasn't just environmental, it was about proving the commercial viability of circular design principles. Each garment sold with its story, demonstrating that consumers would pay premium prices for products with embedded sustainability narratives.
The Breakthrough: IMAGINE CIRCULAR FASHION (2024)
By 2024, I had more than a decade of research and five years of practical business experience to draw on when we launched IMAGINE CIRCULAR FASHION during Adelaide Fashion Week. This was the culmination of everything I'd been working toward. We designed it as a "living laboratory." People could see traditional knitting techniques alongside electronic embroidery. They could participate in workshops that connected historical textile knowledge with contemporary sustainability challenges. Children could learn to "weave their own waste" while adults explored digital embroidery connected to vintage gaming consoles, exactly the kind of hybrid making I'd first imagined with Mobile Makers.
The response was just wonderful. Over 200 people participated in our four-day program. We ran workshops, events and met some amazing people. Most importantly, Renew Adelaide and Adelaide Arcade Management offered us a six-month extension. We'd proven that there was real demand for what I'd been researching: spaces where traditional craft knowledge, digital fabrication, and circular economy principles could come together in commercially viable ways. While I had to shut it down earlier than I wanted, this experience led to the development of the now successful UniSA Venture Catalyst application where I am building the SaaS platform that will ultimately underpin the next iteration of the hub model.
The Vision: Circular Textile Hub as Research Made Real
Now, as we prepare to submit the EOI for the Smart Clothing Factory, I can see how all the pieces of my research journey connect. The online knowledge-sharing networks I studied in 2011 provided the model for how we'd build community around hubs. The Mobile Makers experience taught us how to bring advanced manufacturing technologies to regional areas. The Craft Economy research showed us both the opportunities and pitfalls of scaling maker communities.
The hub model isn't just about textiles, it's about demonstrating how research can generate real-world change. We're creating a space that demonstrates the "five Rs" : repair, reuse, recycle, reimagine, and rethink and we're doing it in a way that honours the social networks, community engagement, and participatory practices I've been studying for almost two decades.
Sometimes people ask me why an academic became an entrepreneur. There is a long story behind that so I steer the question to, "how does committed research lead to meaningful action?" For me, the answer is that you follow the connections, build on what you learn, and never lose sight of the communities that inspired the work in the first place.
The Bigger Picture: Research as Long-Term Vision
Looking back at fourteen years of research, I can see patterns that weren't visible at the time. The crochet communities of 2011 were early indicators of how digital networks could support distributed manufacturing. The maker movement of 2014 was testing ground for new relationships between traditional and digital knowledge. The post-COVID period revealed the urgency of local production systems.
What emerges from this long view is something I couldn't have planned and couldn't have achieved without each step of the journey: a model for how communities can build economic and environmental resilience through making. The Circular Textile Hub isn't the end point of this research, it's the next phase, where we test whether the insights from fourteen years of study can create lasting change.
The Estonian knitting machine that toured with Mobile Makers was impressive, but what really matters are the networks of knowledge, the community relationships and the economic models that make sustainable making viable in the long term. That's what we're building now.
Every grant application, every research paper, every business experiment has been part of building toward this moment. The academic in me is excited to have such a rich laboratory for testing theories about community engagement, circular economics and knowledge networks. The entrepreneur in me is thrilled to finally have a platform for making all this research matter in the real world and the Italian in me just wants this to be successful so that I can spend my days knitting.
But mostly, I'm grateful for the long arc of discovery that brought me here. Good research is about building tools and relationships and sometimes, if you're very lucky, that change looks just alittle bit like what you've been dreaming about, but better, because it's real.
Now, I’d better get back to that EOI. Our consortium has provided their feedback and its my turn to stitch it into its final form AND It won’t submit itself!
Please do contact me at angelina@fleurieumade.com if you want to discuss any aspect of this research. I’d love to chat.
Russo, A. (2025, May). Circular Textile Hub [Video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/1069460595
ADL Fashion Week. (n.d.). Imagine Circular Fashion Pop-Up. https://adlfashionweek.com/events/imagine-circular-fashion-pop-up
Mobile Makers. (2021, April 21). Mobile Makers - a digital fabrication laboratory [Video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/187636039
Rundle Mall. (n.d.). Imagine Circular Fashion Pop-Up. https://www.rundlemall.com/whats-on/events/imagine-circular-fashion-pop-up
Thomson, R. (2015, July 30). Futuristic 3D printing becomes a reality at the University of Canberra. The Canberra Times. https://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/act/futuristic-3d-printing-becomes-a-reality-at-the-university-of-canberra-20150730-gins4s.html
Thomson, R. (2018, April 23). Futuristic 3D printing becomes a reality at the University of Canberra. The Canberra Times. https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6063580/futuristic-3d-printing-becomes-a-reality-at-the-university-of-canberra/
University of Canberra. (2024, January 8). 3D printers have UC designers making their own way. University of Canberra Newsroom. https://www.canberra.edu.au/about-uc/media/newsroom/2015/july/3d-printers-have-uc-designers-making-their-own-way