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!!

Fabric for competition & more butterfly fabric

Thanks to everyone who joined in here and on FB in helping me decide which fabric to enter into the competition. The one with the most votes was the above which I've called Retro Pixel.

This particular competition is this weeks Spoonflower contest but it's a bit different to normal because the winning fabric is to be used by a US clothing company with bigger bucks at stake. After a week of voting it will go down to the top 10 before a winner is revealed, I'll keep you posted!


I'm also waiting for samples of a new fabric I have designed, again butterflies seem to be quite popular with me at the moment, this is called Butterfly Waltz in pink, maybe more colours will follow when I see the samples.

The weather looks promising today making me think summer is still here but I'm really noticing the nights drawing in. I'm doing a lot of sewing on a night and I've noticed I'm struggling with the natural light by 8pm and it feels like I've lost an hours evening sewing time since July, grrrr!
Hopefully it will stay nice for the weekend as I haven't really been anywhere much for months and I feel the need for a bit of culture (not the theatre or ballet I need to point out, not my thing at all!) I reckon a gallery and a change of scenery will suffice.

Have a nice weekend everyone. :)

Design a fabric competition for Making magazine

Phew! am I pleased I stayed inside working today and didn't go to the Driffield Show as it was the hottest day of the year and I know it would be way too hot and tiring for me, tough for the livestock too.

I've decided to post about a fabric design for a competition I entered in May and was holding off with posting my ideas until I knew the outcome. However I think it's safe to say I wasn't successful as the notify winners date was end of June.

The subject matter was nature.

I created one of my mixed media collages with newsprint and stitch.

Started by painting some newspaper.

I wanted to create some butterflies, pods and flowers so I made some scribbles to base my shapes on and then I ripped & snipped bits and built up layers for the shapes.

Then it's time for a bit of stitching, using machine stitching to go around my shapes and add detail

They start to look more interesting when the definition is added

With all my hand made elements complete they were scanned in and worked up in Photoshop. I then started to create a repeat pattern which went through many phases before the result you see below. It had been on a white background but it looked too new and I wanted a more antiquey looking fabric so I did some rubber stamping in the background and built in a few more layers.

Here is my fabric repeat and shown in more detail below.

The competition was quite thorough and even wanted a mood board sending so this was my inspiration.

Not sure which forthcoming issue of Making will reveal the winner but I can't wait to see what the winning design looks like.

Fabric - designed & printed

Here is some preparation for the final exam next Monday. I have designed this fabric from some rough sketches and it has been repeated and printed out on cotton. It is only at A4 size and done on an inkjet but hopefully it will be ok to use in a purse which I'm planning on making.


I have a piece of neckwear to do first in the exam and it's only a 2 hour session so I might be a bit optimistic thinking I can make a purse also but we'll see how it goes.