basecloth

Did I tell you my ambition this year is to make more fabric!!

I want to design and produce more Flower Press fabric designs. In particular I want to screenprint more designs, and if I've been a bit absent, a bit distracted that's why. I've been working behind the scenes to make this happen.

As you know from my recent Sewing with Flower Press post I get a big kick out of seeing what people make with my fabric. Up till now that has mostly meant digital quilting cottons. I love the way with digital I can create multicolour quilting fabrics like my Bricks and Marble prints and print them on quality Kona cotton. What fun! With digital design you can do anything - if you want to combine a hundred colours into one design you can. Swatch or yardage? No problem. Its a designer's dream.

Screenprinted fabric comes with more design limitations. There's more preparation in producing it. But handprinted fabric has its own quality which make us love it. Personally I love the vibrancy and texture and the graphic quality of screenprinting. I love the feel of it, the strong printed designs and the way they sit on the basecloth.

To me basecloth is all important to screenprinted textiles so part of my journey towards producing more has been finding the perfect basecloths. 

I'm always on the lookout for good fabric, and over the years have amassed samples from all over the place. My first criteria is they must be natural fibres which narrows the search to linen, cotton and hemp.

I love 100% linen for tea towels, its hard wearing qualities and substantial feel make this sustainable fibre a star.

For fabric panels that are going to be sewn I prefer linen/cotton blends to straight linen. I think they combine the great strength and character of linen with the better drape and usability of cotton. I find them easier to iron and a finer texture.

Cotton in all its guises is another favourite. There's something about the feel of freshly laundered cotton, its strength and durability and ease of care that make this versatile fabric so very popular. No wonder that quilts are made almost exclusively with cotton.

I was so happy when I sourced the perfect white cotton fabric recently. I love the weight and drape and feel of it. I also found some fabulous coloured cottons to play around with. I can't wait to print some of these neutrals.

And lastly, hemp is a new fibre to me. While I've seen this fabric around I hadn't had much to do with it up close until recently when I got some unused yardage when buying some secondhand screens. 

Wow, I was really impressed. Its a really nice fibre and it has a real radiance to it. It sort of glows. Its also smooth and strong and has great eco credentials. I snapped up a big batch of different weight hemp fabrics a couple of months ago when a local wholesaler had a sale, some of it a hemp/organic cotton mix. This will be fun to print on too.

As for the printing, I'm getting there. It is taking a while to get my setup perfect. The good news is that with my such a great range of fabrics bought I am a few steps closer to my goal. Expect some scrap packs made up of test prints to go up soon. I'm a big fan of the scrap pack myself (remind me to show you my collection some time!) so it will be fun to share some of my own.

p.s. yes, I know, I've messed up my blog template recently experimenting with tabs! I need to restore my saved template but life has been too busy. Time for a complete overhaul methinks!

bricks in print

There's something wonderful about printing pattern on fabric and seeing the designs come to life. So it was fun to pull out the Bricks fabric and see how it worked in lengths. I'm really happy with it!

After all your feedback I couldn't decide which to print, so I have four versions. Two large format - purple and bright blue, and two smaller format - yellow and sky blue.

They are now up in the Flower Press shop for a bit of Christmas sewing.

I can feel a Lego bag coming on. Something to keep those little pieces under control. Or maybe a zip pouch made in Bricks fabric with Lego Mini Figures inside (we love those round here!). Wouldn't that make a great stocking stuffer, actually don't tell my boys, I'm definitely going to make some!

For the next little bit I'm giving a little discount and free postage in Australia and $1 for OS, on all my new fabrics, to celebrate and thank you all for your lovely feedback. It means so very much to me.

I've got a couple more prints too but I'll share them another time. Oh and that skirt, I finished it yay! I have a photo, its not very good, still raining here, but I might post it here after the great advice you shared.

christmas!!

Oh, I'm so excited, I just received the most fantastic parcel! Remember I ordered all that fabric just a couple of weeks ago? Well it landed on my doorstep this morning and its perfect, even better than I imagined!

My bricks are here!! Yay!! They look amazing on fabric. I couldn't decide which colour and size to order so I have lots of different combinations. I'm going to take some photos (go away clouds!) and post about and list them later.

I ordered lots more marbles on blue too for those who want more of this and I can offer yardage now too. I couldn't resist seeing big marbles on purple too, so there's a little in the shop, be quick. For those waiting I have more of the Triangle Twist too, in the large format like the pattern that appeared on my pillowcases.

And I have more to show you! I can't fit them all here but I do want to introduce you to these three prints from my new Flower Bed series - Trileaf, Bloom and Daisy Dots. A couple I've shown before but Trileaf, at the top there, is my very favourite new print. I spoke yesterday about choosing colour schemes for this, I have some others coming. I've been working on this one forever, tweaking it, getting it just right. This design will appear next year as a screenprint too, in a heavier weight for home decoration.

