My Vintage Kitchen Collection

My new bright and groovy fabric collection 'My Vintage Kitchen' is now available for sale here

 

Flo

My new fabric, called 'Flo', has arrived:

I'm really happy with how these have printed. If you like to buy some, you can get it here

lovely pear

You've got to love a pear with leaves!

Do you freecycle? I used it a while back to pass on an exercise bike that we only used as a clothes horse, but I've also picked up a few things which people want to give away. I collected lots of little plant pots earlier in the year which were perfect for my seedlings, and this week I collected 2 bags of pears from a lady who had 2 trees in her garden and more pears than she could cope with.
My friend is getting married later in the year and has requested some homemade chutney from me (to go with her bread and cheese buffet). I've never made pear chutney before but I've found a recipe here which I'll give a go. I also thought I'd give this pear jam a go too.
Blog readers, do you have any other good pear recipes that you could point me in the direction of?

little cupcakes and bizarre dreams

I really enjoyed drawing Mr & Mrs Cupcake for the plushie pattern I blogged about yesterday, so I've also created a cupcake pattern to go with it, featuring Mr & Mrs Cupcake and a few of their friends:

I seem to be dreaming a fair bit about design and illustration at the moment.
Last night I had a dream that I was in a charity shop/jumble sale and that I found what looked like an old betamax tape box with 'Mog the Forgetful Cat' on it. I knew it was useless as I don't own a betamax recorder, however I opened the box to find a chunky little book. The book was full of original Judith Kerr illustrations and concept work for the Mog books. I was over the moon with my find, and happy to pay £1.50 for it. What a shame this was just a dream - I would love something like this.
Bizarrely in the same dream, I also found a 1970's Action Man outfit, which hadn't been taken out of the original packaging. The reason that I wanted to buy it, (even though I don't own an Action Man!) was that it was a 'terrorist' outfit. This is bizarre - I can think of no good reason to own such a thing - other than that designers in the 70's would have thought that it was perfectly acceptable, so in my head it would be a cool and ironic piece of design history to own.
I dread to think what a dream analyst might make of all this. It's a good thing I don't know one to ask.

Mr & Mrs Cupcake

Mr & Mrs Cupcake - Plushie Pattern:

This is my entry in this weeks spoonflower contest. This is designed at fat quarter size - basic sewing skills are needed (machine or hand) along with scissors, a needle and thread, a small amount of toy stuffing and some pins.

It doesn't surprise me at all that I settled on cakes when it came to a plushie pattern, as I've been somewhat of a wonder woman in the kitchen of late - I've definitely got my kitchen making mojo on. Jam, Cakes, Soups and Pies have all been made in the last week. I'm also picking up a bag of pears from a kind freecycler later today, so a batch of pear chutney is also on the cards for this week.

Trumpet and Squeak 2

A few of my co-ordinates for Trumpet and Squeak:

Trumpet and Squeak Circus - see it here

Mr Strong Mouse - see it here

Circus Star - see it here

Juggling Balls - see it here

Circus Bunting - see it here

If you hop over to spoonflower today they are having a free swatch day. They'll send you a free 8X8 inch swatch on any fabric you'd like. Go now, and have a look around - it's free fabric people!

Ghost Face 2

I've been working on a few co-ordinates for 'ghost face'. As often is the case, I end up liking the co-ordinates more that the initial design - the noughts and crosses in particular, which I can envisage being used in many future sewing projects:

I'm favouring the blues, although the girly girl in me likes the pinks too.

barcode dogs

This weekend my nephew's came to stay with us. Amongst other things that 4 and 6 year old boys like to do, we made some barcode dogs:

Rory (4) drew 'Bernut' with some food. I like that he has 5 legs!

Finlay (6) drew sausage dogs going for a walk

Me (35) drew a happy barking dog

I'd actually seen this idea in a great book which my nephew's had borrowed from the library a few weeks ago (it could have been this one). We raided the recycle bin to find everything with a bar code on it - packaging, receipts, magazines etc. We glued the barcodes to a sheet of paper and photocopied them, then cut them out, stuck them onto card and drew our dogs - topping them off with googly eyes.
This is a really quick and fun thing to do. It kept the boys entertained for a while anyway!

Gulp

This is Brilliant. The world's largest stop motion animation:

Now look how it was made - such a huge amount of work on such a massive scale. I love stuff like this. Could you imagine if this was your day job? Amazing.

Ghost Face

A few weeks back I bought some canvas pumps for my nephews (for the bargain price of £1 a pair) and decorated them with Sharpies. I forgot to take a picture of them (!) but had doodled the design into my sketch book and thought that it would make a funky kids fabric. I've called it 'Ghost Face' and it will soon be available for sale (more news on that later):

Today I received the fabric swatches I had been waiting for (eek!) so that should keep me busy with my scissors and camera for the rest of the afternoon.

Roll up! Roll up!

For the Trumpet and Squeak Circus (click on any of the images for more detail):

Mice and Elephants really are quite good friends you know.

shark tales

a few designs for the latest spoonflower comp - a shark theme:

you need to zoom in to see the sharks hiding in this one!

I found this one quite challenging as I wanted to create a useable fabric that I might want to buy myself - although I couldn't imagine buying a fabric with sharks on it if I'm honest. The top 3 designs were all a bit too busy for my liking. I like the fourth but thought people might have a problem finding the sharks in the design, so settled with the last design which I think feels quite serene - sharks and fish swimming in amongst a coral forest - in subtle colours.

My Vintage Kitchen

Flower Power (orange multi)

Flower Power (brown)

My Vintage Garden (white multi)

Flower Power (orange)

My Vintage Coffee Pot (2)

My Vintage Kitchen is now available to purchase here. There are 3 different designs in this range - My Vintage Coffee Pot, My Vintage Garden and Flower Power. Each design is available in multiple colour ways.