Artist studios in Northcote!

Here's some super exciting news before Christmas... we've been having *secret* meetings with Lara. Not our Lara, another one...Lara.D!.. and we can finally blog about it... well only a little bit for now, there will be more exciting news soon!

Lara.D is opening up artist/designer studios on High st in Northcote... Yay for all the peeps who are looking for an awesome studio space!

Here's a blurb from Lara.D:

There are a number of spaces available, some are shared, a few self contained, all have beautiful natural light, access to a shared kitchen and bathroom. There are also opportunities to use a teaching space once a month to earn a bit of extra change.

Spaces would suit artists working in textiles and fashion, all areas of design, artists who use non toxic materials .
Can be used for wet mediums but nothing too smelly or noisy.

Spaces range from $60-120 per week, depending on size.

How awesome! Imagine how close you'll be to all the awesome cafe's on High street!
That's it for now, but keep you eyes on this space... soon there will be some super exciting news from Lara.D and us... really really exciting!

Email Lara.D: harvesttextilesmelbourne [at] gmail [dot] com

I&S Open Studio 19th December

Look it's my desk!!


artwork by Sixto from Too Yeah Media. Thanks again Sixto!!

...That's what I cried out as soon as I opened up the latest Open Studio poster kindly donated by the talented Sixto of Too Yeah Media - AGAIN! So awesome. Gee we have some generous and talented folk in our building.

Anyway, it's time again for one of our occasional Open Studio's, this time just before we close up for Christmas for your last minute gifty needs. Details as follows:

Ink & Spindle Open Studio
Date: Saturday 19th December 2009
Time: 10am - 1pm
Addy: Suite 206, 10 Elizabeth St Kensington
Shop: Fabric, kits, lamps and cushions for sale
Eat: Some nibblies
Watch: Maybe a printing demo (if you ask nicely)
And we have eftpos!

Hope to see you there!!

xx Lara.

Gift Vouchers!!

We get so much pleasure out of making it really hard for you to choose a fabric from our ever widening selection. Well actually we don't, but we do understand that it can be super hard, especially if choosing for a friend and/or loved one.

And we also know how easy it can be to leave gift buying to the last minute. We're only just starting to wrap our heads around the whole impending Christmas thing ;)

So anyway, we finally pulled our fingers out and made gift vouchers!!

We've got three different types for now $20, $50 and $100, and once you've ordered we send you a cute little PDF that you can print and fill out. A la:



Find gift vouchers in the shop over 'ere.

Yay :)

xx Lara.

Fair@Square Festival

We are soooooo excited to be a part of the Fair@Square FairTrade + Ethical Festival on at Fed Square this Sunday!

We're going to be doing a t-shirt screen printing demo at 3.15pm in the Fair Living Tent - *guess* who was volunteered to be the one who has to talk solidly for an hour? Yeah, I know, I'm as surprised as you..

Annnyhoo! There are gonna be heaps of awesome shops represented with tons of ethically produced wares for sale, so come do your Chrissy shopping! Not to mention a whole bunch of amazing demo's and stuff - see the program below!

It's a waste free event, so please remember your reusable bags :)

We thought they wrote it best on their website:

Fair@Square fair-trade + ethical festival 2009 is an inspirational, cultural and educational event that will be held in the heart of Melbourne at Federation Square on Sunday the 13th of December 2009 from 11.00 am to 7.00pm.

Check out all the cool stalls and stay around for a free concert from 6pm til 8pm with Kate Cebrano and others! You can find the full program below.







For more info, check the Moral Fairground website.

xx Teegs

Cushion covers and some DSLR love

45cm cushions in Ginkgo, Birch and Lace Fans. Pretty!

This morning saw me in the Younghusband Building bright and early, dragging our coffee table and armfuls of cushions down to our neighbours' studio. Not only do they have a perfect spot for a photo shoot (a nice plain wall facing onto loads of natural light), but they also have a DSLR that I was allowed to borrow - yay!

