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.

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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!

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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!

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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.

All gone!

It's a sad day here in Blinking Flightsville. It's been coming for a while, and it was always on the cards-- no more vintage chenille left. The 3+ metres I got at the op shop a few months ago finally ran out, and I haven't been able to source anything like it... lord knows, I've tried-- this has definitely been my most populat toy, good for boys and girls, bubs and kids, but alas... the vintage chenille version is no more! All the new stuff looks wrong, feels wrong, is clunky and chunky and just doesn't compare...

I managed to scrounge around enough to make this custom lamb, but she is definitely the last of her kind.

My philosophy in life/craft/art type things is that if you can't find what you're looking for, you're probably better off rethinking the whole thing as opposed to using a second choice/imitation, so my replacement for the chenille will be an organic hemp fleece which looks and feels beautiful in a different way to the chenille, but at $20 a metre as opposed to about $8 per 3m, there will have to be a slight price increase.

Hope your Monday is good too, and that you're not having pre-Christmas stress attacks... I've avoided them so far, but I fear one might be on the cards...

B.

Sorted!

Thank goodness...

Now I have to go pack for the markets tomorrow... haven't even started yet... yikes!

B.

Colour 101

I've been writing my dew drop girl sewing pattern, and something dawned on me... it would be fabulous (sorry if you're finding that I'm over using this word right now, I seem to be utterly addicted to it...), if I included a note about how to pick fabrics and colours for beginners in that pattern... then it dawned on me that I could write a post about too... so I am!

I know we all probably did a little colour theory in kindergarten and possibly in high school, and those of us who studied creative things at uni would have had it piled onto us in first year (I did, thanks to Nicole Punt-- a totally awesome teacher!), but I feel like it is so thoroughly ingrained in my brain and my way of seeing the world that it helps me so much with what I'm doing, so here goes, it's super basic...

dolls on the color wheel, originally uploaded by myfriendamy.

Red, yellow and blue are primary colours.

Orange, green and purple are secondary colours.

Red and green, yellow and purple, and blue and orange are complimentary colours... these are combinations of a primary colour and the secondary colour that does not have that primary colour in it... these colours pretty much always work together, and so do shades of those colours.

I find that mucking around with block colours is a really handy way to get to know what works, and what works for you... because everyone has their own preferences and colour styles, and it's great to play with strongly contrasting colours.

And likewise, working with one colour and print is a great way to find yourself and get confidence with what you are doing.

I find that limiting my colour palette is sometimes the handiest thing to do, and so when I first started making dew drop girls, I was really only thinking about blues and greens, and when I got more confident I started to work in other colours.

But sometimes I can spend weeks deciding which fabrics will work together, I'll cut out a dress piece because I'm busting to use a certain fabric and I just won't be able to make anything work with it, this happens quite often... sometimes I cut out a whole doll and then decide it doesn't work... so there's lots of trial and error involved. I cut out the bird fabric on this doll below long before I found the star bursts would work with it... it sat there for weeks and weeks!

Well, I think that's enough 'teaching' for today... if you have any colour tips please add them to the comments and I'll write them into the post-- links are good too! I hope this helps someone out there!

B.

Where I buy fabric...

Both of these prints are available here. I haven't actually bought anything from this shop yet, but I'm loving so many of their fabrics that I'm sure it won't be long...

At the markets people ask me non-stop all day about where I buy my fabric... I think they are hoping that I will say 'they all come from this nice store just down the road'... I would like it if that was the answer too, but alas!

I buy bits and pieces all over the place. Seriously! This is a little list of some Etsy shops that I can recommend:

Karaku
The Hey Day Shop
Wonderfluff
EmilyMe
Japan Kawaii Ya
Of Paper and Thread
Mel Bomba

And if you're in Sydney The Remant Warehouse is the raddest of rad quilting/cool toy making fabric shop that I know of... not to mention Riyo's stall at Glebe-- although she is back in Japan right now stocking up on fabulous things. She'll be back there first week of November.

And Jodie also has awesome little online shop which stocks really nice fabrics-- Kokka too! One of my fave companies!

Aside from actual shops, op shops are also an awesome place to find unwanted gems... and not just fabrics, you have to think of sheets, tea towels, pillow cases, blankets, napkins, dresses, pants... so much unwanted fabric, and clothes can be especially cheap because you'll find that whilst one part will be worn threw, other parts will be in mint condition...  and moving into summer means that lots of places will be getting rid of winter clothes, which make great fluffy, fleecy softies...

And grandmothers, mothers, aunts and vigilant friends should be incorporated in your hunt for awesome fabrics at all times! Mine are...

Feel free to add faves no matter where you live, I'd love to find some new places!

Hope Monday isn't too painful for everyone...

B.

EDIT: These are shops mentioned in the comments. Thanks guys! :)

Fabric Worm
Miss Matatabi
Duckcloth
From Japan with Love
Sew Deerly Loved
Sweet Flavor

x.

My Creative Space: I'm back!

Well, I'm back after having missed the last 2 weeks of this fun post... which means that I must be slightly more organised, and/or slightly less busy than I have been. This is what I've been up to:

Screen printing-- nice people tell me all the time that I must be so talented and creative to do what I do, I tell them that I'm just patient, and I believe it. No one is an ace at anything when they first begin, some people might be better than others, but it's all down to sticking at it... keeping calm when things stuff up (as they inevitably do sometimes), and persevering... here's some proof that I can be patient... using this one small screen (a little smaller than A4)...

+ a pot of red paint

+ a squeegee

+ only a minimal amount of bad language and deep breathing

= a whole lot of hand-holders!

And I'm loving these orange curtains...

And so much for foxes, when I sat down to do some drawing for new screen designs last night, all that came out were birds... but this is a good warm up for the foxes I plan on drawing, since it's been such a time since I've sat down to do a proper hand drawing-- I've been addicted to Illustrator for way too long!

But this is how today looks... at least I can add 3 more lambs and 1 more dew drop girl... not to mention all the blinkies I plan to make from the red hand-holders! :)

Happy Thursday! Hope you get to use your creative space where ever you are, and don't forget to check out everyone else's space at and via Kootoyoo.

B.