Christmas has come to my Folksy shop with a selection of handmade decorations.
Category Archives: Studio posts
Flavours of Spain No7
I delivered 2 custom aprons to ‘Flavours of Spain’ recently; the ochre coloured denim and red ties are perfect Spanish colours for their deli business. A dog Like Sparky basic No7 design was adapted with changes to the pockets and longer ties, plus a monogram A and T for Ana and Teresa so they could tell them apart.
Flavours of Spain have a spot at The Southbank Centre Food Market (Central London near Festival Hall etc), Brockley Farmers Market (SE London) and throughout August have run a pop-up at Number 57 in Brockley, Lewisham SE London, selling their fantastic cheeses, charcuterie, wines etc and freshly prepared tapas.
Lavender bags…
I had a good afternoon at Number 57, friends dropped by, artists came to introduce themselves, had some great discussions. I even sold some lavender bags, which were the sum total of things I made this week (half-term never pans out the way you think!). They looked lovely nestling in beautiful Jan Barker bowls (see photo).
… and a picture taken at home this morning before I went to Number 57.
Nipper Skipper t-shirts
Earlier this year, in collaboration with Nipper Skipper, I designed a set of t-shirts based on their very cute logo-mascot Pip (Penguin) – They went on sale yesterday!
Nipper Skipper sell sailing gear- safety gear and technical clothing for children who sail – age 0-10 years. The t-shirts are their first foray into Nipper Skipper branded products.
Rather than straight copy their Pip logo I went for a simplified, yet still very recognisable, strong line drawing of Pip.
Nipper Skipper felt strongly that their customers would be keen on organic fair trade t-shirts. After some research we settled on Stella and Stanley marl shirts, printed by 3rd Rail in Bermondsey London, using water-based discharge inks – which give a fantastic soft feel (no horrible plastic finish) you can hardly feel any ink on it at all.
Lastly, we thought about packaging. I’d had these gorgeous stripey candy bags on one of my Pinterest boards for ages, they come in a lovely range of colours and sizes. The yellow ones were perfect with the set of Pip stickers Nipper Skipper already send in their parcels.
Sewing Clinic
Spent hours today trying to sort out an image to advertise the ‘Sewing Clinic’ I’ll be doing at Number 57 in May and June. I wanted to suggest different kinds of sewing projects; so came up with a big collage of bits and bobs with a red cross shape in the middle.
http://www.57arts.co.uk/Events/Sewing-Clinic
New men’s apron No6
Last night I added a new men’s apron to the Folksy shop, and made a ‘men’s apron’ category.
A ‘one off’ mens apron; made from denim offcuts, different shades and some reversed, pieced together to make a unique maker’s apron. It was quite exciting to make; usually I plan designs very carefully, do diagrams etc but this one was more spontaneous, folding and handling the fabric until I got all the fabric pieces in the right place.
No 6 aprons will use the same basic pattern with adjustable neck tie with a loop, pencil pocket on the breast, large pocket, narrow ties, but each will be unique with different arrangements of fabric offcuts.
Smiles
Very jolly ‘Smilies’ repeat logo t-shirt added to the Folksy shop last night.
The nine appliqués are made from the same cotton jersey fabric as the t-shirt and hand stitched with yellow and brown embroidery thread. This is one design from a set of ‘repeat logo’ designs I did nearly 3 years ago. I sold another from the set, ‘orange goldfish’, to Mini Boden it was used in the Winter 2012 range. Quite pleased with the freehand drawing on the photo too!
Here are a few photos of the making process. I had to back each circle with fusible cotton interfacing so that the dark embroidery thread didn’t show through as it carried underneath. You can just make out the lines of the air-erasable pen I used to mark details, the lines disappear in a couple of hours. I discovered these pens when I was on a short embroidery course (St Martins School of Art) a few years ago – such a brilliant solution to lots of making problems!
Goal!
Finished making a new storysack for school, ‘Goal!’ a Preston Pig book. I’ve wanted to make a football themed storysack for ages, to capture the interest of some of our more reluctant young male readers. After a couple of years of waiting I finally spotted a Preston Pig toy, complete with football on Ebay (still in his original packaging!) – so I was able to put this storysack together over the summer. I’m quite pleased with the cloth sack too, quite stylish, made from oddments left over from apron-making and a nice appliqué logo!
‘Shark In The Park’ Game
Decided to do some Storysacks stuff this week, making a board game for the Shark In The Park Storysack.
I wanted it to be as strong and colourful as Nick Sharratt’s illustrations so decided on using ‘cut paper’. I worked out a rough version of my game-board on white paper (scrap) and used it as a template tracing off the colour sections and squares on red, green and orange paper – glueing them to the red paper . I drew characters and other items from the storybook to go in my game, very tiny, to fit in the squares. Scanned the ink drawings into the computer, coloured them in using Photoshop and printed them out. Next was a very delicate cutting out job before glueing them into place on the game board, and lastly adding text with an ink pen.
I’m really pleased with the result. All I need to do now is laminate the two A4 pieces of the board and join them with tape (so that they will fold neatly) and laminate the 4 ‘shark’ player pieces.
‘Little Red Hen’ t-shirts finished
Quite pleased with them, I like the colours very much. Re-drew some chick logos I did a few years ago to keep the hen company.
Took a bit longer than planned, having to finish the threads for all the letters: despite my best efforts there was the odd tiny stitch here and there that felt slightly rough, so decided to put a piece of stretch interfacing over the stitching on the inside – I haven’t done this before and found it tricky to get the temperature of the iron just right ie sticking it to the fabric not my iron!