The Daisy Dots (aka Chicken Spots) are a design I did while hanging out with my youngest son when he had Chicken Pox last year. My Bloom design was born then and I went on to rework it for my Cheater Quilt entry later in the year. I love the colours used and they work even better with the pale pink background I've added.

These three designs are now in my shop. There is a little bit of a discount and free postage in Australia to celebrate their arrival. Prices for larger cuts are listed, you save a bit the more you order and saying that I'm going now to list a Five FQ discount, so you can have a bit of each!

Back soon with those bricks and some other new designs!

flowers

The semi finalists for Project Selvage were announced yesterday, and sadly my Marble Collection didn't make the cut. Go here to see all the great designs that did. I have voted for only one design this time, can you guess which one!? There seem to have been some popular themes and a couple I liked missed out. I am so interested to see which ten make the final cut in the popular vote and how the designers go on to build a collection around their initial design. 

Thank you anyway for all for your lovely support and for all those wonderful GIVEAWAY entries! I just looked and the Red Teapot is ahead in popularity by one comment, followed closely by the Blue Marbles print! For those of you who are interested in the Marble Collection fabrics, I will be printing some small quantities and selling them through my shop. I also have a new coordinating design I'm really happy with which I'll share next week as well as marble fabric proofs that arrived yesterday! The good news is it looks great on fabric, the quality is amazing! (The bad is only that I got the scale a little wrong, duh :-) But I can easily fix that before ordering quantities.)

If you haven't entered the giveaway there is still plenty of time, it won't be drawn till next week, did I make that clear enough, perhaps not, I meant next Friday! Just leave a comment here or on the post saying which print you'd like to win. Followers get an extra vote!

Think of me this weekend. I have J and D's birthday tomorrow but we're out early for the first games of this year's soccer and netball seasons first (the kids not mine!). Sunday I have four hours of stall duty at our School Fair. As you can see the paper pot seedlings have thrived in the autumn rain and are itching to get out and grow! Look at that leggy dianthus! Pray to the weather gods for us and if you're inner westie pop in for a ride, a plant, some craft, some music, some great food or flowers! Its always a great day and a wonderful cause.

my creative space - marbles

The Project Selvage competition closes today. I just had a look over there and from what I can see there are over 700 entries! I've made a few designs with the contest in mind but I've finally decided this marble collection is the one I'm entering. Marbles were the first thought that jumped into my head - about three minutes after I started thinking about baby boys and I'm happy that it appears to be the only design with this theme. I've entered the blue, which colour do you like?

I've always loved marbles. I think they're beautiful. Mr Flowerpress has a lovely collection found over the years since childhood. I like the timeless, vintage quality of marbles, I like the swirls you find inside and how they hang in the glass. And I'm happy with the way my marble collection reads as spots from a distance too, I do love spotty fabric!

From all those entries the organisers choose just 75 for voting on by the Spoonflower community. There's a lot of competition so I will feel really honoured if my design gets through to that stage, fingers crossed.

Whatever happens my marble collection will soon be for sale as a print, I think they would be perfect as a present for new baby boys.

For more creations visit Kirsty.

proof

More fabric in the mail - but this time its my own design :-) Do you remember the Spoonflower cheater quilt contest I entered. I ordered these proofs at the same time (in fact all the fabric I've received this week has been a long time in the coming, I'm not sure why they all arrived at the same time - though I'm certainly not complaining!)

I've had Spoonflower designs printed once before and I was curious to see the quality of the product since it came out of Beta, and also I was curious too to see how my designs printed up. So I ordered proofs of both my cheater design and the floral print I used in some of the squares.

I'm really pleased with the quality of the printing, which to my mind has improved noticeably since last time. The finish on the dyes is much smoother and the colour match is excellent. All my colours look very close to how they did onscreen. Which also means happily that my artwork and colour specification were correct. If you look here you can compare it for yourself with the artwork I sent. In fact if you are a regular here you have seen most of the steps involved as I worked toward the repeats.

The quilting cotton is quite light and thin, I think I'd prefer it a slightly heavier weight, but it has a lovely fine texture. (I'm tempted to order enough of my floral print to make pillowcases because this fabric is really smooth against my skin and I love fine cotton against my face.)

I love all the different repeats, the green spots, the love hearts, the chicken spots! I also really love the colour palette. The limey green is especially fantastic but I also love the deep pink and the orange. And the fine detail in the numbers design is wonderful. Yay!

cheating

Last week I told you I'd been playing around with more spots and I teased that they were headed somewhere fun. Today I can reveal that I ending putting some of them together to make a cheater quilt top for the latest Spoonflower design comp, whose theme is Cheater Quilt. The contest is up today, I just got the email (with my design on it!) and you can vote on it now!

One of the things I like about the Spoonflower contests is that you can VOTE for as many or as few designs as you like. There are eight pages all up and you can click on each one you like as you go through and then vote at the end.

I'd love it if you have time to go and vote - for me!! whoops, no I mean for your favourites ;-). There are some great designs in there and some interesting ideas.

