(that’s post in the mail sense, rather than the blog sense)

to make amends for yesterday’s whingey post and to cheer me up on a dingy stormy day i bring you new fabrics

this is the one that started it all. when i saw it on sale at equilter i knew there would be no going back. all of these fabrics are destined for a quilt for M and the huge scale of this tropical volcanic island print only works in a large expanse so it will be the backing, perhaps pieced with white depending on finished quilt size. i got 2 yards for the princely sum of £5 (including shipping which worked out at £1/yd).

tropical/mod prints to complement the theme. this is where you see my fabric dazzle - these are prints that i simply couldn’t resist, though i’ve no idea how they’ll work together in the whole of a quilt. i’m thinking tentatively of using a star design, with the showier prints at the centres, and the smaller pieces for the points out of the “supporting” fabrics. i’m also planning to group each star colourwise, to make a little order in the chaos.

M asked for orange and pink, the purple and green came from the backing fabric, i hope i can get that many colours to work together. my usual instinct would have limited the palette a little, but then there’s no such thing as too colourful for a 3 year old is there?

i was really nervous about getting an import charge on this order - i’ve had it before on fabric and it’s not so much the VAT and duty that grates, it’s that this can be doubled by an “administration” fee from the carrier. as it goes equilter split the shipment into 2 flat rate envelopes each with a value below the threshold, so even though i ended up picking mostly fabricsw that weren’t on sale, i still got a huge bargain. yay!

the quilt is part of a bedroom revamp that we hope will help a) soften the blow of having to give up space in her room for new baby stuff (room sharing isn’t immediate, but we have nowhere else to keep attendant stuff) and b) encourage her to spend more time playing up in her room. i’ve found when visiting friends how delightfully calm it is when they disappear upstairs for a while, and realised that M spends almost all her time downstairs, even when she has friends round. we’re hoping that encouraging her to want to spend more time in her room (which is the biggest in the house, although you’d never guess with the amount of stuff crammed in there for lack of anywhere else to put it) will help us all to continue living happily in our little house when there are four of us.

and here for no good reason other than i love them are some lovely presents M just received from spain.

from left: coat, top, trousers.

skirt, shirt. see, my love of prints is genetic, i can’t help it

apols for not-so-great artificially lit pics, may as well be living in a submarine for all the natural light we have today.

so the last thing i need right now is another new craft to try to master, right? um, wrong, apparently.

craftzine just directed me to this stamp carving tutorial, which immediately pricked my interest. i designed a few screen printed fabrics at school, quite successfully, i think. i wasn’t bad at drawing, my painting sucked, but printing seemed to suit my strengths - i’m good at putting colours together, and detail-oriented enough to cut multiple intricate paper stencils (back in those technologically-challenged times).

when i first heard about gocco i was all set to go in that direction, but the news of its demise came out just before i invested and i’m glad too since paper really isn’t my medium. but printing onto fabric is something i really would like to explore and it would address some of the issues i have with fabric cost and originality. more than once in my recent craft binge i’ve considered getting hold of an old screen but storage issues have rather put me off. but rubber/lino stamps take comparatively little space to store…

okay so this isn’t in my immediate queue - no need for another category just yet - but i want to keep it in mind for future reference, along with any related links i’ll drop here:

fabric stamping instructions