Art Deco Parrot Blue

My favourite fabric so far is a new version I designed of the Art Deco Parrot, this time in a blue, white and grey colour scheme.

I ordered a yard so I could make a pair of cushions in the cotton-linen blend fabric they offer. Being able to design the fabric myself was great because I actually adjusted the scale slightly so that I could fit two cushions with parrots down the middle of the front and back with just 1 yard.

Here's a picture of the cushions:

I love this fabric, it has a bit of weight to it and the nice feel of linen while the cotton makes it less floppy than pure linen. Incidentally, I also love the new Kona cotton that Spoonflower is now offering for a quilting weight fabric.

So I feel I've finally reached the point where I can design exactly what I want to decorate the home without having to compromise. I'd like to do curtains too, but that's a lot more expensive so it may be a while!

Read more...

Paris Poodle

This week was busy with illustration work but I did manage to do a last minute entry to the Spoonflower contest with the topic "bicycles". It's called Paris Poodle, a poodle bringing home her baguette. One time, I did actually see someone bicycling home in Paris with a baguette sticking out of their basket, but it wasn't a poodle. I have to be honest. You can vote for Spoonflower bicycle fabrics here.

Last week's contest had the topic "jellyfish". I didn't think that topic would inspire me, but sometimes you can be surprised at what you'll come up with in these situations. It turns out jellyfish are kind of a popular motif right now, I didn't know that. I'm still loving mustard, so that's the colour scheme I chose for my jellyfish design (Jellyfish Drift), but I'm finding I've also veered into loving yellow too. Especially with white and grey. In the case of Paris Poodle I think yellow works because it's a more whimsical design.

I've ordered samples of both so I can put them up for sale when the swatches arrive. There are lots of new fabrics in my Spoonflower shop now, including the Yellow Rose print I've shown previously, and a blue and white version of the Art Deco Parrot fabric, my current favourite. I ordered a yard of the cotton linen to make cushions so I'll show you those in another post.

Read more...

Camera strap

I finally made a camera strap cover thanks to this clever tutorial by the lovely Karyn! Here's a link to a post about her new strap, and here's a link to the original tutorial.

As usual I managed to do things my own way, which wasn't really a good thing.  The bit I didn't notice right away is that Karyn used the selvedge to cover the seam which would have been particularly perfect as this fabric has a cute scallop line detail on the selvedge. But I only had a small strip of fabric left from making a tote so I had no choice but to fold the edge over and stitch it together that way. Because I barely had enough fabric I hand stitched the seam so I could make sure it was perfectly snug.

Also I didn't have any Steam a Seam 2 to fuse the fabric to the old strap, but the interfacing kept the fabric from puckering and all the top stitching holds it securely in place.

The end results are wonderful, the strap is just as functional as it was before but sooo much prettier.

p.s. you may notice that the fabric design in my last post has changed! I ended up changing it at the last minute because I thought it was a bit too busy. Anyway scroll down and have a look if you like.

Read more...

Ditsy sea creatures

The Spoonflower contest this week was fun, the theme was "ditsy sea creatures". In case you didn't know, a ditsy print is very small scale, so small that "At a distance, a ditsy print looks almost like a solid color". It's also a scattered print with no obvious repeat.

I always wish you could zoom in a bit more to see the fabrics better, especially with the small scale prints, so I thought would show you a close up of my design "Little Schools" (you can also click on it to see it larger):

The main thing that doesn't show up very well in the preview is that I added a linen texture to the background. I updated my design at the last minute because I thought the first one was just a bit too fussy. I like this one better. I also like how it looks from farther away, as if it's just scattered specks of colour.

p.s. I've been busy sewing too, there are lots of new wristlets in the shop.

Read more...

Art deco parrot

The current Spoonflower contest has been my favourite so far. The theme was Art Deco with a limit of four colours. I was looking through my books and found a wonderful book I actually forgot I had. It's called Art Deco Textiles by Alain-René Hardy. Here's a link:



I've always loved textiles of course, but now that I'm actually designing them I've been revisiting my bookshelves and finding lots of help and inspiration. This book is absolutely packed with full-colour gorgeous pictures of Art Deco textiles. I bought it for the pictures, but I did start to read it as well and learned that Raoul Dufy created over a thousand Art Deco textile patterns. I was interested to learn that because I have always loved his paintings so much.

I also learned that tropical motifs were popular and decided to use that as a starting point for my design. I think the main reason I love Art Deco designs is that flora and fauna is so prevalent and I never tire of a pretty floral fabric or the charm that animals can add to a design.

I was really happy with my design, but after voting today I'm humbled by all the incredible designs this week. You can see them all and vote for your favourites here.

Read more...