Talented customers

We thought it would be great to share some of the awesome products our customers have made with the textiles we've printed for them:


Knuffle Kid reversible dress in red.
Pattern designed by Emma Strybosch.


Knuffle Kid reversible dress - in blue!
Pattern designed by Emma Strybosch.


Keec small leather hOP-scotch bag
Feature panel designed by Melbourne duo Pandarosa.

Gorgeous stuff - nice work and it was a pleasure working with you :)

Next Batch

Our latest batch of fabric has arrived back at I&S studio's - woots!

We're currently in the process of putting it all up in the shop - tho there's a whole bunch of it this time, so please be a little patient with us :)

This batch includes the reappearance of Birch in Chocolate and Robin's Egg:


Wrens in the new (controversially named) Nathan's Blue and the very popular Charcoal:


And Sumor in a whole bunch of new colours!!

Lights, Camera, Action

At the weekend we did a professional photoshoot for an interview we had last week, and for our website. We had heaps of fun, lots of giggles, and a suitable lunch including yummy things from the local deli.

We think the photos turned out fantastic! Thanks to Marcel for his camera skills and Brendan for his flash holding skills!


The prettiest corner!


Teegs mixing Pale Charcoal ink.


Lara putting the aforementioned ink on the screen.


Bianca mid-print.


Teegs, B and Larz upstairs in the funky loft.

For more photos, visit our flickr page.

Copyright Marcel Lee 2009
Please do not copy or use these photos without written permission from Ink & Spindle.

Yay for new stuff!

Lara and I just popped a few spanky, new mix packs in the shop AND there's some new (much awaited!) tote kits, AND we printed a very limited, offset edition of Briar in two colourways! Oooh, it's fun to have your own printing studio - you should totally get one! Or at least share in ours ;) As always check the new stuff out in our shop.





So on to the latest news - we have just sent off a big ol' sack of fabric to be heat set so you will be seeing some new colourways (and some old favourites, back by popular demand) mid to late next week. Woots! No pics tho, soz.

We had a day of visits today - Caroline, a.k.a Poppy's Mum (and friend Trude) came to chat about an awesome idea she has for some hanging fabric lampshades for her new kitchen... and then a lovely Cintia from My Poppet dropped by with - get this - homemade banana muffiny-cakey goodness that-was-still-warm-from-the-oven!!!!



omg. Talk about delicious...

And then we vacuumed. Oh, the glamourous life of I&S!




The boy's girl-dog, being cute & helpful. We love having her in the studio & I think she prefer's it to staying in Ry's backyard all day.. she just loves being around people so much!

xxT

Naming colours? Too hard.

You may imagine, as we are three headstrong women running a business together, we'd encounter frequent butting of heads, however this just isn't the case! We get on extremely well, have heaps of fun and rarely disagree on anything... that is until it comes to the naming of our colour's - geez, what a headache!!

At times we seem almost incapable of agreeing on appropriate names, (though some are much easier than others) and have spent stupidly large amounts of time trying to convince each other that our idea for a name is the better one for this, this and this reason!

Lara is the romantic one, she likes names that sound pretty but aren't too abstract; Bee is the prudent one, wanting non fussy names that explain the exact colour (the most recent in-house controversy has been over a greenish yellowy gold kind of colour - which could end up being named after the plant, "honeysuckle" but the jury is still out); and me the kooky one, I like names that are accurate but descriptive and easy enough to remember!!

So when my dear friend Nathan came up to visit us just before Chrissy, and we of course headed up to the studio to play with some inks! We printed some t-shirts for funs (and no, we're not going to do this commercially) and he chose to mix a rather beautiful colour, referred to around the studio as Nathan's Blue, and made this:

Love the print, Nay!

but of course once we decided to print with it, the unavoidable colour naming 'discussions' ensued...

Anyway, so here's a couple of this weeks latest prints - Wrens and Sumor in Nathan's Blue /Deep Sea/..? on cotton/linen blendWill be up in the shop in a week or so!

Stitches & Craft Show

We're back in the studio (after the hot weather last week)... and we're printing... a lot.

