potholder v 2.0

I decided to have another go making a pot holder since the first one turned out so wonky. Instead of the stitch-right-sides-together-and-turn-out method, I tried just quilting the pieces together right way out and making some binding to go around the edges - much better!



Plus you can use the bias to make a hanging loop. Although I did like the Japanese linen tape used in the last one!

craftin' with mah birches

I've been fixated lately with the idea of making a bunch of stuff with my fabric and taking some fancy product shots. Lotta style. I plan to enlist a friend's fancy DSLR and rustic dining table and have a lotta (haw haw) fun with it.

These aren't an example of such 'fancy shots', just my feeble attempts to tide me over in the meantime:







I love the way these photos totally conceal the wonkyness of the potholder. Obviously I have a lot to learn about sewing with batting and quilting :)

Stitching Night!

I went to my first stitching night at Mikes last night and it was a heap of fun - definitely lived up to all the hype. And I got to meet some lovely people in person, including Bianca from Hollabee. Here's a couple o pics from the night:


Bianca doing her stitching - very cute.


Requisite cupcake shot and lovely freebies from Pip in the foreground (hedgie pincushion, scissors, pins and embroidery hoop).


Towards the end of the night. What a very cool shop - 'twas the first time I'd seen the Bridge road store.


The fruits o' my labour - bobbin girl still needs a stitchy speech bubble with something witty in it.

p.s. - I gave this blog a facelift the other day - for all those non-visiting subscriber folk out there who can't see it :)

cotton/linen mix packs

I really had a giggly old time making these. I felt like for the first time I could put mix packs together where the colours and designs really complimented each other and made a nice little product.



I'm pretty sure by the time I finish writing this post they will mostly be gone from my shop already, as I only had enough fabric left to make a few of them. Next time I'm definitely putting more fabric aside for this!

oooooOOOOoooh

Just saw this at the end of spicks & specs. Soooo cool!





Watch esp if you like animals :)

restless

I've had so many fabric-esque thoughts going through my head of late. Dreams of Shinzi Katoh designs and cute shops in Japan, more dreams about Marimekko and Scandinavian design and Lotta Jansdotter and shapes and colours and ideas running through my head. A new design popped out - exciting. Will show you later ;)

I am soooooo eagre to get my next batch of fabric designs/colourways printed!! I've been waiting weeks for my fabric supplier to get more linen in, and finally it's on it's way to the printer. Now I just have to wait for them not to be busy. Damn it's so frustratingly slow this process. I need to learn to have a few batches in the works at once rather than consecutively.

Anyway, I got all giddy with excitement the other day when I fiiiinally got to make some fabric mix packs out of the cotton/linen fabrics! All orders and swaps out of the way, I could cut up the rest. And they'll be up in the shop tomorrow morning at 9:00am.


I love a plant you can propagate as easily as chopping off a branch and plonking it in a new pot of soil. Note said mix packs in background :)

Drawing, reading, painting

Its been my first relatively 'free' weekend in awhile, and I've been enjoying having the space to do some non-work creative stuff. Buying a watercolour painting kit and having a play (mmm I really like this medium) , starting to read The Artists's Way, and doing some drawing with a nice new technical pencil.

It's been aaaages since I've done any drawing - inspiration is few and far between for these. But I like how this one turned out, inspired by my obsession with lofty warehouse spaces. mmmm.

Mmm Shinzi Katoh

I'm going through a real phase at the moment of being obsessed with the Japanese designer Shinzi Katoh. I love his cute illustrations but more than that I totally respect and admire his use of colour.


1. SK - bento sun, 2. Can you find squirrel, 3. Mug mosaic, 4. Mary Mary, 5. Postcard - Orange Elephant, 6. Postcard - Bear, 7. Postcard - Biggest Animal, 8. Postcard - Almost All, 9. SK - slices of sweetness.


Mmm, a new Shinzi Katoh mug and homemade banana bread with morning tea - how can you go wrong?

Fabric Notebook Cosy kits

Well, the fabric mix packs have all been snapped up already, but the fabric notebook 'cosy' kits are still available in my shop as of right now. *UPDATE* - oops sorry! They've all gone again already! I'll get onto making some more :)





I had fun putting these together and choosing the fabric combinations, and printing out the instructions in colour and guilt free with my new printer jigger!

