The rise of the Instagram food celebrity

Office drones, stop that pencil pushing. It turns out you can practically make a career from being really good at Instagram. All you need is an angle. For Phil Ferguson (that's @chiliphilly), it was crocheting wearable food. After moving from Perth to Melbourne mid-last year, Ferguson said he realised he needed a way to make friends, "so I figured I'd make this Instagram account where I'd make all these hats. That's kind of how it started."

It takes a certain type of person to crochet a stack of buttered pancakes dripping with woollen maple syrup that also functions as a beret, or a balaclava of claret grapes, or cronut earmuffs that could very easily double as a Princess Leia costume. "I'm not making these things for practical uses. Half the time people grab them and they're like 'oh, these are actually really heavy' and it's like 'yeah, they have stuffing in them and about 5 kilograms of wool.' They're not the lightest things."

Ferguson, who boasts 134,000 followers at last click, creates free-hand with no plan of how his creations are going to turn out. "I try to turn them around really quickly," he says. "I just make them straight away - I'm not a sketcher and I'm not a drawer. I don't plan or anything like that, I just go into making. So essentially everything is just a first draft."

Due to his popularity on Instagram, Ferguson finds he now gets stopped in the street, which he finds both pleasing and strange. He's done pretty well for a guy who up until recently worked in a cafe making Redskin smoothies (yes, that's exactly what you think it is). But he's stayed surprisingly down to earth. "I don't really do anything, I just have an Instagram account and make hats."

When it comes to meteoric rises on social media, you only need to look to Katherine Sabbath (@katherinesabbath, with 193,000 followers, respectively). Such is the reach of the English teacher-cum-confection-queen, whose creations are as crazy as they are colourful (cupcakes that look like the embodiment of the Japanese punk movement, marine-inspired macarons that look part like space creatures and part like a Little Mermaid hair accessory, a full English breakfasts made of fondant) she's even inspired cake-related tattoos.

But Sabbath is just as realistic as Ferguson when it comes to her fame. "Sometimes I catch myself talking to my friends about all my media commitments and how much work I'm doing and then I realise I'm at home in my pyjamas covered in sprinkles."

Meet Katherine Sabbath at Sweetfest - a celebration of all things baked, fried, dusted, iced, creamed and colourfuy. aMBUSH Gallery, Level 3, 28 Broadway, Central Park, Chippendale. October 17-18, 9am-1pm. $20 includes masterclasses and a complimentary glass of Redbank Emily Brut Cuvee – kids under 12 free. The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Month presented by Citi runs October 1-31, sydney.goodfoodmonth.com.