And oh my god, it was so much fun. I do love my little Canon G10, but it's nothing compared to a DSLR with a 50mm lens and playing with a shallow depth of field.


Lace Fans in Olive cushion cover


Wrens in Inky Blue cushion cover


Birch in Robins Egg cushion cover


Birch in Gold cushion cover

Anyway I've just put these lovelies up in the shop if you're interested! They're sold without inserts (because inserts are a bugger to post) but if you're local you're welcome to collect some from our studio!

xx

Lara.

Ink & Spindle and Suzie Fry make cool stuff together

Everyday shorts & skirt kits
Modelled by Wil & Amy, Photo by Suzie Fry

I'm VERY excited to announce one of the coolest things that's happened at Ink & Spindle in a while - a fantastic collaboration we've been doing with the wonderful Suzie Fry!

You might have read about it on Sooz's blog already, but basically Sooz got in touch with us with the idea of developing a range of simple patterns and kits using her designs and our fabrics. A perfect match! Sooz has been supporting our fabric ventures since day dot. She was buying our fabrics before Ink & Spindle was born, back when Bianca & I were printing designs elsewhere. I think she still has some from one of my very first print runs. Crazy huh!

Anyway Sooz had some fantastic ideas, and developing more kits has been something we've been thinking about for a while now but never had the time to pursue. So thanks to Sooz's productiveness it didn't take long to go from conception to full product development, and we launched them at the Melbourne Design Market last Sunday. They were very well received and now we've put them up in our online shop for everyone to enjoy!

Here's the full range!


Everyday shorts kit - ages 6 months - 3 or 4 years
Modelled by Wil, Photo by Suzie Fry


Everyday skirt kit - ages 2 - 6 years
Modelled by Amy, Photo by Suzie Fry


Shoulder bag kit
Photo by Suzie Fry


Sling bag kit
Photo by Suzie Fry

And for good measure, I stopped making excuses and finally put our little basket kit up in the shop too!


Little basket kit

All in the shop just in time for Christmas and would make a perfect gift for you or your crafty friend :)

xx

Lara.

Crazy Times! And a Kiwi!!

We've been raaaather quiet on the blog front! Things have been a tad intense around the ol' I&S headquarters of late - lots of drama's, life changes & big developments - which is the excuse I'll use for the lack of blogging! It's hard to find the time to write something appropriately.. er, appropriate, when shit is so crazy! Even when there's heaps of cool stuff going on too - namely...

... the lovely Theresa! Our latest Kiwi- er, I mean - intern!


Printy, printy!

Theresa traveled all the way from Wellington, New Zealand just to spend two weeks with us - how special do we feel!?! Theresa is a fourth year Textile Design student at Massey University in Wellington and she's ace. No, really! ACE!!

She was such a huge help, did everything from printing to folding tons of fabric for the MDM and all kinds of other misc crappy jobs - without complaint! AND a smile! Amazing - she was the ray of super helpful sunshine we needed in the lead up to the Design Market!

Thanks, Theresa! :D We're gonna miss you!

It was hilarious when we had both Lou & Theresa working at the same time - we heard nothing but 'choice, ay!"s the whole day.

We giggled.

Did we mention we love Kiwi's? Coz we totally do.

Anyhoo, if you would like to meet either of our delightful New Zealander's, then make sure you come along tomorrow to the Melbourne Design Market @ the Fed Square carpark from 10am to 5pm!

See y'all there!

xx (one already thoroughly exhausted) Teegs

Just that little bit more pro...

The local talent has done it again. Check out these new market display shelves designed by us and build by Like Butter!


Photo courtesy of Jem & Laura of Like Butter

We wanted something to help give our stall a bit more height variation and interesting-ness. They're designed to fit on a standard 180cm trestle table, with moveable particle-board inserts so we can block our admin crap from view. The tall verticals can be swapped to sit in the center if need be, with notches at the top for hanging stuff.

