New folk fabric design

Sometimes I make a new fabric design from the embers of some old designs and that's what I did last week when I created an American style folk fabric.

A few years ago I designed some Amish people cut & sew kits which I think I only sold one of, the idea was to make a family group and string them like bunting.

I took some of the design elements from the kits and worked out a pattern repeat and then picked a selection of muted colours for the range and these are my results.

I've already had some cotton samples back from print which I'm quite pleased with and I think this one will be nice for kitchen textiles, aprons, patchwork etc.

Another design just finished is a mish mash of lots of other elements, butterflies, embroidered flowers, vintage postage stamps. birds. I'm thinking Hawaiian shirts with this, maybe because the sun is shining on me today!

Solar Eclipse, first day of Spring

Hurrah spring is here. 
Today was to be the best solar eclipse since the one in 1999 which I traveled down to Devon for and was thoroughly wowed by it.

Different story today, started off with a hint of brightness but cloud soon got the better of it. All my pictures were rubbish, this is the only one less rubbish with a hint of eclipse if you look closely.

I also think I made the hole too big for my pinhole camera. Not satisfied with the pin prick shown by the red arrow, I went for a larger circle above but it didn't actually eclipse and after the near totality point it naturally clouded completely.

Oh well, 6 years to another partial eclipse!

Hope you saw it wherever you where.

Sausage Dogs on the loose soon!

I can't help but smile when I say the words Sausage Dog. The word Dachshund is just slightly austere for such a comical, characterful little doggie.

For some time a friend of mine has suggested I make something sausage doggy, I think brooches were the original intention however I wanted to work on a bit bigger scale so as to incorporate some doggy clothes.

This is what I've come up with, Sausage Dog Cut & Sew Plushie Kits.

I found some classic sausage dog pictures to sketch from and created digital illustrations to have printed as my kit.

The fun bit will be clothes, as in the visual below I plan for them to either have jackets or bandanas.

I will make the clothes from vintage or tweed fabric and offer a choice to go with each kit.

Funnily enough, last weekend as I was supposed to be finishing off this project, I went to Bridlington for a bit of fresh air and I saw 2 very cute sausage dog puppies out for a walk. This spurred me on to finish my kits.
I didn't used to be too fussed about sausage dogs but I have to admit to quite liking them now!

Fabric designs, crochet and tweed makes

March is still throwing some frosty mornings at me and I'm still very cold in here but the clocks will soon be changing and letting more light and warmth into our lives, hooray!

A quick result for the cat fabric, I did so so, came 85th out of 237.

More fabric has been designed for this weeks Spoonflower contest which the theme is 'spoons', I couldn't resist having a go at some simple designs.

These were the first, spoon outlines.

Next I did these which were slightly inspired by that retro, Festival of Britain type feel and colour.

I looked on the Spoonflower site and there are already lots of simple spoon outline designs so I decided not to enter any of the above. I wanted to do something a little more quirky. Two things came into my head, that lovely nursery rhyme image of 'the dish running away with the spoon', not that I could do anything illustrative like the jolly nursery rhyme books I had as a child. The other thing spoony I thought of were the Welsh Love Spoons, beautiful carved pieces with symbolic meanings. 

I looked some up and nearly started trying to draw them but I didn't have time as the deadline is today. 

Instead I've whizzed up a quick design, called Love Spoons, a running spoon with a whole lot of love to give.

I'm entering the white version, with multi colour hearts, basically because I couldn't decide which colour background I preferred.

I am still updating fabrics and adding to the collection at my Woven Monkey shop. Recent additions have been the range of Breakfast fabrics, now in new colours.

This is a completely new range on Woven Monkey, Savannah Stripes.

Moving on to crochet, I've been willing Spring to get here and I've made some spring flower jewellery. A little brooch, probably end up as a Mother's Day gift and the necklace which I'm finishing for myself.

I bought myself a new ball of wool and this lovely new crochet hook with a rubberised handle which is very nice to hold.

Finally, a couple of Harris Tweed makes for my Folksy shop, a pin cushion and needle case, this is quite a large needle case so plenty of room for stuff.

Thank you if you stuck it out!!