Christmas shopping + FREE EXPRESS POST this week!

How is it just 10 more sleeps until Christmas?! Time has evaporated into the vortex of pre-christmas making and markets! The Yardage Design online shop closes this Friday, with all Australian orders placed between now and then getting a free express post upgrade (excluding Brisbane metropolitan addresses) so that everyone will have their orders before Christmas day. International orders are still welcome, but it is unlikely they will arrive before Christmas, so they will be a new year treat!

If you can't decide what to buy someone, or yourself, you might like our new Gift Vouchers. Plenty of everything for everyone in the Yardage Design online shop this week!

Thanks to everyone for their support this year :: it has been amazing!
Have a safe and happy festive season, and wishing you all the best for 2015.

{ new } vintage green australia market bag

Sometimes colour inspiration comes from unlikely places :: in the case of this lovely, vintage green, it was from an old tin lid. It seemed appropriate to print something Australian. Vintage green Australia Market Bags are in the Yardage Design online shop now for a limited time …

Have a great day!

{ new } ochre australia tea towel

In true Australian style, the "Girt by Sea" linen tea towel has had a makeover and is now also available in a wonderful, earthy ochre colourway …

The ochre, and the original blue, "Girt by Sea" linen tea towels are available in the Yardage Design online shop right now.

Have a fantastic week!

{ new } lime HEX tea towel

Zesty and in the shop right now!

i'm in mollie makes magazine!

A few months ago, I was asked to contribute a tutorial to Mollie Makes magazine :: how to handprint and make your own pennant flags. After much excitement and waiting, it's finally here :: my tutorial can be found in the current, issue 43, of the magazine :: step by step instructions to show you how to cut and print a stencil with patterns for you to use. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed putting it together …

Issue 43 of Mollie Makes is in newsagents now!

Have a great weekend! You will mostly find me over on instagram these days :: I am @yardagedesign :: come and say hello if you haven't already!

{ lots of new! }

So much newness has been designed and printed in the last couple of months, and today it's all finally available in the Yardage Design online shop!

These are all available online now, along with $10 discontinued tea towels and market bags in the SALE section of the shop :: be quick for those!

Have a great weekend!

{ making } little jute bunting flags

A while ago I saw an idea on Pinterest (as you do!) where someone had made a garland from some hessian webbing. I wanted to make some, for no other reason than to justify the enormous roll of jute webbing I bought on ebay years ago!

These are as easy as they look :: cut some webbing (or ribbon, or fabric) into about 10cm strips; keep one end straight and fold over about 1cm; sew, staple or glue that end down but leave a little gap to thread some string through the top; cut the other end however you please; repeat as many times as you like and then thread onto string (or thin ribbon or whatever you have). Easy peasy garland for your studio, office, home!

You will find all the other ideas and projects I'm yet to get to via my Pinterest page, and keep up with what I'm doing over on Instagram (@yardagedesign).

Have a great Friday, and fabulous weekend!

free shipping this weekend!

Mother's Day is just a couple of weeks away, so I thought it might be handy to have a free shipping weekend so that everyone can get organised! Free shipping applies to all orders posted to an Australian address. No need to do anything, free postage will be applied automatically at the checkout until 6pm AEST tomorrow (Sunday 27 April). As well as free shipping, I have also listed a few heavily discounted items. Pop over to the Yardage Design online shop for a look!

Have a lovely weekend!

eastery days

I hope you've all been enjoying the easter weekend. It's been family time here, with a bit of faffing in between, as evidenced below!

{ "hello" napkin in duckegg blue on oatmeal linen }

{ handmade "nest" on freckle tea towel }

{ arrows and dots napkin in neon pink on oatmeal linen }

Have a great week!

why don't you wrap it, wrap it good!

Apologies if you have the Devo song in your head now (see what I did there with the "Whip It" and the "Wrap It") but it's been one of those kind of days! Aaaaaaaaaanyway, back to wrapping things! I've been doing a bit of wrapping with tea towels in readiness for Mother's Day, and thought you might like to see. This is my new Hex tea towel in tomato red ...

