Design Market stall video!

I'm really glad I took this video just after we set up the stall, before the crowds set in. But gawd, do I really sound like that??

quick journey back in time

Just quickly, I have to share this! I was just uploading a video of the MDM to youTube when I discovered this old video of our studio space before we leased it and renovated the bejeezus out of it.



How completely different does it look!? We used to call it the asylum. What a laugh.

Giveaway Ends Tomorrow!

Hey everyone, just a quickie to remind you that the giveaway ends tomorrow, (in approximately 17 hours!!) so if you haven't yet, leave a comment on this post!

We're gonna do the draw at 10am our time, just as Bee jets off to Europe for three weeks!! Lucky minx that she is! Bon Voyage, Bebot!! Bring me back a present!

xx t

Post Melbourne Design Market

Hooray! It's over!

We had such a great (albeit thoroughly exhausting) time yesterday - must say a massive thanks to all the wonderful readers who came in and introduced yourselves! And an even bigger thanks to those who came in, introduced themselves and bought a bunch of stuff! (And a spank for all you naughty blog lurkers (blurkers?) out there. Apparently there are many. De-lurk, dammit!)

Ahem, I'm here to show you a bunch of pics today! So I'm gonna attempt to limit myself to hilarious captions only from now on.

The Spunky Lady of I&S, modeling one of the Italian Felt Wool Scarves! They are going to be available in our shop soon, tho we only have about 12 left... I'll keep you updated.


Me, Bee & Larz's back putting the finishing touches to our stall.


Me, Bee, Larz & Sandra (a.k.a Pepperberry & co) all set up and ready to sell, sell, sell!!


Stall shot - well half the stall...


Posing in front of the cushions, fabric bolts and lamps! Can you tell I've not had much sleep?


Pepperberry & co's beautiful passport covers and notebooks!


Shonah's fabulous pendants, mid-unpacking...


Mattt's latest collaberation with us - New coloured hemp canvas bags, launching the latest design 'Rooftops'!! They sold like hotcakes, too!

Ok, now for some name dropping! We had some other fabulous blogger peeps, and non-blogger peeps, come visit us:
Penny from Pocket Carnival, Amy from Moyou, Susie from Button & Squiggle, Susan from Spin Spin, Shannon from Rabbit & The Duck, Britt from Stitchy Britt,(who by the way, actually came up and helped package stuff on Saturday arvo, with her friend Jett, in exchange for a cup of tea and a vegan chocolate biscuit), the ever-lovely Anna from Living Creatively, one of my favourite workshopee's from the Melbourne Stitches & Craft Show - the everlovely Kate, our lace teacher Jan, our newest neighbor here at the studio Yong, my chiropractor San, & Ruth the vet!

Speaking for Lara, the definite highlight of the day was when Bee spotted Lawrence Leung in the crowd told Lara (Lara loooooved his show) who then bolted out of the stall, (nearly bowling me over in the process) to shake his hand. Seriously, people, it made her day.

We found one more!

Here is, until further notice, the final 'Hot Man of I&S'!


Introducing Gerard!

A wonderfully surly teacher buddy of mine, he gave up part of his Saturday to come to the studio and fold & package fabric! The most impressive part of it is that it was during his report writing time and he STILL came! And it wasn't even the first time, bless his little cotton socks, he comes to visit fairly regularly and we always put him to work.

What a guy!

xx

Melbs Design Market

IT"S TOMORROW!

Well, it is. So come one, come all to Fed Square carpark, between 10am and 5pm!

We've got an extra big stall this time, and we're gonna need it!! We are selling a whole range of fabrics, kits, fabric covered lamps, felt scarves & cushions!

As well all that amazing stuff, we're ALSO stocking products by Mattt, Shonah & Pepperberry!

Speaking of Matt, and in keeping with our previous post, we thought we'd show you him! (We were thinking of having an entire series titled 'The Hot Men of I&S' however, there really is only Jem and Mattt, so yeah...)

Enough of that! Here's spunky Matt:

Matt inspecting the very first repeat of the new Rooftops print, on his fancy new hemp canvas! All up to scratch, Matt..? We thought so.

