And.... breathe.

I feel like life has been a bit of a whirlwind for the past 6 or 8 months. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in the least complaining, just that it has been one thing after another (and sometimes over top of another) since last October or so. I just finished up a fairly exciting project which could lead into a larger, even more exciting project and am looking forward to a bit of time to catch my breathe for the next few weeks. Time for lots of printing and some highly anticipated sewing, I have piles of fabric set aside for quilts-to-be that are calling out to me. So, although it is usually my least favourite, I'll enjoy this season of chilly temperatures, shorter days and no deadlines in immediate sight. We're off to Canada in August (with a pitstop in Disneyland for the kiddies) and then it's straight back into the frenzy of making for the Christmas markets, the end of this year already looks like it's going to be crazy in the best kind of way.

Going sustainable and big time shop news

I am super happy to introduce my new hemp/organic cotton basecloth! I have been searching for a few months now for a sustainable replacement for my quilting weight cotton and jumped at the chance to purchase this creamy white and soft, mid-weight gorgeousness. I am picky about my fabric. I want it to feel right and this feels fabulous. It is a bit thicker than my quilting cotton but will still work perfectly for quilts, with the added bonus that hemp creates one of the most durable fabrics on the planet so your quilts will really be heirloom ready. The slightly heavier weight also makes it perfect for cushion covers and light upholstery, even clothing (would make a great skirt). I've added the first of my new panels to the shop today, in new colours of Mint and Camellia Pink, and in even bigger news, I've also decided to offer DOUBLE PANELS of the new basecloth and my existing flax linen/cotton. That's right, all you folk who have been desperate for fat quarters, double panels are your answer! There are only a few available at the moment with more to come in the next few weeks.

So what does this mean for my quilting cotton? It means that what is in the shop now is pretty much all I have and I won't be ordering more (I will be able to offer the bone and grey cotton for a while longer as I have some left on the bolt). I really want to feel good about what I'm selling and creating and while the quilting cotton felt beautiful to the touch, it bothered me to know that the way it is being grown is damaging the earth and potentially the communities that are producing it. I will also be replacing my current linen/cotton basecloth with an equally gorgeous organic linen/organic cotton later this year.



Oh! And I've added two new special edition cotton panel sets to the shop today, as well! Anyone who missed out on the Sorbet panel sets will be happy to see there is now Sorbet II with all new prints. And a lovely selection of blue shades called Evening Song. I'll probably have a few more special edition sets coming as I clear out the random quilting cotton remnants I have hanging around my studio but I think that's it for the Sorbet colours, might have a few meters of the purple.

I think that's all my official news for tonight?

Fat quarter (and smaller pieces) project ideas

Don't you love it when things just work out so perfectly? My giveaway winner turned out to be Gaby, which was a bit weird in itself because she was the last commenter on my giveaway post, just 10 minutes before I drew a name. She was comment number 94 and when I asked the random number generator to choose a number between 1 and 94 it gave me... 94. I have to admit, I was pretty pleased that I didn't have to count through the comments to find the winner but really, how bizarre is that? I guess the Random Number Generator really is quite random. Anyway, it got even more crazy because as I clicked over to Gaby's (awesome) blog to find her contact details, I discovered that she is also a Canadian expat married to an Aussie AND she had a recent post that showed these amazing patchwork stars (that she so kindly allowed me to share here) made from some of my fabric! I'd been planning to do a post suggesting ways to use your handprinted fat quarters from the swap (or panels from my shop ; ) and this pic (plus the one of the AMAZING baby sleep sack that Gaby directed me to, also using some of my fabric patchworked for the front) gave me a perfect seque to share both the winner and some ideas! And so here we are...

I was going to trawl through the internet and list a bunch of projects here but as I started to search, I found many people had already done the hard work for me! So instead, here is a list of places where you can find fantastic posts dedicated to tutorials using fat quarters of fabric - there are so many to choose from, you'll be itching to sign up for the next swap (probably around October) just to get your hands on more amazing fabric to use:

25 things to do with fat quarters by Crazy Little Projects
30 fat quarter ideas from Owen's Olivia
Fat quarter projects from Sew, Mama, Sew!
Fabric Scrap Projects by Tipnut
Fat Quarter Gang by Art Gallery Fabrics
Fat Quarter February on Spoonflower's blog

Who's making what?

the long lost GIVEAWAY : )

Whew, in the madness of wrapping up sale orders, I completely forgot I was going to do a giveaway for all you lovely folk! (Thanks for all the sale love, by the way!! xx) I have a good one for you today to make up for it...



Simply leave me a comment here and you have a chance to win this lovely little prize pack consisting of one A4 size dropcloth artwork (no. 1/24 from dropcloth #7), five 100% cotton handprinted fabric panels and one genuine leather card wallet. Easy as that! Open to anyone worldwide, one comment per person please, winner drawn Sunday, April 21st. If you'd like another chance to win another great set, head over to my Facebook page and leave me comment there too (and Like my page while you're at it. It's only polite ; )

Comments are now closed, thanks so much, everyone, for entering!! I'll draw a winner shortly and notify the lucky person directly

SALE!