Needless to say we're tres excited about using these at the upcoming Melbourne Design Market! This time we'll have a double sized stall and you'll find other I&S textile goodies alongside ours by the lovely Mattt, Pocket Carnival and Rabbbit & the Duck. Yay! We'll also have the Melbourne Design Guide for sale if you don't have it already :)

Hope to see you there!

xx Lara.

Melbourne Design Market!

It's almost Christmas and we're sure you'll need presents, right? Well, the Melbourne Design Market is on again and we'll be there! Come 'n say hi... and do your Christmas shopping :)

Melbourne Design Market
Federation Square Carpark
6 December 10am - 5pm


making bundles for the Melbourne Design Market

xx Bee

Our second intern...

About two weeks ago our second ever intern came to work with us! (meanwhile we have our 3rd working with us but more about that in another blog post).

Jane asked us if she could come and help us for a couple of days and we said yes! Jane was super lovely - she mixed our inks, helped with general tasks and even printed fabric with us, which she picked up really quickly. I think she had a great time and learned heaps (with the vision of starting her own little label sometime soon) and I'm sure we'll see more of her in the future :)


Jane mixing inks

Thanks Jane, please come back and visit us!

Birthday dress...

What?! Two posts in a day? Well, these two are related.
Teegs made a beautiful dress from an original pattern found in the May 1940 issue of Good Taste Magazine and it became her 'birthday dress'. It's gorgeous!

(Teegs edit: You can't really tell, but the best bit is the fabric is a Skull'n'Crossbones print!! Being the pirate girl I am, I totally LOVE it!!)

Yay for sewing!

Teegs' Bday goodness

We're a little bit behind with this birthday blogpost...

I'll let the pictures show the story ;)


Cerveza's to start us off


Excitement!


Curiosity


Unwrapping


Welcome Breville Wizz!

Happy Bday Teegs!
We're done with the birthday-a-thon now :)

xx Bee

Redstaggerwing Designs

We promised to blog about this before Blogtoberfest was over... well, we didn't quite keep that promise but we'd still like to share this amazing scarf with you.

Lisa emailed us her pictures and we're always happy to see what people make with our fabrics... and we love showing it off too ;)



The temperatures here are getting a bit too hot for scarves, but I'm sure people in the Northern Hemisphere could use one of Lisa's beautiful scarves!

Thanks for sending us your photos Lisa!


scarves by Lisa DeMio from Redstaggerwing Designs

(pattern by Kathy Mack of Pink Chalk Studio)

New Designs Finally Released!

OK, so you know they've been coming, but Lace Fans and Geofloral are finally here!! YAY!

Firstly a big thanks so everyone's feedback re both designs, as it really does help us decide whether to go ahead with one or not! We're very glad we did - they're both slightly larger in scale than we are used to doing, which was oddly odd, but we're particularly happy with how beautifully they printed up!

We have limited our colour pallette, so they're each only available in the Shop in four colourways :)

They are the tres classy Charcoal on Black Linen:

the uber chic White on Natural Linen:

and two refreshing greens- Olive on Organic Cream:

and Robin's Egg on Nautral Linen!

We hope you like them as much as we do!!

We also have a couple of colourways previously-seen-before but back by popular demand!! (See? We really do listen to you guys!!)

They are Birch in a very pretty Honey Gold:

and Blue Wrens in a lovely summery Teal, both on delicious Organic Cotton/Hemp! Yum!

On a side note, we had both these prints rolled out on the table yesterday and my goodness do those two colours look a-MAZ-ing together!! I love them! If only I knew how to quilt.. *sigh!

xx Teegs

Blogtoberfest 28 Aw Shucks!

We'd just like to say a massive thanks to Bonnie of Going Home to Roost blog for this wonderful 'Eco Find' feature! It was such a surprise!

Thanks heaps Bonnie - we heart you too!

xx Teegs

Blogtoberfest 27th - dropping the ball a little

Wow we were doing SO good at this blogtoberfest thing but let's be honest, there were slim chances of us being able to keep it up being the tres busy ladies we are.

It's been a little bit crazy around the old Younghusband building of late (esp with the lovely new neighbours we've had move in downstairs) and we're due to knuckle down for some mammoth printing weeks in the upcoming month.

