Hello,
I’m Melanie Perkins, you can call me Mel.
Let me tell you a bit about us here at Caboodle Textiles.
At Caboodle Textiles we offer a cut length fabrics service to business, work at home mums, crafters and sewing enthusiasts. – That’s the boring bit about what we do, but it’s doesn’t tell you who we are.
We are a UK based small business run by a partnership of me; Mel and my husband Adam Perkins.
I am the one running the business predominantly. I cut the orders, answer your messages, design and order in the fabric as well as keeping the website and social media platforms running smoothly. If you can think of a job in our company that needs doing then its probably me doing it.
Adam is mostly a silent partner and isn’t based here in the unit as he is busy doing other important things with his day like looking after our son. He offers support when I need it – often assisting with getting large orders into the unit, batch cutting club fabrics and stocks of our most popular solids and always, always building shelving and putting up new lighting that I am constantly requesting.
Caboodle Textiles grew organically from my prior business Caboodle Kids clothing. Caboodle Kids was created when our son was born with two dislocated hips and only one proper hip socket. He had to have multiple surgeries and spent a long time in a spica (full body) cast. This required lots of special clothing and adaptations. From here I caught the sewing bug of joyfully making kids clothing to meet the need and personality of the individual.
With a background in theatre design and costume making it was no problem to make this shift to sewing kids clothing and I quickly realised how much I loved letting my son choose his own style.
My son has always loved bright colours and very few high streets could cater for this. But I could, and that made me very happy.
As Caboodle grew I realised I loved designing the fabrics and giving kids the choice to develop their own style.
Now as Caboodle Textiles I get to give that opportunity to so many more kids. Letting children express their personality, free from stereotyping or colour restrictions that you may find in high street fashion trends.
I believe that kids are people with independent minds and ideas about how they want to dress. Some kids like the traditional ideas of boys with cars or girls with butterflies. But on the whole, kids don’t fit neatly into marketing boxes (apart from cardboard ones for fun). Given the opportunity kids will express their personality through a whole range of colours and imagery.
Here at Caboodle Textiles we believe that colours are just that and are not matched to gender. We feel that children should be free to dress without restrictions. We encourage kids to explore their own style and developing personality.