Head over to my Etsy shop now for a SALE happening all week:
Sample packs $10
Cotton panels 3 for $20
Linen/cotton panels 3 for $25

Dropcloth artwork $20 and $32

Oobees $40

I'll be back here later today with a giveaway too!

Handprinted: a fabric swap III : fabric!

Aw, poor swap folks, I feel like I've totally abandoned you since the mailout deadline! Not to fear, I'm back to show some of the goodies I have received from my two swap groups (we had 98 people sign up so I joined two groups to have full numbers) and will put together a post later this week with some ideas of how to use these amazing fat quarters.

First up, a gloriously stunning FOUR colour, stencil cut print by screen printer extraordinaire, Sarah Waterhouse. This design is just amazing and the colours are so striking. My kids both love this one and had a little tussle over it until I said I'd make them a cushion cover for their playroom with it - crisis averted!

Some beautifully stamped fabric by Adrienne, made with hand carved stamps of her own design. What makes this one truly special to me is the way she has overprinted the different shaped feathers and accent designs in the multi-colour piece. It is so wonderfully and spontaneously done and the colours are just perfect. (I had the pleasure of meeting Adrienne in person last week at Finders Keepers - Hi, Adrienne! It was great chatting to you {and your pal, her name escapes me, apologies!!}) 

Some more gorgeously subtle stamping by Katja in Germany! She explored a variety of different materials to create these: an old wooden block stamp for the bird/flower bud design, her own linocut for the flamingos and a cork lid for the circles, which in turn form a flower. So clever!

Awesome, simple but super effective wave design, screen printed by Anna. I'm not sure if this one was stencil cut or emulsion but I truly love it, I think it will be great as a cushion cover for my couch, along with the next fabulous piece...

By the hugely talented, Amy of Umbrella Prints! Amy screen printed four sections of this circle for each of the swap participants so that, when put together, they would form a whole. Awesome concept, beautiful (as always) design. So pleased to have this!

Another super talented print maker, Kylie, created this gorgeous design with a hand carved stamp. It's so clever, take a look and see if you can make out the actual shape of the stamp apart from the shapes it creates as a pattern. The lady is a genius, I tell you. Also destined for couch cushion fame, I think it will be perfect with the two above.

And last but most certainly not least is a collection of screen and block prints by Krista, who has been doing all sorts of experimenting with drawing fluid and photo emulsion! I don't want to play favourites but these designs are up there, the geometric block print is so great and the circles made up of tiny lines gives me serious design envy. I'm excited to see where she goes with these 'cause the girl's got huge talent (which we already knew from her quilting prowess).

Thank you so much to each and every one of my swap groups, it has been such a delight to recieve these in the mail and so exciting to see people explore new ground. I've got one more print on it's way from the UK so hopefully that will turn up in time for my post of fabric usage ideas. I'm eager to sew with these and actually use a few from the first swap as well - off to see what projects I can find and share!

Melbourne Finders Keepers:: lots of new goodies!

And here's the reason I have been so absent around here of late, too busy preparing lots of stock and dreaming up new items to sell at the fabulous Finders Keepers market here in Melbourne this weekend! I was hoping to get some proper pics of the new goodies I'll be debuting but with school holidays and last minute prep, it just ain't happenin' - here are some Instagram shots instead:



New polka dotty 100% linen teatowels in three fun colour combinations...


Brand spanking, limited edition, dropcloth foldover totes...


Snappy new little printed leather card wallets...


and little printed leather bags, perfect for toting your wallet and phone.

Plus my usual bucket totes, cushion covers, dropcloth artwork, oobee and diy oobee kits, fabric panels, fabric sample packs AND for the first time ever, a big basket of misprinted panels at $5 a pop!! Hope to see you there! Out of town folk, I have been working my buns off to make LOTS of stock so that I will have some left for my Etsy shop so look out for an update late next week : )

Mailout deadline for Handprinted: a fabric swap III

Screen printed by Amy.

Various hand printing techniques by Suz of SewPony, all with great results!

Awesome triangles and overprinting from Bec.

The deadline for mailing out your handprinted fabric is fast approaching - Monday, in fact!! If you're running behind, please send your group an email to let them know when they might expect it. I have to admit that I haven't sent mine yet either but they are ready to be wrapped up tomorrow night and popped in the post first thing Monday morning. Again, so much amazing work is popping up in the Flickr group and I've also seen some great stuff from Instagram pals. Can't wait to see what shows up in my post box, so exciting!

New in the shop...

I seem to be perpetually a week or two behind in my blog posts and don't really see that changing any time soon - I thought life would slow down a tad once we got into the routine of Mae going to kinder four days a week (half days) but nope, it's actually more hectic than ever. But everything gets done eventually and, while it took me a couple of weeks from the time they arrived to get them into the shop and another week and a bit to actually mention them here, I am happy to introduce a small range of limited edition, two colour, digitally printed fabrics available as yardage.