But in the meantime we have some lovely new printy goodness to share with you. Not least of which is Teegs' new Lace Fans print!!

Here it is is a tres classy & Melbournesque charcoal on black, with more colourways to follow soon!


Lace Fans in charcoal on Black

Also exciting, our new Chalk print in snow on natural!


Chalk in snow on Natural

Also a classic fav, the robins egg Birch on Natural instead of cream! Mmmm I love the translucency of this ink on this baseloth:


Birch in Robins Egg on Natural

And last but not least, Teegs' Antique Keys print has finally made it up into the shop! It's available in Charcoal (pictured) or Rust Red on Natural or Cream.


Antique Keys in Charcoal

Enjoy :)

Blogtoberfest 23rd - MORE birthday goodness

We've been a little slack with Blogtoberfest a bit this week, but we'll pull ourselves together and get back in to it again :)

It's been a week full of birthdays and although there's enough food for talk, we've simply been too busy to actually write it down!

BUT, like the blog title says, we have more birthday goodness to share. My birthday goodness this time!! :)

The girls bought me some absolutely A.W.E.S.O.M.E presents, I got spoilt rotten!

Here's my brand spankin' new pair of snail mail earrings:


I also received a pair of Love's blue birdcage earrings and a 3D card of a rocking horse, how totally rockin' ;)

xx Bianca
P.S. Thanks to Juicy Roo for the fabulous b'day poem! xx

Blogtoberfest 21st More Birthday Goodness

So we've fallen off the wagon with Blogtoberfest, just slightly, but we're just going to accept it and move on. It's one of the 12 steps, right?

Anyhoo, you know we had an awesome time at our Birthday and that heaps of ace people came, but what we didn't tell you was that the acest of the ace peeps bought us cards & presents!! How pumped were we?? Um, about a 10, I reckon!!

Here's our Birthday Cards! Thank you for all your kind words and gifts - we love them all!

From left to right: Spin Spin, Rita & co, Fernanda & Tom, Mal & co, Louise & Simon and Nikki & Colin!

I wanted to give you a close up of this beautiful letterpress card by Idlewild Press - Thanks Spin Spin!! It's gorgeous!

The other super-uber-ace cool birthday related thing about today is that it's BEE'S 27th!! Yaaaaaay!! Happy, happy birthday, dear one!

Wait til you see what we gotcha!! ;)

xx Teegs

Blogtoberfest 18th Post Party Post!!

Only a day late! Pretty good considering the night we had, I reckon!

We had a wonderful time! I must admit we were a tad worried at 7:55pm, when we all looked at each other and said "d'ya think anyone will come..?" Turns out we needn't have worried and we could have done with a little bit more space & seats


Some of the crowd


Surprise, surprise - I was "volunteered" for the thank you speech/door prize draw


Bit blurry, huh? That's what it looked like from behind our eyes by this stage, too!


Door prize winner!


Suzie, Chris (and Thread Den ladies) Mel & Tenille


Karin, Paula & Baz


Caitlin (aka Pippiejoe) and Liesl (aka Hoppo Bumpo)


My old teacher peeps! Louise, Gerard & Sandy - oh and Simon in the spiffy hat!


Newest member of I&S, Lou & our dear Ironside Studios neighbour, Laura!


Then there's a gap of about 6 hours, til this gorgeous photo of Lara was taken by the infamous Jem, as she's calling cab at 5am...

... I know. 5am. It was a very late night. On the walk home the birds were singing and the sky was turning blue.

Big ups to Jem & Angus who stayed to the very end, and gallantly made sure we were delivered safely home!

Needless to say, Sunday was a non-event, Bee (who bailed at 2 - lightweight!! :P) came and cleaned up a bit, I slept allllll day and Lara went to see a play... and slept allllll through it! We're still recovering.

To quote Angus, "we're sure not 19 anymore". Not a truer word was ever spoken.

Great people, great party - thanks for coming you guys!

xx Teegs