some news...and a giveaway...

first the news...

in the new year i am going to be launching a fabric club. a bimonthly fabric club that you can dip in and out of as you please, order as much or as little as you like...

 but i have a few questions first...

there are a few things i need your help with...

if you fancy helping me out by answering these 3 questions I will enter you in a giveaway for a chance to win a bundle of my fabrics.

fair enough?

so the questions if you please...

:: number 1 :: 

have you signed up to any other fabric clubs and if so have you continued to stay a member?

:: number 2 ::

what would tempt you to join a fabric club? is it the chance to try a range of fabrics that you may not ordinarily be drawn to? is it the opportunity to build up your stash? is it something else?

:: number 3 ::

size matters...what is your ideal size with fabric clubs...charm packs, half panels or full panels?

big thanks for answering these questions for me and i will draw a winner this time next week.

x

(ps exciting?...i hope so...but this isn't even the news that i have soon!)

 It's been a hellava week this week. One that can be basically be described as a bit of a post celebration blur.

I'll post about the amazing weekend we had at another time, when I can put into words what we all went through and when I've picked myself up off the floor from exhaustion. 

I don't remember Sam's flooring me quite so much, but I think that's a lot to do with us being out of routine this week with the extra Bank Holidays and Half Term. If we had been back to routine the next day we would have had no choice but to get on with it.

We spent most of this week sleeping late, saying farewell to visiting family and friends and generally living in the moment.

By the time Matthew went back to work yesterday we were finding it tricky to get out of our slump.

I dived into the cellar to get some printing done for some orders that were piling up and as is my normal trick started playing around with an idea that had been forming in amongst the blur.

As you know i normally print in colour on white fabric but wanted to give printing on some colours a go.

This ended up with me printing on a fair few of my solids and rather liking where it was going. The main reason behind this was the need to order more magnets and deciding that perhaps they would look better with more colour.

I've put up a couple of pics here to get a feel of the difference.

What do you reckon? Printing on solids or printing on white?

I'm rather liking how the solids look coupled with other fabrics. The design seems to stand out better, particularly with the blues, but on the other hand the postage stamp block seems to work with the print on white.

Maybe I'm too tired this week to make a decision or maybe there is a place for both.

Do you have an opinion? Would you like to see more designs on a coloured background?

Would love to know what you think. You are probably less tired than I am...unless of course you are recuperating from FQR...

I've been feeling a bit glum.

And let's face it the only way to get out of that one is to go fabric shopping.

Come on...we all do it...

I was reading Amy's blog this morning about this year's Trimmings Competition.

I adore Amy's fabrics (actually I aspire to be Amy) so what better way to lift me out of the doldrums but to purchase a trimmings pack and think happily about which selection I will get and what I will do with them.

Quite frankly to know they are coming is enough for right now.

Fancy joining me in the comp? (altho obviously the prize is mine) go right here and purchase one of your own...

I've been involved in a Flickr Group Swap this month...Pretty {Little} Pouch Swap. Since I'm big into making pouches at the mo it seemed the perfect group to be in. I don't do many swaps, but this one tickled my fancy - a nice small project, a quick time frame, and quite frankly nothing better to do with my time (and if you believe that you'll believe anything).

I love swaps. Actually that's not wholly accurate, but it's been quite a while since I've been involved in one, so at the moment I love swaps.

I love meeting new crafters. I love browsing the group and getting a feel for what everyone likes and fabrics they enjoy using.

And I love the opportunity to create a one off piece for my partner, using fabric combinations, designs that I wouldn't ordinarily be justified to find time to try out.

With the summer holidays upon us, it was decided that this would be a rapid turn around swap, which suits me just fine. Most of you know my character flaw of being all-consumed by a current project and consequently I made my partner's pouch in next to no time.

I used one of my new hand printed flower patches, some of my favourite blue palette fabrics, a little embroidery, all sewn together in a new (for me) shape pouch.

I'm pretty happy with the result and will just have to wait to see if my partner is too.

If you want to see what the rest of the group is up to, take a look right here...

I'm having a bit of a dotty thing going on at the moment.

Normally I line my pouches with Liberty fabric or shirting fabric, both of which i really love using, but today some relatively new Robert Kaufman purchases got a look in.

It all started when I was looking for a fabric to line one of my Summerville Pouches.

Perfect! More than a little ray of sunshine on this dismal day!

Having remembered that I had actually bought this fabric for this particular purpose, I decided to use them as linings for the other pouches that I've been making for a stockist today.

I really love them and just hope the stockist and customers do too!

As you have seen from all the printing I have been doing recently for BCTF last week, there has been a lot of new work going on. Most of it was for actual items, but some has been for a couple of new kits I've been developing.