Ink & Spindle will be at the stitches & craft show from the 11th till the 15th of March and we have two stalls to fill :) We'll have some new colour ways for the show together with lots of fabric packs, fabric by the metre, sewing kits and other bits and bobs.

We hope you'll come and visit us and perhaps enrol in one of the classes and seminars we'll be presenting. Looking forward to meeting you!

a new look for I&S

Ink & Spindle has a new website! And not only that - a matching blog and shop to complete the ensemble!

This is how the new design looks, for you feed readers out there:



Simple, clean, friendly & modern (we hope).

I had to force the web designer in me to make a reappearance to get this baby off the ground, so I'm very glad it's done and dusted and looking a lot more like 'us' than the previous design. Yay!

Great news!

The website is very close to launching!!

This means we're ready to start taking external clients on board. The reason this is such great news is, that before we do launch properly and advertise and whatnot, we want to give you guys (our fabulous blog readers) the first opportunity to get your artwork on to fabric, as seen below!


If this sounds like something you'd like to do, please email us!!! info(at)inkandspindle(dot)com

We will send you our price list and some easy to use and understand Illustrator CS3 (and up) templates! (basic Illustrator skills kinda required)

Yay!

New Fabrics Up!

Yay! We have some shiny new fabrics up in our shop! I have two new designs: Antique Keys, seen in two colour prints and a half print, and Wrens.

We'd love to get some feedback from you! Let us know if there are any colourways you would really love to see in either print, and we'll try to accomodate :)

Hope you like!

Antique Keys in Two Tone Charcoal

Antique Keys in Cupcake

Antique Keys in Edward

Antique Keys Half Print in Black

Wrens in Charcoal

Wrens in Teal

A Little Something

It is my sort-of-cousin's (mum's brother's wife's sister's daughter.. confusing I know) 1st birthday today! Yay for Lana! She had a lovely party last Saturday with lots of friends and family, and most importantly as Lana will agree, chocolate cake! :)
So I though I'd post a couple of pics of the little dress I made for her. Watcha think?

Lana's Sundress:
Made from Bianca's Bloem, in Plum on cream organic cotton/hemp blend,
with lace trim and ties.
(note the drawstring bag, made from some scrap Antique Keys fabric. More envirofriendly than wrapping paper - and reusable too!)

And one more - just coz Lara takes a great photo, and has lots of cute things hanging on her wall! Also for scale :)

Me retying the bows to make them pretty for the pictures...

Liz (Lana's mum) has promised a visit to the studio soon with Lana, so when that happens I'll post a pic of the little cutie, possibly in said dress!

A week of printing

Birch in Chocolate - Lara Cameron


Wrens in Charcoal - Tegan Rose


Antique keys in Cupcake - Tegan Rose


Bloem in Teal - Hollabee


Seeds in Orange Gold - Hollabee


Bloem in Olive - Hollabee

Hello 2009!

Happy 2009! We hope you had a lovely, restful non-denominational politically correct holiday break.

We certainly did. As much as we love the studio we had some much needed time away. We've come back feeling (somewhat) refreshed and are right back into it:


Printing Teegs' gorgeous new Antique Keys print in a new 'cupcake' colourway. OMG this turned out so delicious looking - it'll be up in the shop in week or so :)


Closeup of Antique Keys in cupcake - dusty pink and white on a cream organic basecloth. Yumm.



We've also spent much of this week working our way through a large order for Kelani which will be available in their shop in a week or so also:


Birch in red orange (Kelani exclusive).

What's that you say? The Birch looks smaller? Why indeed it is!! It's a new small scale Birch more suitable for 'craft' applications :)

It'll also be available in our shop in a few other colourways. Excitement.

Reflection

About this time of year it's good to look back and take stock of accomplishments and milestones and - wow! What a crazy year it's been for us.

Lara, B and I were having this conversation last evening, over a bottle of bubbly- we thought back 12 months when we were all in (and heading to) really different places (for example, Lara and I hadn't even met!) and now, here we are, totally connected and cheers-ing to our first Christmas at I&S!!

I guess you just never quite know which direction life will take you. I really thought I was going to be an art teacher forever, and over the last couple of weeks I have had to say goodbye to all my gorgeous students (I miss you SASC guys already!) - which has been the only downside to starting up this business, and sadly I couldn't do both jobs and stay sane.

