pear shaped!

A few weeks ago, I had an idea for something a bit different to take to The Finders Keepers Market. I have admired Brenda's work for some time now, and wondered if she would make her gorgeous pears with my linen. She (thankfully) agreed and this was the result ...

I just love them!! Two sets of pears in each colourway (on natural linen) will be available at The Finders Keepers Market in about 10 days time. I also couldn't resist showing you how beautifully Brenda packaged up her pears to send to me. What a great idea to use old sewing patterns - looks brilliant with the red and white string - my kind of packaging!

Have a great day!

hello

I bought this gorgeous fabric collage last week from the very talented Lisa Stubbs. Lisa is an artist and screenprinter based in the UK, and she also makes these beautiful collages from reclaimed fabrics and trims. This one struck a chord with me - especially the glasses! So this was a little gift to myself, because sometimes it's nice to have a little treat!

You can find more of Lisa's work for sale on Etsy here - I'll be heading back for Christmas presents shortly - everything comes packaged so beautifully. Thanks, Lisa - I love it!

you asked for it + a winner!

Thanks to everyone who entered my giveaway and left great colour suggestions. This afternoon, I just couldn't resist mixing up a batch of hot pink ink and giving Carmel and Gem's suggestion a go ...

I also experimented with a small pot of flourescent pink too (kind of an eighties vibe today!), but it didn't print well on the black (it wasn't opaque enough). It did print well on the off-white tea towels, though ...

I only printed one of each as a test and a bit of fun this afternoon while the grand final was on. If people like them, I may print one or two more and take them to The Finders Keepers Market in two weeks time - mainly for a laugh!

Now for the winner ... the randomly drawn winner of a tea towel of their choice from my shop is ... Jessica who also has a lovely blog called Scrappy'n'Happy. Thanks again, everyone - I really appreciate all of you who read my blog and leave me comments. It makes my day!

colours + lovely regulars + a giveaway

I've been experimenting with colour lately, and thought it might be fun to print some of my tea towel designs in limited edition colours for the Finders Keepers Market.

You may have noticed that there are now 200 lovely people who regularly read this blog (aka Google Followers, but I hate the idea of "followers"). I think such a milestone is worthy of a giveaway. Up for grabs is a tea towel of your choice from those listed in the shop.

All you need to do to enter is leave a comment with you suggestion for a new colour for one (or more, if you like) of my tea towel designs (you can see them here). Will it be something to match your kitchen decor, your favourite colour or  a colour you've just always wanted to see on a tea towel ...?

Lovely regulars get an extra entry, as do people who "like" me on Facebook - just let me know in your comment. Open to Australian and international readers.

A fast giveaway is a good giveaway, so I'll randomly draw a winner on Friday at midday (AEST).

buckets

Yesterday I was testing out a fabric bucket pattern I adapted from the Zakka Sewing book and then enlarged. I made two - one smaller one in my red circa fabric  (perfect for cotton reels and other little things) and one larger one in my white agapanthus fabric (perfect for pattern envelopes or whatever really!) ...

I'm thinking of making a few of these for the Finders Keepers Market in a few weeks. I still want to refine the handles - especially for the smaller one - I think they are a bit too big. I think I may even make the smaller one a little bit bigger. I'm glad I remembered to try out one of my new labels this time! Let me know what you think of these. I'd like to make at least a couple in each fabric colourway. They would look great in a set too - I like nice storage!

P.S. I'm accumulating lots of fabric offcuts that are too beautiful to waste - do you think I should put some small remnants packs in the shop?

P.P.S. After selling out again, a big stack of Vintage Tram Roll Menu Market Bags are back in the shop.

a fairy floss induced sewing spree

Mr Yardage went to the football last night, and Little Mister was so tired after the Show that he was asleep early, leaving me rare, quiet time to sew. Sugared up on fairy floss, I made this top from start to finish ...

I am real square neck fan, so I was keen to try the New Look 6356 pattern out. I used just under a metre of my Swizzle fabric in teal. It's a pretty simple pattern, with just a small zipper at the back. The whole thing took about 3 hours to sew (in between a bit of blogging and fairy floss). Once I'd finished it, I realised that I'd forgotten to sew one of my new labels into it ... bugger! Anyway, it was just so nice to start and finish something in the same sitting - I can't remember the last time I did that and made something just for me. Hope your Sunday is a good one!

commended!

We've just got back from the Royal Melbourne Show, and I was absolutely thrilled to find that my machine embroidered cushion got a commended certificate ...

