my menagerie offers a range of handmade soft toys and cuddly felt pieces, for the home & nursery, with an overriding animal theme. Each piece is designed & made by the sole maker, Caitlin, in her Blue Mountains studio. Each piece is hand-stitched, made from a natural, durable & soft merino / pure wool felt and filled with an environmentally-friendly toy stuffing, made from recycled water bottles.

Caitlin has taken inspiration from animal encounters in her childhood, when growing up on a small hobby farm in southern Tasmania, and during time spent with her family out camping and exploring the Tasmanian wilderness. The menagerie features Australian native animals and birds, alongside beloved pets from farm life. Caitlin has spent several years living in Japan, which too has influenced her designs. The hand-stitched detailing odes to the Japanese embroidery technique of “sashiko”, and her minimalistic designs encapsulate and resonate some notable Japanese aesthetics, in particular, finding beauty in simplicity and imperfection.

my menagerie’s pieces can be displayed more ornamentally in a nursery or home, or cuddled to bits!

the materials & eco considerations

my menagerie is all about slow-making and slow-giving. Each piece is designed & hand-stitched by the sole maker, Caitlin, in her Blackheath studio. They are slowly made, in small amounts or as one-off pieces, designed to be a keepsakes that will cherished & last for a long, long time.

Consciousness of its environmental footprint, the maker chooses a high quality, natural & durable felt - merino wool felt; paired with an eco-friendly toy-fill made from recycled plastic PET water bottles, made by local Sydney company, Innergreen. Both the merino wool felt and the Innergreen stuffing are hypoallergenic. The maker sources the felt from Victorian company, Winterwood, and the felt is manufactured in Europe as there is no local commercial felting facility in Australia. Commercially made merino wool felt is chosen for its high quality, smooth finish and overall durability for the tactile soft toys and home furnishings. my menagerie purposefully chooses to make many pieces in their range from “biofelt”, which is undyed felt and made simply from the palette of the sheep’s natural fleece. The coloured felts are made using non-toxic dyes. All of the felts used by my menagerie (undyed natural and colour dyed) are non-toxic and comply with international standards (Oeko-Tex® Standard 100) in being tested for harmful substances and found to have no nasties in the dyes and materials. my menagerie’s pieces are therefore perfectly safe for both little ones and big ones alike.    

my menagerie opts for eco-friendly packaging - tissue paper made from recycled paper, paper-gummed tape and compostable mailer bags made by local Sydney company, Hero Packaging. The mailers have double strips so they can be reused, are made mainly from corn starch and are compostable in your own home compost bin (or if they do end up in landfill). my menagerie consciously steers away from using plastic in their gift wrapping and postage parcels, and when they do need a bit of extra padding to keep a piece safe in the post, they repurpose previously used bubble wrap. 

the maker & her background

Caitlin is from a creative family, who take great inspiration from their surroundings, particularly the flora & fauna. Her father is a woods craftsman and makes incredible furniture & sculptural pieces from Tasmanian’s fine timbers. Her sister designs & makes statement pieces of jewellery & is a talented photographer, as a side to working as a graphic designer. Caitlin’s childhood home & surrounding bush property is perched above the Huon River in southern Tasmania. It has provided much inspiration for my menagerie toy designs:- with the property being home to many native Australian animals & birds, along with the property being a small hobby farm during her childhood and home to a menagerie of farm animals & poultry (chickens, guinea fowl, turkeys, peacocks, Cape Barren geese). She is not the only animal lover in her family; her parents are avid “twitchers” (i.e. bird lovers & watchers) and her mother cares for injured wildlife. Her family has had the pleasure of raising several orphaned wombats from pinkies to joeys, to then be released back into the wild.

Caitlin has recently moved to the majestic Blue Mountains in NSW, after pursuing a legal career in Tasmania, Japan & Sydney. She has put her professional career to one side for now, to follow her creative passion of toy-making. She is excited to take inspiration from her new surroundings and continue to grow her toy-making business. She finds it very rewarding to be able to make keepsake pieces by hand, that she hopes will be cherished for years to come.