The designs are designed and previewed over one yard of fabric, which I think would make a great quick and inexpensive baby quilt, I like to think mine is not too girly and would match a range of contemporary colour schemes.  I've ordered a test swatch to check colours (I'll show you when it arrives) and then I intend to order at least one yard to keep in my stash for the next girl baby that comes along. I think it would look lovely backed in pink flannel with some straight line quilting between the squares.

Each of the squares in my cheater is a repeat so I'm uploading my favourites to Spoonflower too. I think they would be great to sew matching accessories like bibs and baby shoes. And most of them work for boys or girls too.

heather ross spoonflowers *

I love Heather Ross's fabric designs, so unique, quirky and beautifully drawn. I really enjoy her blog too so I was really intrigued to read a while ago that she was going to be rereleasing some of her fabrics printed to order by Spoonflower.

You may remember I had some fabrics printed by Spoonflower last year. The service was still in Beta back then.

I find it very exciting that an industry professional like Heather is happy to release her designs in this format. I must go back and sample the service again, see how the quality of printing has improved in the last year.

Its going to be really interesting to see how the fabric is recieved. I know for myself that there are some discontinued designs of Heather's that I'd love to buy, the goldfish and firefly patterns being top of the list. Heather has started a new blog page to share info about this collaboration.

Another cool thing is you could print some of your own fabric and pick up some gnomes at the same time!

* I'm just stopping back in here to share this Flickr thread which raises the issue of unacceptable levels of fading in Spoonflower fabrics, specifically the Heather Ross printings. Stephen Fraser has replied with a comment about their disappointment in the results shown and has said that Spoonflower are going to look into this issue. I know we all want Spoonflower to succeed, such a fantastic concept. I truly hope they can resolve these issues successfully.


I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend coming up! I'm looking forward to a quiet one with time to potter. But first, to all of you that came and read the first Show & Tell interview with Kristina, below, and to all the lovely peeps who left such lovely, encouraging and generous comments -
A BIG THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kristina and I were really delighted and touched by the response.

I can't wait for the next interview, which will come in March. I know you're going to love that one too. Thanks friends.

2009

Well I'm late with this mosaic - but what a year 2009 turned out to be!

This year I made my first quilt, expanded the designs and colours in my tea towel range, made a new gocco print, did lots of knitting and designed my first yardage print! In between there was more of the usual - cooking, embroidery, gardening and sewing.
The start of the year is such a great time to take stock and plan for the future, I'm mentally writing a wish list of projects for 2010 which includes sewing clothes, producing a letterpress print, papercutting... And I definitely want to produce some more yardage!
I'd also like to draw more and I think I'll start posting some of it on here, to keep me motivated.

wips

I love the term wip (work in progress) which I first discovered in blogland, though sometimes it seems everything I do is eternally in progress and never complete (can you tell I'm having a bad week!).
Here's a peak at a wip I've been playing with for a while - my rick rack pattern in four different colour stories.
I haven't quite worked out the repeat but one day I will and then its off to spoonflower to print!
In the meantime I might post some more of my wips, it might help me get round to finishing some of them!!

spooning

My printed fabric arrived yesterday from Spoonflower (after a minor hiccup, quickly and happily corrected - originally they sent me swatches instead of fat quarters).

The blue on the first batch, the swatches, was a bit faded and I was worried about my colours. The lovely Stephen was kind enough to include a printed colour palette swatch with these for future reference. I needn't have worried though because when the quarters came they were perfect. All the colours printed true as you can see if you compare them with the artwork below (which actually looks more faded here than in photoshop!).

So, next week, as promised, I'll post a tutorial on how to prepare artwork for Spoonflower specifications. Its actually quite simple once you get your head around it and how much fun - seeing your own work as fabric! Speaking of which tomorrow I'll tell you about last night's visit to Screenhaus, a local fabric screenprinter's open house. Really interesting. Hopefully I've got a couple of dodgy photos on my phone.

ribbons

I've done it! I finally ordered some fabric from Spoonflower today — fat quarters of the two designs above, the turquoise spots I showed before and a new simple woven ribbons pattern which I dreamed up yesterday, literally, it came to me as I woke up :-)
They share a limited colour palette, chosen from 'in gamut' colours on the downloadable Illustrator palette available from Spoonflower here. The designs were drawn in Illustrator which made it easier to get everything exact and I found a great tutorial for making pattern repeats in Illustrator which makes it easy to preview your repeats and make sure they work (important that!)
Once I get my samples safely back (and make sure they work!) I'm going to post my own simple tutorial which will share the technical aspects of preparing a design repeat in Illustrator and saving it in Photoshop to meet the Spoonflower specifications. It took me a while to work it all out and I'd like to share what I learnt along the way.
And now I have the technical stuff clear in my brain I'm looking forward to preparing some new patterns that I've been playing with. I really want to make my Chrysanthemums design into a repeat, using the fabulous blue colour of my tea towel prints.