New Yarn

Progress has begun, again, on my Attic24 ripple blanket.  It has been ages and ages since I last worked on it.  My colour selections have been alternating warm and cool colours and last night I found that I needed a new cool colour.  With only 2 blues left sitting in my bag.  The last few colours were blues, so I needed something new.  Like I needed an excuse to pop into our local yarn shop!? 

Want to see my new colours?

There are a whole bunch of new Sublime Extra Fine Merino colours.  Yay!  Some lovely bright orange to reds...I must confess that the pinks were starting to get a little boring for me...as well as some new Spring pastels and gorgeous metallics.  So, I bought 3 orange-y, pink-y, red-ish balls and another green.

Want to see the possible colour line up?

...and the gorgeous bag that I took it all home in....?

...and another shameless plug at one of my gorgeous goodies....

I also bought these....!

Hoooked Zpagetti!  It's a rather dull shade of brownish grey, but it is intended for this.  One day, the wall behind where it will hang will be a lovely shade of sea green, so grey seemed the sensible sort of choice.  The shop didn't have many colour options - white, ivory, navy, a gorgeous coral-y orange, light and dark grey.  I book marked that pattern ages ago and when the Zpagetti saw me it shouted and screamed at me to take its gigantic self home.  The bag/basket will be used for stashing hats and gloves - which are presently all stuffed into one of those Crocs bags that you get with their kids boots.

So...you noticed that lovely printed green linen then?  No?

This one...!  The ink is a really lovely pearly white, slightly on the grey side so as not to dazzle the eyeballs.

These fabric pieces are destined for gorgeous bags or zippy pouches.  I haven't decided yet.  More like this one maybe?

What do you think I should do with that fabric?  Have you made anything with Zpagetti?

Happy Robots on Spoonflower

For the last few days I have been "in message" with a fellow fabric lover who asked for a bigger piece of my screen printed robots design....

Well, between the two of us we decided that Spoonflower was the way to go.   This is what we have finalised.  Isn't it just so fun?!



You too can order a Happy Robot panel as big as your heart desires and in whatever fabric floats your boat over on Spoonflower.

Oh...and if you reeeeeaaaaally need pink robots with blue shapes, or whatever, let me know and between us we can create your favourite colour-way!

A Skirt for Me!

Looky what I finished this morning...

A skirt for me!  It is a deep pinky-purply-fuschia-y sort of colour, in stretchy corduroy.  The pattern is from the latest Ottobre Woman's magazine and is pattern #12 .  You can see their skirt on page 4.

I must say that I am rather pleased with myself.  Especially after unpicking the zip and seams numerous times - I think that I cut it a size or 2 too big!  Also - little people distractions are not the easiest thing to cope with while trying to concentrate on cutting and sewing.

I used my new fabric designs for the pockets, pocket facings and waist facings.  Am especially pleased with the way the pockets turned out!  The raspberry poppy print is on a scrap piece of natural loomstate denim - wish I could find more of this fabric...

I think that I will be wearing my new skirt to work this week!

Screen Printing Love

What is it about screen printing that is just so darn addictive?  The more paint I mix and slop around, the more I want to do it again.  I want to print and print and print until I get the technique just right and am rewarded with a perfect print.  Then I want to mix a different colour and start it all over again....

The whole process can be really rewarding or really, REALLY frustrating.

Either way - it is a-d-d-i-c-t-i-v-e!

So, I was allowed an hour or so at the weekend to get messy.  And whipped out a few green apples and green robots.  I mixed the green myself - the on screen colours don't do the colour a great deal of justice.  It isn't an emerald green, definitely not an olive green or even a granny smith kind of green - it is a lovely vibrant, summery, sunshiney green.

The colour is probably somewhere between the Pantone Summer Green and Bright Green.  It is g-g-g-gorgeous...if I do say so myself.

Anyhooo, if you are looking to invite a bit of summery green into your life...look no further than here!

On a really exciting note, I have a few days of leave to look foward to at the end of August.  Leave where I will be all to myself!  The girls will be at nursery, Flower Daddy at work (for most of the days) and me at home.  At home!  Designing!  Mixing ink!  Printing!  Exposing screens!  Sewing!  Time - all - to - myself.  Time to do with as I please!

Can you feel my excitement????!

New Fabric - Apples and Robots

After my printing frenzy last weekend, I have finally put these two fabric designs in my Etsy shop!  Yay!  The fabric is the most gorgeous green linen.  The apple fabric photo's really do not do the fabric colour any justice.  I just do not know why it was so hard to capture the real greeny colour.

Anyhooo...pop into my Etsy shop and have a browse...lots of happy goodness in there for the taking (or buying if we're getting pernickety).

