It looks like rain

It's actually a beautifully sunny day here today, not a drop of rain in sight. This pleases me because the seeds that I planted at the weekend are all sitting in my greenhouse waiting to pop up and they'll be happy with the sunny warmness of the day.

Here are some patterns with rain clouds that I was working on earlier in the week:

I actually missed the deadline for getting them into the latest spoonflower competition. I had such a faffing day on Friday (which was deadline day) where not much was achieved. I got my mojo back on Monday though and have been working on some more rainy patterns and ideas this week.

To start the day today I had a lovely message from Tallulah in my inbox. Look what she did. Thanks Tallulah, actually, you rock!

a stitchy interlude

I'm sitting here surrounded by little piles of fabric that I need to put away.
Whenever I have an idea of something I want to make in my head, I draw it out first, then pull out lots of bits of fabric that I think might be right for what I want to make - making little piles of things which I think will go together. The piles I am surrounded by at the moment are as a result of this stitched canvas:

which I made as a mother's day present for my mum.
I wish there were more hours in the day for me to sew things and design things all at the same time.

the Pixies, via THePETEBOX

Today I am very much liking this Pixies cover, via THePETEBOX. I think I have probably watched this 10 times already. This man has some serious talent:

If you were thinking you might like to vote for my fabric design in the Project Selvage contest but you haven't quite got round to it yet, please pop over here and do it now - there's only a couple of days voting left.

Semi Finals

Eep! and Wow-Wee! and OMG!
My baby boy fabric design (called Flippers and Kippers) made it to the semi finals of Project Selvage. I am over the moon (doing a silly dance) excited about this.

My design, along with 74 others has been selected from almost 1000 entries and they are all strong designs, this is one tough competition.
The next stage of the competition is the public vote, and this is where I need your help.
I'd be ever so grateful if you could spare a minute to vote for me. The link for voting is below - it's all very self explanatory once you get there - and you don't need to log in or be a member of spoonflower to vote.
You can Click this link to vote

or paste this into your browser bar:
http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_voters/new?contest_id=78

It would be a life changing leap for me in my fledgling design career if I could get into the top 10 of this design competition and inch a bit closer in my quest towards world surface pattern design domination.

Thanks also to all those have have already voted for me and given me such nice feedback about my design. It means a lot to me.

Eep!

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.