Ok, I've been told to keep my posts short, so moving on.

• On behalf of us all, a massive 'Thank You!' to everyone who has read, commented, emailed, bought, visited and encouraged us. Trust us, we loved it :)
  

• Keep your eyes out early in the new year for some new designs... here's a sneak peak at (so far) my fav one, called Antique Keys:
  

(sorry about the terrible phone camera pic, but you get the idea!)

Finally, from the three of us, wishing you all happy and most importantly, safe holidays - we'll see you in the new year! Cheers!

xx Bianca, Lara and Teegs

Come and visit us...

Our studio will be open on Tuesday 23rd December from 6pm to 8.30pm and we'll have some yummie goodies for you to buy. Most of them are not in our shop... so it's a very special event.

We'd love to see you on Tuesday, even if you have already finished all your Christmas shopping. We'll have drinks & nibbles :)

An open studio event

To make sure that you all receive your orders well before Christmas Day we will be posting the last of our local orders out on Friday 19th December.

All postal orders placed after this date can be collected from our - last minute - open studio evening on:

Tuesday 23rd December - 6pm to 8.30pm

Ink & Spindle Studio
Younghusband Wool store
Suite 206
10 Elizabeth Street
Kensington VIC 3031

This will be the last opportunity to pick up your order or shop for some a last minute gifts before we close for Christmas.

There will be drinks and nibbles to celebrate the festive season and our first open studio night. Merry Christmas everyone!

Please note that we don’t have eftpos facilities (yet) so you will need to bring real money! (or pre-pay with your Paypal account)

We'd love to know if you're coming, so we can plan our drinks and nibbles :)
Please leave us a comment to RSVP.

Wet & Windy

That pretty much described our day at the Yarraville Christmas market.
We still had a good day though, it's fun to spend a day at the markets together... chatting, laughing and eating deli goods :)

Visit us in Yarraville today

Just a quick reminder that we're going to be at the Yarraville Christmas market today. And of course it's raining ... again. Luckily we're indoors again (the Masonic Hall, corner of Canterbury and Willis streets) which is in the Yarraville village centre, so only a quick dash for all those breakfast and coffee goers who flood the village centre on weekends.

Hope to see you there! Please say hello if you do come for a visit, we love putting faces to names.

City Love

You probably already know that we at Ink & Spindle love our city of Melbourne.

And it looks like the City of Melbourne loves us back.

We just found out on Monday that we are one of the proud recipients of the City of Melbourne Small Business Grant!!! We were hopeful, but never too hopeful - you never know what sort of businesses you're up against. The news is still sinking in, but needless to say we are stoked. It allows us to get productive a lot quicker. New screens for customer print jobs (we'll be ready for you in the new year we promise!) and more importantly an in house oven so we can heat-set fabric ourselves and take a week off our turn around time.

Yay. It really takes a load off our shoulders, and it's nice to be validated by your own city :)

Thanks Melbourne!

MDM, skirts and a masterpiece

So it's post Melbourne Design Market, as you know, and we're all still spinning a bit, exhausted and achy.
Seriously, my right leg hurts like crazy! The left one is fine tho..? Weird, but hey, I've never claimed to have grown from the normal tree ;)
There was a lot of midnight oil burning in the lead up to the MDM - including on market eve. The studio witnessed much last minute packaging, pricing, packing and even sewing! I think I finished lovely Lara's luscious 'Ginkgo' wrap skirt (see previous post) just after 12pm! Bianca's 'Bloem' wrap and mine were finished a bit earlier that evening. Totally worth it though, so many people commented on them to each of us, and is was great wearing our own designs, too!

(On that note, the Wrap Skirt sewing pattern will be available in the shop tomorrow, so help yourself if you're feeling inspired!)

Now, it's really fabulous to 'meet' so many lovely people through this crazy medium, and it even becomes more fabulous (fabulouser?) when they make our fabrics into fantastic things and email us their awesome handiwork!

Here is Heids' latest masterpiece, made for Miss Grace's 3rd Birthday Party! We hope you both had a great day!!

Miss Grace modeling her blue 'Briar' party dress - too cute for words!