My other cushion didn't get anything, but I'm not surprised because as I was handing it over, one of the buttons popped off! Anyway, by the time we got to the Arts and Crafts Pavilion, Little Mister was well and truly off his trolley, so we didn't get to look around much, but there seemed to be more entries in the craft section than last year, which was great to see. Hopefully I'll drop in again before it closes for a better look.

my creative space ...

Is a little bit messy ...

  

... and a little bit organised ...

Lots of activity in my space this week - tonnes of printing, which will hopefully make way for some sewing next week, using these ...

All in preparation for the Finders Keepers Market on 9-10 October ... not far away!

Check out what everyone else is up to today at Kootoyoo.

for shop handmade ...

A selection of handprinted tea towels, including a special red tram roll print onto natural linen - available only from Shop Handmade in Canberra. I'm posting a box of these off today, so they should be in store soon!

my tea towels are in GOOD FOOD Magazine

Complete and utter excitement here this morning! The latest edition (October 2010) of Australian Good Food Magazine hit newsagents today - I had been counting the sleeps! About six weeks ago I was contacted to see if it would be OK to feature my tea towels in the magazine ... YES PLEASE! So, here they are ...

Thanks to the lovely people at Good Food (especially Hana) for finding me, asking me, and taking wonderful photo's of my tea towels - I am thrilled! You can find the tea towels featured in my shop, including the return of the very popular Red Vintage Tram Roll Menu Tea Towel.

Felt Aid for our friends in Christchurch

Last night I came across Felt Aid, thanks to Jenny from A Little Vintage. Felt is the New Zealand equivalent of Made It, and they have set up a store called Felt Aid with donated handmade items to raise money for the clean-up and rebuilding of Christchurch. Pop over for a squizz - I picked up some gorgeous hand bound notebooks during my visit! They also have a blog - felt like helping out, and a facebook page.

new ARTichoke tea towel colours

White on natural ...

Deep green on off white ....

Both in the shop (listed together).

Happy Sunday!

playing catchup

Hello! It's been a while between decent blog posts, so I thought I should catch you up on some news. First off, I was lucky enough to be accepted to be a stallholder at the Melbourne Finders Keepers Market! It's on the weekend of 9-10 October. Check out the list of other stallholders - it's going to be a treasure trove! Christmas shopping ... check!

I can't wait - I am madly preparing a whole lot of new products including a new fabric design. More on that in a couple of weeks. Speaking of fabric, Annabel from Earthgirl Fabrics sent me this pic of a Kristen Doran sling bag pattern made with my Agapanthus fabric (purple on white linen) ... love it! I have added it to the "Things people have made with Yardage Design fabric" page too, here.

My Black Vintage Tram Roll Menu Tea Towel was featured on a lovely Etsy Treasury this week - loving the monochrome theme ... here. Have a lovely weekend!

new tea towel design ... TASTY

A slight variation on the tram roll theme - this time with a theme of TASTE. There were so many excellent taste words to choose from, but I stuck to the basics and added something a bit different for fun ... umami ... a Japanese word describing the fifth primary taste, savoury. Who'd have thought you could learn something from a tea towel! I've printed this design in black ink on a natural linen tea towel, and teal blue on off white linen tea towel.

Both are in the shop now (listed together). Vintage Tram Roll Menu Market Bags are now back in the shop too. Hope you're having a good Wednesday - it's a beautiful Spring day here in Melbourne ... bliss!

second one down

I have finally finished my second (and final) entry for the Royal Melbourne Show. This one is for the machine embroidery category. I have really procrastinated about this entry - mainly because I couldn't decide what to embroider. In the end I went with a small art nouveau design I've been working on for a while ...

The embroidery is in peacock blue thread, on beige linen, with some accent from a small geometric print I got at Patchwork on Central Park this morning (love that store!). I think I'l print this design too - I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Hope you're having a good Saturday!

vintage ice coupons

It's Spring at last ... sadly, you would never know it today in Melbourne as it is raining quite heavily. Nevermind, it's technically Spring, and I'm going with that! To celebrate, I'm launching a new market bag design, with a warmer weather theme, based on some vintage ice coupons I found a while ago ...

I have printed these in a lovely teal blue, and they are in the shop now. 

In other news, the vintage tram roll menu market bags have sold out (amazing response - thanks everyone!), but I will be printing more today, so they should be back in the shop next week.

I hope the first day of Spring (or Autumn) is lovely where-ever you are.