Happy Autumn Equinox

I'm sorry to see the end of summer as I don't feel like I've had a summer this year but at least the sun has appeared today and the cute google squirrel made an appearance!

The light is rather nice at this time of day and I just spotted this leaf with dew drops on the step.

This week I've been putting together some fabric kits for my Etsy shop. The orange and brown patchwork kit below went quite quickly which was brilliant. The packs feature a large centre panel of my Scandi Birds and Flowers fabric.

I'm also preparing some vintage caravan kits which can be used for embroidering or embellishing to create a mixed media work.

My fabric to celebrate the wonderful city of York

Here's a project which I got stuck into rather last minute and I've been beavering away creating digital illustrations for the last few days.

I spotted a fabric design competition on PrintMePretty to design a fabric to illustrate 'My Town', in my case I've taken that to mean my favourite local place which is York.

This has been a great excuse to do some illustrations which may have use in other projects too.

King's Sq below

The legend that is Guy Fawkes!

Bootham Bar

You can't mention York without thinking of it's chocolate heritage!

The city walls

There are a few more illustrations of notable landmarks which I have now thrown together to create my York fabric for the competition.

It looks like this, the white background version is the one I have entered. If you felt inclined to fancy voting for my design I believe there are 2 ways to do it, either by leaving a comment on the PrintMePretty blog post when it goes live in a couple of days and you would find the blog page from this link

http://www.printmepretty.co.uk/

Or the other way is to look up the Print Me Pretty page on Facebook and when they show the designs in a couple of days you can like the ones you fancy :)

I created some different colour versions in small and large repeats. I'm thinking the pink one might make a fun table cloth in a vintage style tea shop in York.

A week of digital doings online

A number of things which I've been meaning to do do for a while, and I've probably been saying that for a few years now, have finally been done last week which feels quite satisfying.

First up, a new Etsy shop for Fabric Mountain.

This year has been very slow with my Folksy shop, I think I've only had 3 or 4 sales all year and I had been curious about joining Etsy although I always wanted to wait until I move away and have a new address to embrace it afresh. 
However, just recently I have heard so many encouraging stories from other arty crafty people who are doing pretty well with Etsy, it convinced me to get organised now ahead of Christmas crafting.

Thank you so much to Vivienne from Green Rabbit Designs who has given me some valuable advice and info to help me get my shop up and running, much appreciated :) Vivienne has a wonderful shop of knitted bunnies and animals which disappear as soon as they are listed so there might not be any right now!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/GreenRabbitDesigns

So here is my shop and there are some brand new bags which have not appeared on Folksy and which have been finished recently and I'm in the process of adding more.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/fabricmountainuk

To run alongside the Etsy shop and to attract some attention as textile things are in the process of being made, I have started a Facebook business page for Fabric Mountain.

Do pop along and give it a like if you fancy, thank you.

https://www.facebook.com/FabricMountain

And lastly but by no means least, my graphic design business, Wicked Poppy Designs, finally has a new website. This has been a job which rather embarrassingly needed doing for over 10 years and like a lot of things for yourself, it never gets done.

The old site and work samples were so out of date that I was at the stage I didn't even tell people I had a website if they asked. Anyway, it's only simple and made with some Wordpress theme we bought but it looks a lot fresher and I've been able to show new work on it.

http://wickedpoppy.co.uk/

Phew, it feels like I'm finally up to date with some long awaited tasks on the to do list!

Hornsea pottery and Hornsea Station

I made my usual bank holiday pilgrimage to Hornsea for the Nostalgia weekend and huge sale of pots. Lovely to catch up with society members and see the fabulous range of pots they bring to sell every year.

There's always plenty of information posters to read up on rare, unusual or popular pieces in the Hornsea range.
I love the cruet sets from the 1960's and I didn't realise until I read this poster that they were sold through Boots the chemist.

Whilst looking and drooling over the lovely pots, I took the decision to only buy something if I wanted it, needed it and would use it. So I bought a couple of the slightly more rare lidded soup dishes in the Contrast range, I make a lot of soup and it seems to make  more of a meal when presented in a lidded container.They are beautifully designed, they wash well and seem very robust.

And these 2 pin dishes which are in a muramic style with the high gloss decoration. I have none of these in my collection and I shall use them as olive dishes.

After admiring the pots it was such a nice sunny day that I went for a look at the former Hornsea railway station. It struck me that all the times I go to Hornsea and I never knew if the railway station (which was one of the many closed in the 60's) was still standing or derelict. I think this idea to go and look was prompted by a recent photograph I saw of it but it wasn't clear if it was a picture from the past or present so I had to investigate.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the station very much in tact, looking quite lovely and I believe some or all of it is now housing.
This is the main Station House

Here's the rest of the station building

Some information boards about the Trans Pennine route

Most interesting and a nice day to start the bank holiday weekend. Shame the weekend ended with a day full of rain!