Quick ramble

Man I have been such a slack blogger of late. I get a little stressed out about the fact that I don't have time to respond to all the lovely comments people leave. I hope I don't offend anyone when I don't. Gosh thats such a silly thing to worry about. I'm sure this lady would tell me off for such thoughts :P

Anywhoo, it feels weird to write a post without any pics so here's some shots of a new toy I have in my office, which some of you might find quite useful/interesting:





It's this cool little add-on to my printer called a CIS. Ink gets fed in to the printer from 6 large ink bottles, which makes printing SOOOOOOO much cheaper than those hideously expensive cartridges. Perfect for small business people like me who chew through lots of ink printing labels and proofs and things. More info here.

In shop news, some fabric mix packs and notebook kits are going up in the shop tomorrow morning :)

Oh and thanks for the great response to the Xmas designs - quite overwhelming! I'm not sure when they'll be up and available on the Moo site, but I'll let you know when they are!

A Very Moo Xmas

If all goes according to plan, a bunch of holiday season/xmas theme designs I just made for Moo will be available on their site - yay! You'll be able to turn them into gift cards, mini cards, stickers, and whatever else they have up their sleeves over there.

Gee I must say it's tough trying to make xmas stuff not look tacky and boringly cliché. Took me ages to come up with anything but once I got on a roll it was okay and I started to really enjoy it. Plus, put linen as a backdrop and anything looks 10x better, hehehe.

Here's a sneek peek:

Some pictures to fill the gaps

Finally made some more profesh looking bolts for my wholesale orders:



Textile designer Kristen Doran from Sydney just released these notepads and sent me one along with some of her lovely fabric. The notepads were only released as a limited run of 20 but hopefully she makes some more - lots more!


Kristen Doran's 'Peacock Garden' Notepads

[sidetrack] logo competition

Hee how cool is this - my brother is holding a logo design competition for his software (webmin) and there are soooo many entries! a lot of them are quite good too, and submitted by some fairly well known design firms. It's nice to see one of my brothers involved in something designery.

I'm gunna have fun recommending a winner :)

[coming up for air]

Man, i don't usually have super busy, stressful weeks, but this definitely was one. trying to get my fabric up in the shop within 48 hrs of receiving it probably wasn't the cleverest idea at such a time. but the response, again, was fantastic. i'm still really quite stunned at how quickly this stuff sells. it's always a surprise because I'm in it, not outside looking in - I can't really see things for how they are or how appealing they might be.

Check out this awesome post from Pip over at Meet Me at Mikes. All this 'real world' publicity for all the peeps in our little community - I'm so proud of yas all!

Tis funny, a few years ago it felt like all the artisans and crafters you saw at markets and in the paper were (somewhat intimidating), unknown people... and now it feels like we know them all and are all a part of our little community. Or maybe there's still heaps of people out there who I don't know, but because the community has expanded into this online world it doesn't feel so intimidating anymore. Hmm I'm probably not making much sense...

Meanwhile, here's a little contra job I did for my buddy Jeremy over at ImageScience. He needed a 1 year wedding anniversary present for his wife and the themes are clocks and paper. So he commissioned a birch forest clock!



It was fun to put together and it was nice to do something a bit different. Not too hard to make either. You can buy the clock parts from here, and I just got the design printed onto A3 paper and wrapped it (canvas style) around a few pieces of chipboard stuck together (A4 cut down to 21cm x 21cm ). The hole in the middle can be cut out with a cutting knife, or a drill I suppose, if you're careful.



Okay I'm off. Enjoy the rest of your weekend :)

New Fabric!

Just a quick note to say there'll be some new fabric in the shop as of tomorrow morning! Sorry for the late notice and lack of pics - running a bit behind schedule but I should be able to post some proper pictures tonight. If you'd like to be notified earlier you can join my mailing list. Shop update is scheduled for 9:00am Melbourne time.