As Larz often notes, we love a man who sews! ;)

(Note my brand spankin' new Princess Coat on the mannequin behind - more on that, and Lara's newbie, next week...)

On to other news, here's a pic of Lara, mid-lamp making:

She's notoriously hard to get a photo of as she's always hunched over something or another! At least here, you can nearly see her face - and she's almost smiling!

Ok, best get on with the rest of the preps!!

Come visit us at the market tomorrow

xx Teegs

Amidst the busy..

You'll find some pretty!

Here's the result of the placement printing which Sam and I did during the Open Studio last weekend, a lovely wool felt and linen scarf for dear Cousin Nathan's birthday! Only two months late, but hey, it's handmade.

Scarf modeled by the spunkiest man in the entire Younghusband Wool Store building, the very wonderful (and very tolerant) Jem of LikeButter!

Jem. You could be a part time model! Heheh!

You can see why we love the LikeButter crew so damn much - aside from building all our stuff (see tree behind) dear Jem allows us to accost him with the occasional odd modeling demand! Though he never stays for a cup of tea... can't imagine why..?

If you can tear your eyes away from the thing of beauty above (the scarf, people) we thought you might like to see what happened next...

After a few people thinking that perhaps they'd like one for themselves, it got us thinking that maybe we could whip some more scarves up for the Melbourne Design Market! So I headed off to Park Orchards to pay a visit to our dear friend Winterwood and pick us up some fancy-pants, Italian felt. After eventually choosing the colours, we came home to I&S HQ and began doing some placement prints.

Mid print run of the first colour


Ta-Da!

All cut in to lovely scarf sized lengths, now ready for colour 2!

That's all so far, I'm actually procrastinating doing the next batch of printing by writing this post. But I just had to show you Jem- er, I mean the finished scarf! ;) Just kidding, Jem!!

One last one to see what the other two lovely ladies are up to today:

Larz is on cushion making duty, Bee wrapping handmade soaps (no, not handmade by us)

P.S. massive thanks to everyone who's commented on the giveaway post - so far the most popular suggestions are MORE GREEN PLEASE and SMALL GEOMETRIC DESIGNS. Keep 'em coming folks!

xx t

GIVEAWAY?? About freakin' time!

Ok, so we're not exactly known for our frequent blogging, but that's mainly due to the fact that we have a business and there's heaps of other crap that goes in to getting fabulous fabrics to you, and it's almost ALL boring as bat doodies. I think so anyway....

Oh, sweet jellybeans, I've gone off on a tangent already.

Let's start again.

You like free stuff right? We do. So we thought we'd give you some stuff, even if it's not entirely free. Woots, anyway!

We're gonna give you a whole bunch of gorgeous handprinted fabrics! (*gasp* Wow! What a surprise!) Some you will know, some you won't... ooooh tantalising... some are so brand spankin' they're not even back from the heat setters yet!

Ok, so the dealio is:

*Leave a comment - tell us what you would like us to print. Colours, new designs, fabrics... whatever! But BE SPECIFIC! We plan on exploiting you guys as market research, so make with the detail.

NB: No praise or flattery will be allowed. Only good, solid constructive criticism. Or something.

We'll do the random draw on Wednesday the 17th June at 10am, our time. That's two whole weeks to think about what you would like to see and write something really useful!

That is all.

xx T

A busy Week(s?)

So much happened this week. No time to blog.

In an attempt to make this post not a novel, and so as not to earn more pointed looks from Larz & Bee, I'm going to work in dot points.

And try to stick to them.

Here goes:
Monday: printed like crazy; went to Lace Class; on the way, wound Bee's bobbins and nearly vommed coz I was in the back seat and I had to do it as we went thru the hated tunnel and that, along with the fumes, made me all a tad carsick; recovered and kicked the latest lace pattern's proverbial butt and got an invite to our teachers house for a private lesson (Woots!!) (yes, yes, it's well established I'm the teacher's pet.) (You're just jealous.)

Tuesday: We printed like crazy - oh btw, Bee spent the WHOLE week with us at the studio due to some time in lieu from her other job and it was ace!

Wednesday: printed like crazy (surprised?); had meetings and general boring work stuff; went to Glen Iris for my private lace lesson, learned how to do Tallies and Windmill Crossings properly. Pumped as. Time flew. Home late.