While I am all about printing by hand, I really need some way to address the numerous emails I receive each and every week from people requesting fat quarters and meters or yards of my designs. The screens I currently use are only as large as my panels, which is why the panels are the size they are. To print yardage using my screens requires me to print between 9 and 12 (depending on which direction the design goes) impressions per meter and to line up the design for each repeat. It can be done but I find it pretty arduous and my misprint rate on yardage is high (have one smudged or light print and you've got to start all over again, especially frustrating when it's one of the last repeats!) which is why my pricing on the custom printing I offer is quite high. I'd like to be able to offer yardage as a more reasonable price and so, for the short term, I've turned to digital printing.

The three prints above are printed in a gorgeous pale grey with minty, turquoise accents on 100% cotton basecloth. The quality of both the basecloth and the printing itself is EXCELLENT, much better than when I looked into digital printing a couple of years ago. I struggled with what designs to offer and in what colours, I've probably been too reserved and should have made better use of the lack of colour limitations but decided I just had to make a decision and stick to it. I love grey, you guys love grey, I didn't have these prints in grey - there you go. They go excellently with my handprinted fabrics and I've mixed up a minty turquoise ink so I can print some accent designs as well (coming soon). I have 3 meters available of each and then will decide if they get reprinted or if I try some other designs, I have so many brewing in my head now...

You can find these new prints here, available by the fat quarter or half meter (full meters available by ordering 2 of the half meter listing.)



And as a little surprise, I have also listed 12 sample packs and a shwack of new prints, head to the shop to see them all on the front page. Updated to add:: sorry about that folks, those sample packs sold out in record time!! I will have some more next month after Finders Keepers, I promise!

custom king single quilt:: finished!

This week I sent off the completed king single (160cm x 220cm) quilt that I mentioned last month. It turned out so beautifully, with amazing organic lined quilting by Karen of Quilts on Bastings. It's the first time I have sent a quilt out for quilting rather than struggling through it on my wee Janome and it certainly will not be the last. I don't actually mind the quilting as much but the basting I really, really despise, especially with a large quilt like this. It was LOVELY to have someone else take care of that for me and do such a beautiful job of it.

All the fabric in this quilt is either 100% cotton or 55% linen/45% cotton with a mix of handprinted and plain solds for the plus signs. I handprinted a diagonal half of the light grey backing with my Quill design in white and printed the dark charcoal border with my Verses design in black. I'm really so very happy with how this project came together, the client was lovely to work with and we came together to create something that we both truly love. Win and win : )

Handprinted: a fabric swap III update

Wow, lots of amazing work already showing up in the handprinted: fabric Flickr group! Here are a few examples but be sure to click through to the group to check it all out:

Gorgeous designs and a great, detailed blog post on her process from Craft Kitty.

Stunning dove design created with hand carved stamps and a stencil by Marilla Walker.

Amazing stamped fabric by Monique.

And as for me, I decided to finally get my EziCut stencil material out of it's packaging and give it a try. I cut a simple design of organic stripes using a box cutter (an Exacto knife would probably be better for more detailed or finer designs) and thought it would be interesting to try a multicolour, layered print with them. For screen printing, you use this stencil material the exact same way you would use a paper stencil, as shown in my tutorial here.

Stencil vinyl cut and ready to use...

First layer of stripes printed. I'm loving it at this point...

And here are my final prints...

While I don't absolutely hate them, I have to say that I don't really love them at all either... The colours, which looked so great together in my head, somehow don't work for me, even though I switched the yellow for a pale green in my second batch. I do think they will look really great when made up into something, maybe a cushion cover or a little zipper pouch. The print got favourable reviews on Instagram so I'm hoping that my swap buddies won't be as nonplussed about it as I am! It was really very fun to play though and great to have an excuse, otherwise my EziCut might have stayed in it's package for three more months. Now I'm already plotting my next stencil design and am thinking about printing some panels of single layer stripes...

hand printing decisions...

I've scored myself a bit of bonus working time today as my littlest one crashed into a very-rare-these-days nap right after dropping her sister and three friends off at kinder. We do a childcare swap with three other kinder mums and so Wednesdays are my busiest day with two extra kids arriving around 8:45am and another joining us for lunch and the short walk to kinder. By the time I get all four (plus the 2 year old) fed, into shoes and hats and sunscreen, with their snack bags, kinder bags and drink bottles, out the door and ushered to kinder, signed all four of them in and made my exit, I am pretty happy just to have one kid to deal with so you can imagine my extreme delight that the one kid is now asleep and I have some time to relax (and actually think whole thoughts. and drink coffee and eat lunch).

So anyway, the photo above has nothing to do with what I'm up to this afternoon, it's an Instagram from a couple of weeks but I like to have a bit of pretty in a post so it will do. I'm actually planning on wrapping up the 10 or so orders that have come in over the past couple of days (thank you, lovely people!!) and then getting down to planning my contribution to Handprinted: a fabric swap III. I ordered some EziCut stencil material months ago and haven't even taken it out of the package yet so I'd like to come up with a design to try it out and this seems like the perfect excuse. Although I haven't played with my block making stuff for a very long time either... Decisions, decisions... What are you guys working on?