tea towels

We don't have a dishwasher (yet - it's on ongoing battle because 'we don't have space' he says, but I will have one someday) so dishes get washed by hand around here, and not normally by me I should add. Then they sit in the drying rack to dry naturally. Bizarre then that we tend to get through quite a few tea towels in a week, but we do.
I bought a new one a few weeks back, from To Dry For. It's currently hanging in my office:

To Dry For were also running a competition to design a tea towel. How could I not?
Here are a few of the designs I put together for the competition:

My entry was actually quite different to those above however. It's the excuse I've been trying to use all my life:

stitched penguin classics

I came across these amazing stitched covers for penguin classics yesterday:

The work is produced by Jillian Tamaki - you can see more about these pieces on her blog here and visit her illustration website here.  All images © Jillian Tamaki

I have a great vintage embroidery pattern which I really want to make a start on, but it will have to wait until I've finished the granny stripe blanket. I just feel better when I finish one thing before starting the next. I think it's about the feeling of accomplishment which I just don't get with lots of UFOs hanging around.

vintage prints

Today, I've been digging around flickr for a bit of vintage print inspiration:

 1. a bit of vintage pink, 2. Vintage Fabric, 3. Vintage Pink and Orange Fabric, 4. Vintage Sheet, 5. red and pink floral, 6. Vintage Pillowcase, 7. vintage floral, 8. Vintage Sheet, 9. vintage floral sheet
 

1. Vintage Fabric Teeny Tiny Roses and Daisies, 2. OGBB fabric yellow white floral, 3. OGBB fabric white floral, 4. Vintage Floral Fabric, 5. Retro/vintage floral fabric, 6. Retro vintage fabric- atomic barkcloth, 7. Vintage fabric, 8. Vintage fabric ~ barkcloth, 9. Atomic Barkcloth

cats with thumbs

I just love this advert, it makes me smile each time I see it. Probably because I think it is actually true that cats behave like this:

and yes, I am following Bertrum Thumbcat on twitter.

flippers and kippers

This is my entry in the Project Selvage competition for a baby boy fabric:

The people at Spoonflower and Michael Miller will choose their top 75 fabrics which will go to the public vote next week.
After voting the top 10 designers need to then design an additional 5 fabrics to form a collection and the voting starts again. I'm keeping everything crossed here.

under the sea

Here are some of my designs that I didn't end up entering into Project Selvage. Although I love these, I have also created some designs that are more just a bit more 'baby boy' (as opposed to 'boy'):

I hope I made the right decision in not selecting these for this competition? It's hard to be objective about your own work sometimes. I'm fortunate in that my husband is also a designer and can give me constructive feedback with a designers eye.

revamp

I've been revamping and changing things around here a bit - a much overdue job. If you read my blog via google reader (or similar) you probably haven't seen my new tabs. I finally have tabbed pages - with information and forms and all kinds of jazzy stuff that links to things, like twitter, flickr and my shops:

Today I'm putting together some final ideas for Project Selvage - the Michael Miller/Spoonflower competition to design a fabric for baby boys.

Have you ever tried to find a great baby boy fabric out there. The choices are few and far between. I'll post my final design here later in the week.

cats and dogs

I'm working on a few designs with pairs of animals animals at the moment, and I'm really enjoying it. In fact, I'm really enjoying my days at the moment. Being able to draw and make patterns every day is so far away from what I was doing this time last year.
Things feel different here. My world has become very pattern and colour focussed and most nights I dream in patterns or about patterns. It's a nice feeling.

Don't carry it all

Today, I'm very much liking this, by the Decemberists:

the BIG day

I just realised that I didn't sort out and post any pictures of our BIG day.
As readers of my blog will know, we put quite an effort into our handmade wedding and it was those little touches that made the day even more special:

directions

we just got married!

the barn before everyone arrived - decorated with handmade tissue pom poms

we had a lot of cake!

photo booth with props and 10p mix bags

we had afternoon tea with vintage china

my beautiful dress. I stitched the flowers onto the sash.

my button bouquet (front) and bridesmaids bouquet (back)

we hired professional dancers to give a jive lesson. It looks like we can dance!

and lots of laughs were to be had on the day

The crochet flowers in my bouquet, the boutonnieres and on my dress were made for me (with vintage threads) by the lovely Emma Lamb and our wedding photographs were taken by Lucy Walters
It was such a lovely day.

decorating

At the weekend we started the decorating task in the living room.
This is what it looked like before we started:

We took off the skirting boards and picture rails and started stripping the walls. Our flat is 2 level semi detached maisonnette that was build in the 1950's. I was really hoping that we would find some really cool 50's/60's funky wallpaper underneath the paper we were stripping off - but sadly we didn't.
There is a fairly cool retro graphic print on the walls which may well have been wallpaper at some point. Maybe the colour from the wallpaper seeped through to the walls over time.
This is the first wall we uncovered:

I already prefer this to the wallpaper!

After uncovering this, we went onto uncover something a bit more interesting:

The remainder of the walls have some hand painted elements - mostly a frame with decorations around the edges.
We won't be keeping these 'feature walls' in our new scheme for the living room, but it did make the wallpaper stripping a bit more interesting.
The jobs for this weekend include finishing off the stripping and uncovering the covered fireplace to see what lies behind. I'm not sure that the period features from council built property from the 50's were anything to write home about but we figure it is worth a look.

cards

I've finally put some of my vintage postcards to use and made some new cards for my folksy shop
Part of me can't bear to cut them up and another part of me loves that they have been reused and made into something entirely different. I've made a few each of mother's day cards and birthday cards:

fruit and veg and kitchen things

Joseph Joseph recently ran a competition to design a worktop saver. Here are a few of the designs I created:

apples and pears in green

apples and pears in orange

apples and pears in red

vegetable soup - this is my fave design

time for tea - using a variation of vegetable soup in green

time for tea and flowers

I really enjoyed working on these patterns. I'd love it if one of my designs won, but regardless of this, my aim at the moment is to have a variety of work in my portfolio in my ongoing attempt to take the surface pattern world by storm. Well that's the plan anyway.