Fabric Preview and Giveaway

Fancy a chance to win this gorgeous piece of screen printed linen?  Printed by moi...today!  Hop on over to my Facebook page for the low down.

This photo does the fabric no justice what-so-ever.  It is a very beautiful summery sea-green sort of colour.  The red of the apples is deep and rich.  The piece is about 32x47cm....a great size to make something with!

I have a few more pieces which will wing their way in to my shop and on to Etsy this week...once I have been able to take some better photo's in great lighting.  A few smaller robot prints will join the apples.  Apples and robots!?  Strange combination.  But, that is inspiration for you!!

Any suggestions on a name for this appley-linen fabric?

New Product New Product New Pr-o-o-o-duct!

Ok, ok, ok!  I am just a little excited to have these in my shop now.  I first mentioned them w-a-a-a-y back in September last year.  I just can not believe that almost 7 months have gone by since then.

I finally conquered my fear of my mammoth sized screen week ago, and today, I squeezed in time to print a bunch of these quirky-fun tea towels.  

The design is my own, created especially for you or your little people to colour {or, you could just enjoy it as it is}.  You could use it in your own kitchen, or save it for a special Granny.  There is also plenty of space above the print for a memorable message to be written to your favourite person.

We have coloured the tea towels with crayons as well as Crayola fabric markers.  I must say that the crayons were a lot more fun, and most definitely easier for little hands to use.  We taped the tea towel to the table and coloured away, then I wrote Ava's name and the date on the side...and posted it off our Grannies, with strict instructions that this work of art was to be Used and not just sit in a drawer!  

I kept the marked coloured one for me....

So, hop on over to 1 of my shops and grab yourself some colouring fun!  

Sneak Peak - new doll softie in progress

I was allowed some much appreciated time this weekend to do a little screen printing.  I have had a few new acetates ready to burn to my screens for far too long.  I managed to do a few at the end of last week.  But printing is MeSSy....and I need guaranteed child and baby free time to get stuck in.  I don't really fancy cleaning ink off of either of them....or cleaning where ever they spread the ink!  Or re-printing everything because they pulled at them, smudging the prints...or any other mischief they get up to while my hands are dirty.

So here is little miss Lucy all printed and drying.  She is an intelligent little girl who is a bit of a neatness nut, but loves colourful boots and buttons.

I need to get these all ironed and stitched together, which may take a little while...but, if you have a special need for one, please let me know and I will hop to it a little quicker.

I have also printed more of Hillary Hippo, which I ran out of a week or few ago.  So these will be in my shops soon too.  There is also a friendly crocodile and sausage dog waiting to be burned....watch this space!

It is sunny right now, rain is coming later today, so us girls are going out to enjoy some rather chilly sunshine.

Where ever you are......

Making your own screen printing frame

There are a few tutorials around explaining how to make your own screens....this is how I do it.

Rule #1 - make sure little fingers and toes are attached to little bodies taking a nap.  Staples guns are not for little people to be around - and staple results are severely hampered by a case of the "Mommeeeeeee"s.

I used a little wooden picture frame - overall size about 15x20cm which will hopefully allow me a printable size of around 10x15cm.  Hubby has made me nice big A4 printable sized frames before with lovely smooth and flat wood screwed together - I used the exact same method to stretch net on those too.  They are my favourite frames, and I have a few.

So here is my little 'how-to'.  If you are lucky enough to get a frame that hasn't got the glass fixed behind annoying battens like mine was, it is all a whole bunch easier and quicker to do - just skip out steps 2-4 and remove the glass at step 1.

{More after the jump}

Birthday PJ's!

I am feeling really pleased with myself.  I pulled out some Speedball opaque fabric paint that I have had stashed for ages.  All the paints in this set have a slightly pearly appearance and are intended for darker coloured fabric.  I usually print on light colours, so this was the first time I have used the opaque paints.

What fun!

Pressed for time, I decided to make just 1 stencil and print it on to 2 pairs of pj t-shirts and 2 pairs of pj shorts - all from Primark.  I went simple and printed my text on to paper, cut it out with a craft knife, then taped it behind a blank silk screen and squeedged the blue paint on.  I could have done much the same with freezer paper, but it takes time to iron and peel x4...

I hope Daddy likes them.

Silk screening busy-ness

I am busy updating the soft colouring toys for the shop.  Changing them from hand drawn to silk screened - a little more finished in appearance, I hope.  At the same time I am also adding to the animal range...an elephant to start with.

Progress is slow, but I had a wonderful 2 hour time slot the other day when Lily was at nursery and Rose was having a lovely long nap (times like these really don't come often enough!) to focus on printing.  I have also ordered some sew in labels, which I need so that I can finish these off and get them loaded into the shop.  They're coming from Worldwide Labels on Etsy...I hope they arrive soon!