Blinking Flights

Paper Pie & Moda!

I spent the weekend catching up on blogs that I love, and one of them is Paper Pie... Liz designs lovely fabrics which she prints at Spoonflower and sells in her Etsy shop, Wonderfluff. I was thrilled to stumble upon the news that her Sugar Pop collection was picked up my Moda and will be available in shops in the US in December.

I managed to scoop up a couple of the fabrics a while back when I was still making lots of bugs, and the very first dew drop girls I ever made featured some of Liz's fabulous fabric. 

Oh boy! How things have changed!! Both dresses were made from Liz's designs, and you can see how well they mix with Japanese prints... and how much the dew drop girl has evolved over the last 12 months!!

And now, the colours have been worked on and mixed up, the scale of design has been played with, and voila!

I love them! And what a nice story!?

B.

 

I'll take 2!

Joe found this great bag online somewhere, he doesn't know where it came from, and neither do I, but I want it, it is perfect! I'm reading Persuasion at the moment though, and Captain Wentworth is proving quite the heartthrob... Jane certainly likes a man with some attitude!

In other news, today I replenished depleted stock at Monster Threads in Newtown-- new Dew Drop Girls & Blinkies, which I didn't have time to photograph-- but I assure you they are cute-- one is made from the Seoul subsystem fabric I bought recently, and one is made from a pretty doily, completely inspired by the coin purse I bought from Gretel a little while back. 

And I managed to find some small vials which will be perfect for making little rattles-- I've been on the look out for-EVER! Apparently they are very popular and hard to get a hold of... and in the process I managed to get some 'squeakers', so look out parents, I'll be contributing to the noisy toy industry sometime soon-- they sound like ducks, and I think after visiting Kinokunya this afternoon, and looking at all those Japanese craft books, I'm filled with an endless array of ideas!

And (!), I returned home to find a lovely package in my mail box. I won some fabric from Sheridan last week in her 3 year blog anniversary giveaway-- I've been on the look out for this sausage dog fabric for a very, very long time!! And she kindly included some utterly beautiful Tina Givens fabric as well, which I adore!

I'm exhausted!!

B.

About Spoonflower:

I know, I know, I have only ordered 3 swatches from Spoonflower, so I'm no expert... but this is the lowdown:

It's very simple--

1. Make your design, and make it digital if it isn't already. If it's hand drawn you need to make sure that you scan it at the right resolution (at least 250dpi), and tidy it up in PhotoShop if need be (Spoonflower has some simpler online software to use if you don't have access to PhotoShop or the like).

2. You pick the repeat pattern, so you could centre the design in the middle of the fabric, or you let it repeat in a number of ways, such a basic repeat, a half drop or a mirrored effect. It's all very user friendly and visually easy!

3. You decide how much you want, from a little 8"x8" swatch to as much as you want-- swatches are good for checking the printed colours against the colours on your screen.

4. If you want other people to be able to buy your designs, you make them public, you need to have bought at least a swatch before you do that, it acts as a 'proof'. The customer buys the fabric at the standard Spoonflower price and 10% of the sale goes to the designer-- so you won't get rich by selling your designs this way, but you might accumulate enough to give yourself a nice discount every now and again.

All this info is available in more detail here, but I thought you might like a summary before committing!

I have made the hand drawn matroshka doll available for you to purchase. Only 1 and a half will fit on a fat quarter, but it actually doesn't cost much more to buy a yard, so maybe you could make a softie doll this way, or a pillow or something-- but please don't get all crazy, buy 20 yards and start selling them... contact me if you have commercial aspirations and we can discuss them.

Like Etsy, Spoonflower has a lot of not-so-good designs to wade through, but there are some really, really awesome designs/designers too, here are a couple of my favourites:

Sweet and Sour Apples by Syko. Kajsa's blog actually inspired me to get off my butt and finally order this fabric that I'd been umming and arrring about for so long!

Spring-a-ding by PaperPie. You can't buy Liz's designs on Spoonflower, but she does sell them herself through her Etsy Shop.

And there are many, many, many more designs!

Happy Friday! I won't be at Glebe tomorrow-- I have hardly any stock and it looks like miserable-thundery-rainy weather again... but I will get to sleep in and that sounds lovely to me!

B.

New at my house:

I've been screen-printing again... and I'm realising how much I have learnt about it over the past year. About which designs are good, how to draw them for printing, the ink, the fabric, the tightness of the screen, how to use photo emulsion... with Joe's help, I've come a VERY long way! Not that I'm pretending that I'm a pro, but I'm certainly not the complete amateur that I was. I've been playing with the dolls from my banner... and I've named this one Anne-Sophie.

I also had a package arrive from Spoonflower today. I ordered three swatches:

Very exciting! I have so many plans!

B.

Doll Fabrics:

I've been making some custom dolls over the last few weeks, and decided that it might be a good idea to have a fabrics set on my flickr page so people know what I have. I'm not sure how it will work in terms of when I run out, but it will provide a good place for inspiration and ideas, I will try and update it each week. The little doll here is named Ursula, and she is made from a machine embroidered pillow case I picked up at the op shop recently... I have a bunch of pretty things like this here at the moment too & they work really well with modern fabrics.

----------------------------------------------

My market highlight from this weekend was when a very serious girl, about eight years old, took one of my cards and asked if I was at the markets often. She told me that she loved my dolls and fabrics and that she was going to save up. Very sweet and made me smile.

I can't believe it's Autumn already... jeepers!