I have 2 new kits that I launched last week - 'Gerry' and 'Steve'. Who's Steve you may ask? Well, he's an elephant of course. (A very good friend of mine put me straight on the over obviousness of Ellie the Elephant. Steve was the next natural choice...) And Gerry? Well, he's so a 'Gerry'.

That aside, Gerry and Steve went down a storm at BCTF and they are now wending their way across the country from Lavender Lakes up in the North, down to Hawthorn Gallery down in Dorset.

I'm just waiting for the new labelling for these kits to be back from the printers. I just love how they are looking though. And that side is all thanks to my brilliantly talented designer friend who is the brains behind all my Kit labelling.

I'm very excited about these kits and already have plans for similar ones that hopefully I'll have time to develop very soon.

Final countdown week in the BCTF preparation stakes this week.

I've had a bit of a breakthrough this weekend with getting the stand how I want it. It's been in the preparation stages in my head and I have finally got around to getting it sorted in practice. 'Bout bloody time, you may say, and you'd be quite correct.

As well as making sure the display is as I would like it, it's all systems go as far as making sure all the samples are completed. There's still a fair amount of work to be done in that area, but I'm sure it will all get done...quite frankly it has too. There's nothing like putting yourself under a bit of pressure.

If you happen to be in the vicinity of Harrogate next Sunday, Monday or Tuesday, I'd love to see you. So please come and say hi - Im on stand D399. And if you need a ticket, just give me a shout and I'll pop one your way.

In about 10 days it's the British Craft Trade Fair and less than 10 days ago I signed up for it, which gave me at the time less than 20 days to prepare.

Quite a mountain I'd say.

One reason I hadn't decided to go before now was all the personal stuff going on here and to be quite honest the whole timing completely passed me by.

Having made the decision and been accepted (again - as I did show there a couple of years ago) it's been all systems go.

I'll be there with my Take Away Craft Kits, with a couple of new ones added, as well as various accessories that I have been working on this year.

There's going to be an emphasis on hand-printed fabric to go alongside the items I already produce and it's this that I am most excited about showing and having on my stand.

Since I was accepted last Monday I have been working like a maniac to get all the work done, so that next week I can focus on the stand itself. One of these days I'll get into the rhythm of doing regular trade shows so that it all happens as a matter of course, rather than being a starting from scratch each time.

I am getting there - sort of - but there's still a lot of blood, sweat and undoubtedly tears to be had first.

Yesterday I managed a trip out to get crafting supplies, including some fabric paints for my hand-printing fabric projects.

First up on the project list was taking the pencil pouch idea a step further by personalising it.

Ruby has headed off to her friend Sadie's party today, so of course she was first on the list to get one of my new pouches.

Despite the fact that Ruby's response was "Mummy, I wish we could give my friends something other than crafty stuff for their birthdays. They aren't all like me and like it you know. Can't we give them something normal?"

I'm still wracking my brains to think what may be construed as normal, if a personalised pencil case and matching keyring isn't. I'm thinking Ruby was implying something pink and plastic. Or perhaps glittery and sparkly.

Either way, she did rapidly back it up with could I make her one.

And I'm pretty sure Sadie's Mummy will be more than happy with this pink and plastic, or silvery and glittery alternative.

First off, I have an apology for this post.

As beautiful as the photography was in yesterday's post, today's is the other extreme. Quite simply, some of these images are not pretty. Not helped by the colour paint I have been using.

But please bear with me, as I take you through my journey.

You all know of my love of hand-printed fabrics and my desire to do more screen printing and produce pieces of my own, but since access to screen printing is out of the question at the moment, I am looking at alternatives.

My Gocco printer is still not in full working order, due to the need for several accessories for it. So when I discovered Saints and Pinners were now stocking Freezer Paper I swiftly ordered some and have been sitting waiting patiently for it to arrive. I know that sounds like I have been waiting an inordinately long time, when in reality I think this has been less than 48 hours, thanks to the super efficient service Jo and Fran always provide. But considering my fabric producing journey started almost a year ago, this has been a long time for me.

So today I started experimenting with Freezer Paper Printing. The seedhead design that I used in my first screen print in the summer seemed a good place to start. I want to use hand-printed fabrics in lots of different ways and incorporate it my work with other fabrics too, so I'm starting with little patches that I can add to my work.

The Freezer Paper method is very simple to do. The paper has a shiny back and this sticks to fabric when ironed. Once you have cut out your design and ironed the paper on to your fabric, you stipple your chosen colour over. If you want to repeat the pattern reposition the paper and repeat as many times as you want.

Simples!

This really is a fantastically fun and easy way to print fabric and produce something really unique.

I am really enjoying experimenting with this and I promise the next photos I show you will be a little prettier than these...okay, A LOT!