Oh and thanks for all the lovely birthday wishes :)

Lara += 1

Things I am grateful for today:

- That my birthday didn't fall on Grand Final day this year

- That my boyfriend doesn't need any 'training up' in order to choose wonderful birthday presents:


You can find them here

- That each day I sit down to a wonderful job that I enjoy, and am surrounded by so many lovely people who are infinitely supportive thru this little blog. Thanks so much :)

- That I got to spend the weekend surrounded by my closest friends, spoiling ourselves rotten on a Hen's weekend for my friend Karin. Winery tours, fancy lunch, pampering and then high tea (totally reminiscent of the mad hatter's tea party) at the Windsor Hotel grand ballroom:


Best viewed large (like our stomachs afterwards)

This was all insanely indulgent of us, and cost way too much money. But hey, it was a once off opportunity and I don't pamper myself often :)

out with the old, in with the new

Wow, such lovely responses already to my last post! I'm so glad people liked it! I feel this sort of design is more in the direction that I'd like to be heading.

But on that note, if I'm going to be printing even more new designs, I have to start relinquishing some of my old screens. I've got quite a collection gathering at the printers, and they've asked for some back. Bonsai Forest & Wild Geese, Poppies & Raindrops are the two screens I'm thinking of giving up.

So... the question is, should I do one last run of those old designs before discarding the screens? I thought the linen might help revitalize some of them, such as below:



Honestly now. I can accept when it's time to move on ;)

experiment

mmmm, everything looks nice when mocked up on linen....

A trip to the fabric printer

Today I went for a walk to the fabric printer to check out some colour samples they'd prepared for me. And I did something I've been meaning to do for ages - I took my camera with me!

I think it's true that if you're buying something handmade, it becomes so much more valuable when you feel connected to the process. It's the background if the product that's interesting - how it came to be. I reckon that's why almost all of my customers have found me through my blog. Because you're not just buying something by a nameless, faceless company, you're buying from someone you know, who you've listened to rambling about stuff day in day out.


The printer's building, formerly "The Mighty Apollo Gym" ! They're on the top floor. If the building looks familiar at all it's because it was used in the filming of the TV series "Last Man Standing". The main character supposedly had his funky warehouse apartment in this building, hehehe.


When I arrived, Nadia still had the mixing dishes out, containing the 4 colour samples I requested. This is for a dusty "robins egg" colourway. (The design in the background isn't mine).


Here's one of my screens, standing up against one of their printing tables (note big long tables in background). This screen has the birch forest and riverside adventures designs on it.


Choosing colours for the "teal" colourway. The ones on the fabric are a little too blue, so we're trying for something a bit greener.


The final samples for the robins egg colourway. I totally love that one in the foreground. However it's actually supposed to be the birch/riverside designs in this colour, and on a slightly lighter basecloth. Still, yummy. I might print this combination next time :)


Not a great photo, but when I got there they'd already printed the riverstones + flowing dots designs in the raspberry, on the cream coloured linen (it needs to be heat set first, before I can take it home). Looks really nice in person, not so much in the photo :)

And that's it! I'd love to take some photos of them actually printing but we'll see about that. They didn't seem too keen on the idea, not sure why.

Woe is clumsy me :(

Baaaawh!!! My most favouritest piece of crockery ever! Morning tea will never be the same again :( :(

Luckily I know this lady who is about to send me this mug.... but it's just not the same, ya know? I remember the gorgeous shop I bought it from - cutest shop ever, full of 'shrooms and all sorts of japanesey goodness, with a tiny little cafe on the mezzanine level... sigh.

On the upside, printer just called and has some print sample swatches for me to look at! So I'll go distract myself by looking at those :) Hope the linen looks good!!

Kirin&Co's Tutorial Factory - Tissue box cover

Well, the suggestion of a tissue box cover tutorial definitely generated enough interest, so here it is! I hope it all makes sense and turns out correctly - if you have any troubles or feel the tute needs amending, please let me know!

The tissue box cover is essentially a single flat shape which folds up the sides of your tissue box, and is fastened at the top. This shape can be made in two different ways:

a) From a single piece of outside fabric, plus a single piece of lining.

b) From a number of pieces of outside fabric, sewn together in such a way that the pattern is always upright on all four sides of the box. Plus a single piece of lining.

These two options (and the direction of the fabric) are illustrated below:



Either method is fine - it depends on the fabric you're using and whether or not it has an obvious "right way up".

