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!

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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.

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Happy New Year! New fabric designs...

I've been keeping busy with the Spoonflower contests and learning so much while doing them. My Bluebell field fabric was #2 a couple of weeks ago and my Weekend Bread fabric was #7 this week! So now they're both for sale in my Spoonflower shop.

The current contest was good practice making a set of coordinates. I called mine French Seaside, and it includes a polka dot, a stripe, seagulls and a French yacht pattern. The set needed to include a dots and a stripe print, but I also created an extra print of a striped beach chair and made them each as separate prints to go along with the four-in-one coordinate fabric.

Sometimes you get caught up in making the illustrations, but I always like to make sure the result is a fabric I would actually like to sew with. And even better if I can picture a specific project for it. In this cases I was inspired by beach houses in soft grey and cream, like the beautiful one (Shell Cottage) in the last Harry Potter movie. If I was decorating a beach house I would like prints like these.

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City of Craft - after

Wool pompom wood thrush, stunning photography by Celine Kim

This is a little glimpse of my table from City of Craft. I had painted some branches for my display and they turned out to be perfect for hanging my wool pompom bird ornaments. These birds were definitely the stars at my table, they sold out at A Handmade Holiday, then at City of Craft by noon on Saturday and the few more I managed to make in the evening were gone by the end of day two.

I didn't invent pompom birds, but I think people liked the way these birds have a mix of colours that make them really looked like chickadees, or, (pictured above) a wood thrush. After the first batch I took Kalpna's suggestion and added glass bead eyes. This one was my favourite, so I'm extra happy it was captured in a beautiful photograph by the talented show photographer Celine Kim.

As always I'm left stunned by the incredible skill of lovely Becky in creating and managing such a wonderful, inspiring and also really really fun craft show. I can show you the treats I brought home in another post, but it was also about meeting new people, chatting about crafts and being inspired by everyone's creations, and, of course, winning a prize at Nutso (thanks to Chevaux de Bois for the Nutso board and Bespoke Uprising for donating my lovely fabric bundle prize!). Thank you to all the friends how visited, I loved seeing everyone.

Yesterday I was so tired I just watched a lot of tv and did a little quiet hand sewing for something I had the notion to make but no time until now. hint: she will make her appearance in my next post once her accessories are finished!

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