Ok, it's time I started declaring all the fabric that has been mounting up over the holidays. Part of the reason I have been ordering with such gay abandon was that my Aunt came over from US during the hols and I always make use of getting fabric Stateside, without the worry of heavy postage and import costs. However now that the airlines have started charging their baggage allowance according to weight, I'm not sure she'll be quite so agreeable to letting me take up precious kilos. In the meantime I made the most of it.

First up in the show and tell pile is this collection from Fabric Closet. I'd seen the Kisses in Red by Wendy Slotboom and thought it was fab and then found the other 2 by Wendy too. They are perfect basic stash fabrics. While I was there, as you do, I dropped Michael Miller's Brady Bunch (far left) into my basket. too.

Whilst it is pretty clear that there is little chance of me giving up my fabric buying addiction anytime in the near future, so it really was pointless to make any resolutions to do so, one thing I have however made a resolution to do, is to keep any new fabric on my work desk in full view and approach it first when making something. This way, hopefully it will become integrated into my making psyche and not hide away and be forgotten.

So today when I needed to make some gifts, I headed straight for the new pile. The girls in Noah's year are all celebrating their Bat Mitzvah's this school year (girls come of age the year before boys) and he seems to have a party almost every weekend. I'm trying to keep stock up in the present pile to avoid that "aggghhh, what do you mean you are going out in half an hour and you need a gift??" panic.

Judging by Ruby's response to these Make Up and Purse Pouch Sets, I'm hoping the girls will be pretty pleased with them.

I don't know about you but I'm really struggling to get back into a good working rhythm after the break. The children had all gone back to school by Wednesday but Matthew was still off until today.

This had the advantage, as I've already told you in my last blogpost, of slowly getting into 2011, but it's had the negative effect of making it difficult for me to reestablish any kind of routine. I've been having the joy of spending lots of time with the family and not being cocooned up in my studio in the attic. But it's resulted in me being out of the swing of blogging, tweeting, making...generally attending to my business.

I have had these photos uploaded into edited mode for about a week now, but couldn't get into the right frame of mind to actually write the post.

I can't quite put my finger on why that is. I'm so excited about these new pencil pouches and am very keen to get them out there and have already got a couple of stockists interested, so it's all good. But still I can't quite move myself into action.

I've got my tax return hanging over me. That always makes me sick to the stomach until it's all done and sent off and I'm hoping that that's the root cause of my unrest. It's time-tabled to be done this week, which is the first opportunity after the silly season and holidays (if you don't count any time from April 6 2010...)

So hopefully all this New Year procrastinating and inability to focus will disappear into a puff of smoke just as soon as I hit "send" with my tax return and I'll be back to bugging you regularly with constant tweets, flickr uploads, blogposts and anywhere else you may happen to be lurking...

One of the amazing things that I love about our online community is the generosity of cyber friends. Friends that we have never met in real life, but have such a mutual interest with that we appreciate what each other is doing and how much something means to us, that we go out of our way to do a kind deed. Kind deeds that real life friends do without thinking, that I guess makes our cyber friends real friends too.

This week I received metres of this gorgeous striped linen from one such generous cyber friend. Louise posted on Twitter that she was off to buy some of this linen and did I want any. My order was placed and within days it was here in my home.

The fact that this linen is gorgeous and works beautifully with my creations is irrelevant. The fact that Louise, who only knows me from my blog, Twitter and other such web based meeting places, knew at once that I would love it, is the reason behind why I love this community.

I really love what I do and I really love that it gives me the opportunity to meet all of you.

We have big plans this year to put our own stamp on our house. We bought this house when we first moved back up from London over 5 years ago. And whilst we fell in love with it immediately we have lived with some interesting decor that we haven't quite managed to obliterate.

Until now.

Next month we are starting attacking with vengeance and I am having an amazing time putting into place all those items I have been drooling over for aeons.

First off the living room...after some persistence I have managed to persuade Matthew that we NEED this Orla wallpaper around the fireplace. Fortunately he's relented. I've given him first choice for the bedroom. Well that was easy. You have seen what we've been living with there. Anything will be an improvement. And it's not like I entertain in my bedroom!

Having got the wallpaper, the teal, grey with a touch of mustard theme was beginning to materialise. Next stop Etsy to finalise some fabrics that had been on my wish list for almost as long as the Orla wallpaper.

The first two are by Caitlin of Pippijoe. I just love her patterns and the richness of the colours she uses.

These next 3 are by Roisin and Arounna of Repeat. An equally talented pair that produce the most stunning handprinted fabrics.

These fabrics are now all on order and I'm now sitting very patiently waiting for them to arrive. Ok, so I'm not so patient. I'm beside myself with excitement and can not wait to get going on some cushions and possibly a quilt for my new room. It's going to be unrecognisable.