1) To create the above shape, we firstly need to figure out it's dimensions. Measure the size of your desired tissue box, taking note of the following lengths: W, H, L, X & Y:

Based on the above, this is how your cover measures up:


Don't forget to add 6mm all around for seam allowance!

2) Cut out this shape from your cover fabric using either method a) or method b). Cut out the lining fabric to match.

3) Pin the cover and lining fabrics together right sides facing. Cut two pieces of elastic each about 8cm long, and create two loops. Pin the loops in place between the fabrics, as shown:

4) Sew around the outside of the entire shape, 6mm in from the edge, leaving a gap at the end of one of the side flaps as shown above. You may like to run the machine back and forth over the elastic loops to make them extra secure.

5) Turn the piece inside out and iron flat, then hand stitch the hole closed. (Note: You may wish to test the cover on your box first, to make sure it fits nicely. If any of the flaps are too long you can always turn it back inside out and shorten them).

6) Now just position two buttons as shown below (the elastic loops should be nice and tight), and you're done!

Thank you to Heather for making the original tissue box cover from which this tute was developed!

Journal cover - Japanese style

Weird. Last night I had my second bout of late night stitching in a row. Not sure what's going on there, but I am sure it's not how most "young people" would spend their weekend evenings. But ahh, who cares :)

Anyway, you know how it gets to 10:00pm, and you're sitting on the couch not quite ready for bed but with a sewing project in mind? And you say to yourself "Oh, I'll just cut out the fabric and then go to bed". And you cut out the fabric and then think "oh... I'll just pin it together". And then afterwards you think "oh, I'll just do the first round of stitching", after which you figure that you may as well just finish it off.

Well that's what happened to me last night. I decided to make a journal cover based on a pattern I saw in a couple of Japanese craft books:



It's really quite a simple design, and it seems like almost all Japanese fabric book covers are made this way, but I've never seen it here before:



It wasn't till after I'd made it that I realised how useful that little tuck under flap is. I thought it was just to make it easy to get the cover on, but I found it also helps to keep the cover from buckling when you have the book open flat. You can take up the slack by pulling the flap in tighter. Very neat.



The pattern isn't particularly complicated, but you can find it in either of those books above, which you can find in one of the online Japanese crafty shops that I've listed in previous posts (sorry can't remember which - but I know I've seen them!). Otherwise the pictures above should make good reference. It's just one big rectangle: tapered at one end, folded over and sewn at the other, with the vertical band sewn in also. Measurements should be based on your own journal and common sense :)

One last note - how bloody cute is that fabric!! I'm kicking myself for not buying more. But that's what happens when you're over there - it's all so overwhelming, and when you see something you like you sometimes hold out because you figure you'll find something even better later on. But my tip - don't hold out - just buy buy buy! I found it in Kyoto (again just $1 for a fat quarter) from a shop called Nomura Tailor in Teramachi Arcade. Grr.

Little pencil case

Petey said to me last night: "why don't you make meee anything?" So I asked what he wanted and he said he'd like a little slimline pencil case. I just happened to have a single, suitable zipper in my stash, and some very appropriate fabric (only $1 for a fat quarter in Kyoto - can you believe it??) and put it together late last night and this morn. I just went and presented it to him then but...well he was still asleep and just rolled over.


(don't you just love arranging/styling up little product shots, just for the sake of it?)

I haven't made anything with a zip in it for ages, and I can't say I enjoy it! At least this time I tacked the fabric to the zipper band first before machine sewing. I used Amy Karol's 'zip pouch' pattern as a reference, but I modified it because it didn't seem quite right to me. Her instructions say to sew up the sides and bottom of the outside fabric, then sew on the zip, then sew up the sides and bottom of the lining fabric and just hand stitch it into the inside. Hmm. I don't like hand stitching and especially not in such a prominant place where u can see the crappy job i've done :)


(more product shot experimentation - man I wish I had a fancy pants camera)

I opted for sewing the outside and lining fabrics to the zipper at the same time, and then sewing down the sides and bottom (leaving a hole in the bottom of the lining for turning inside out). Anyway it seems like there are heaps of different ways to do this, and each has their pros and cons, and there's no simple, perfect way.

Brekky time...