I'm not really sure why I went with asymmetrical ribbon attachment, it just seemed right at the time (told you I'm having one of those days!).

I've always liked giving fabric or tea towels as gifts, but I like using them to wrap special gifts as well :: a gift around a gift! I'm chatting about this and other stuff in an interview on the Country Culture blog this week :: pop over for a read! More Mother's Day gift ideas here too!

Have a great weekend :: stay safe and eat too much chocolate!

new :: linen napkins!

I get asked for napkins at almost every market I attend, so I have been working on a few designs for them. I couldn't decide between three designs, so I ended up printing them all!

First :: a large, hand drawn succulent flower, in neon pink or Tuesday blue on oatmeal linen.

Second :: "hello" in duck egg blue or Tuesday blue on oatmeal linen.

Finally :: arrows and dots in neon pink on oatmeal linen!

Napkins come in a set of two in one colourway. I like the idea of mixing and matching sets on the table (see above picture). Pop over to the Yardage Design online shop to check these out.

Have a great Thursday!

new :: beads!

Towards the end of last year I printed some lovely, light organic cotton voile in bright colours, and then used that fabric to make some wooden beads. I quietly wore and displayed the beads for sale at a couple of markets, including Melbourne Finders Keepers last October, and was relieved to find that people liked them as much as I did!

So, after some lovely emails from people who had seen them, they are now listed in the Yardage Design online shop. The beads are made from handprinted organic voile and coloured wooden beads. The strand is adjustable - just by tying the knot at the desired height, you can wear them long or short. I've also printed a little drawstring bag for each set of beads ...

Beads are available in the shop now!

Have a great weekend!

new :: HEX tea towel

A new tea towel design has landed! This one has been months in the designing ... I think I started it about a year ago but couldn't decide on the scale or final configuration of the hexagon "chains" so left it to ponder ... until early this year when I looked at it again and it all made sense!

The design is based on hexagons (!) but I had a go at creating a pattern I'd seen once in an old embroidery book where the shapes overlapped. After much trial and error, I settled on a striped and solid combo. The result is "tricky geometric"!

This design is currently printed in three colours - Tomato red, Jacaranda purple and Tuesday blue on an off white 100% linen tea towel.

New tea towels now available in the Yardage Design online shop.

Have a great week!

making :: my materialized exhibition wall hanging

I think I may have said this before, but a couple of times a year I like to participate in swaps or exhibitions or the like :: they make me think outside of my day to day printing and creating, and often lead to something I love. Such was the case with making my entry for the Gleaners Inc "Materialized" exhibition. This is my finished piece ...

So the whole exhibition revolves around a little swatch of fabric we were all sent when we signed up. The fabric (design or colours or both) was our inspiration and we could make anything we liked! For me it was the colours that struck me first, and I knew I wanted to use my "Sevilla" design to reflect the almost moroccan tile design of the fabric swatch. I wanted to make a wall hanging.

I chose a deep indigo denim to print on - for both the colour and the weight as I wanted it to hang nicely. Once I had worked out which colours I would use (mint, mustard, lavender, pink and blue), the ink was mixed and the slow process of taping and printing for each colour began ...

The finished printed area is quite large - larger than the screen, so I had to "join" up the design for length, which meant double printing of all five colours for each section! All in all it took me about 5 hours to complete the printing, which I did over a couple of days.

The finished piece was then sewn to include two rods - one for hanging at the top, and one for weight at the bottom. The whole thing measures about 1.2m long by 55cm wide. I love the scale.

I know when I've made something special when Mr Yardage says, "let's just keep it and hang it in the house"! Of course, I didn't keep this one. It is currently on display at Gleaners Inc in Brunswick for the month of March. There is a little opening night drinkies tonight if you happen to be in Melbourne.

And, incase you were wondering, this wall hanging is for sale. Contact Liz at Gleaners Inc for details. I am in the process of printing myself another one just for us {and for you too if you would like :: just send me an email}.

Have a great weekend!