B.

To make a scrap quilt:

Ok, well, here it is, in all it's half-finished glory! Please don't be critical of my wonky lines, I think they're going to look super when it's all put together!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To make your own scrap quilt:

Technically, making a scrap quilt is really, really easy, It's collecting the scraps that is the difficult and time consuming part. I have had quite a few emails asking me how I made the quilt, so I thought I'd share the details, although please be warned: this project was not planned, it just kind of grew from something small, and I didn't do anything clever like plan block sizes, or use a rotary cutter to ensure angles were correct... but you could, and in fact, maybe you should!

1. Find all your little scrap pieces and make sure they are all neat and ironed, and flat!

2. Match up pieces which are a similar length or width, and start to make some small blocks.

 

3. Make sure that you have your iron set up right near your sewing machine, so that you press flat the seams as you sew. This picture is the backside of the patchwork.

 

4. Start to join the smaller blocks together, and follow the same principle until you get some larger blocks. Then, you just join all these blocks together... it's that simple!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And I'm sure there are some people out there with some amazing scraps to work with, and a lot more space and experience with quilting than me, so I'd love to see some links if you decide to use this idea.

Since finding my second box of scraps I've been colour sorting. I now have a bag of red, blue, green and yellow, and a bag of 'white background with lots of colours in the print'. I've trimmed them into nice rectangles and squares using my rotary cutter, and I've started stitching them together. I plan to make some bags and small softies-- I'm thinking maybe a guinea pig? Upon stumbling on this little pink elephant on flickr, my mind has been filling with cute ideas...

It's by Abby Glassenberg, and she blogs about it here, and it's just one of about a million fabuolous things to discover on the blog.

Well, I hope this modest little tute answers some questions, and helps some people out!

B.

Did I say scrapless?

Well, it turns I am not at all scrapless. I opened up my storage cupboard last night looking for something, and I noticed that tucked away under all the other boxes was a rather large cardboard one, about 60cm high, filled to the brim with scraps... probably with about 8 times as much fabric as I used to make the little cot quilt the other day...

Despite my instinct to throw the entire box into the outside garbage and pretend that it never existed, I tipped it out onto the floor and began sorting. It turns out that there are some cool things in there, and pieces much bigger than I expected... I don't think another 12 hrs of scrap quilt sewing is in order, but any more suggestions would be appreciated! I am thinking that a batch of toys made from patchworked fabrics might be very cool... perhaps with a little more purposeful colour coordination this time.

Happy Thursday!

B.

P.S. I am umming and arrhing about Glebe on the weekend, there could be a lot of rain on Saturday, so if you need something, email or facebook me, and we can sort it, cause I will be venturing up to Sydney regardless.

Scrapless.

Do you save up the most pathetically tiny little scrap pieces of fabric? I do. I find that I just can't part with them, I think it's because I'm selling a lot of my toys, the beautiful fabrics just up and leave... and I want to remember them.

So yesterday in a completely unplanned act of madness and obsession, I started sewing the scraps together, and what I have now is a quilt top, about cot size, and it reminds me of all the toys and fabrics I've been using. I also have sore shoulders, eyes that are having trouble focusing, and a kitchen that looks like a bomb hit it, every mug and glass has been used... and my scrap basket is practically empty as opposed to overflowing!

I hope you all have a nice day off, and think about the lovely diversity that is Australia, and about the thousands and thousands of years of complex culture that was already here. (It's 'Australia Day' today for OS peeps!).

B.

Hemp fleece lambs are go!

I stayed up very late the-night-before-the-last-market-before-Christmas making 4 new organic cotton & hemp fleece lambs, the fleece had only arrived the day before. I sometimes forget how long these things take, I think it must be like giving birth, they say you forget all the pain and complication when the baby is born, and I can be pretty optimistic about how long a toy takes to make. It took eleven hours to make the four lambs, and I was busy doing the closing stitches the next morning at the market. I LOVE THIS FLEECE! It's sooooo soft and lamby! I got it here, it worked out to be $30/m by the time I paid the shipping, so it's a little pricey, but very nice.

Welcome back to the post festive season life! I'm completely out of any routine, my wake up time has shifted from about 6/6:30am to about 9am, and I found myself awake and pumping at 1am last night (this morning), it made getting up for the markets on Saturday extra painful, and it meant I needed a little nap when I got at 3-- came home early thanks to Mr. Rain!

B. 

Cha-Ching!

Having been a loyal St. Vincent de Paul Op Shop employee a while back, I became privy to a lot of op shop info that had been completely oblivious to me up until that point. Now is the best time of the year for op shopping, people are de-cluttering and the stores are overflowing. They simply can'y keep up with it all. Other good times include any old long weekend, but especially Easter. The op shop I worked at had a little yard at the back for trucks and deliveries, and I remember returning to work in between Christmas and New Years to discover a sea of donations, not only unwanted Christmas presents, but furniture, ornaments, linen, really specific hobby related things like photographic enlargers, mosaic making equipment, entire sets of watercolour paints... all kinds of things.

Pricing in op shops often relates more to supply than market price. I got a bag of 'linen' for $10 at my local Salvation Army Op Shop, which included tea-towels, doilies, and funky retro baby sheet sets from the 60s and 70s, as well as a bunch of fabric.

This dress is from another, similarly overflowing op shop just down the road-- $10!

Happy Wednesday-- must get the sewing machine happening today, have done all the hand sewing I can possibly justify.

B.