Thursday: P.L.C (see above); then we went to Mattt's Funky Gertrude St Pad so Larz could show him how to set up the blog we've finally talked him in to doing. I cooked dinner. Bee assisted. Again home late.

Friday: Got ready for our Open Studio; Then went for vegan lunch and vegan shopping with Miss Pepperberry herself, (she was teaching me all the good places to go. BTW if you haven't been to the Ivanhoe Coles. Go there. Just go. I can't explain it. It's amazing.) Sandra and I traveled all across Melbs, from North to Southeast and back to West all in an arvo, which actually ended up being and arvo and and evening, (but hey - who's timing!) which involved a lot of chatting (and eating) and it turns out she is totally ace! I had an inkling, but now I know for sure, and thought I'd better share; after I finally let poor Sandra (she was/is sick) go home, I had to stay up til 1am to go the the airport and pick up Sam! Yay, Sam! 1am turned into nearly 2am, and after a nap in the car, which was parked, running, in a bus zone, with the heater on full coz it was about minus a million degrees (I hate the cold), my bestie arrived! Huzzah! Home, cup of tea, sleep.

Saturday: Here's Sam - she is the Honorary 4th I&S Member, as she spent four weekends in a row getting filthy last year, helping us reno the space in the depths of winter AND she was from Darwin. That's a good friend, right there.

She'd kill me for putting a pic up, I guess it's just too bad she's in WA! Haha!

Saturday saw us hold our second bi-monthly Open Studio - and what fun! We had heaps of awesome people come up for a look and a chat and a nibbly, we also did a bit of placement printing, so people could see the general process. That was fun. Tho the awed silence freaked me out a bit... I'm used to demo-ing to bored teenagers!

After that, Sam and I went out to Sandra's where we got to meet (in order of appearance) Tango, Sharon, Coconut, Monsieur, Manhattan and the adorable ginger (we gotta stick together, y'know) cat, Gin Gin. We dove straight in to cooking a 5 course vegan dinner, had a great afternoon full of laughing and cooking and mess-making and quickly-cleaning-up-before-Sharon-noticed-what-we-were-doing-to-the-kitchen.
Evening rolled around soon enough, Bee & Larz arrived to join the party and we ate. And ate. And ate some more: Pesto dip; taco's with guacamole; asparagus, lemon rind and something else pasta; mini passionfruit pav's (in theory, tho they were less than successful); and finally choc ganache and strawberries... mmmm... I didn't mention the "marshmallow's". Hopefully Sandra will write a blog post about those. I just can't bring myself to.

Sunday: Sam and I woke up with sugar hangovers. They exist, trust me. After checking up on the hosts, Sandra said and I quote "Sharon woke up with a migraine, I woke up fat." We giggled.
We eventually crawled out of bed and went to Grumpy's Green on Smith St for delish vegan food and organic wine... then decided to head to the studio to make Sam's little 4y.o. sister, Ally, an Audrey & Maude Softie! We decided on Eloise the Elephant and made her from a gorgeous silk/linen fabric we had lying around somewhere and Bee's Sumor in Teal on Natural, coz look at how awesome it works with the ears!

Hmmm, now where should those ears go...

Et voila!
(Sorry about the crappy photo's, I only had my iPhone camera handy.)

So we finished Eloise just before Sam's flight home, which she made this time. Phew. Home. Sleep.

Monday: Printing, a bit crazy-esque, our new batch of delectable organics arrived, so we got straight in to those - omg yum as. Wait til they're ready, that's all I'm gonna say. Home, Ashburton, pick up Bee, get noodles, lace class, buy more bobbins, home, sleep.

Tuesday: Printing, blogging. Banana. And that's it! We're up to date.

So much for the not a novel bit, but oh well! There was a lot to catch up on!

xx Teegs

Shameless Advertising

Well, it's that time again, 2 months have passed, and we are holding our SECOND ONLY Open Studio - surely an event not to be missed!!

Bring your friends, bring your family, heck, you can even bring your dog! No really..

Anyhoo, come see our fab space, our setup, us, and most importantly, buy some of our amazingly-amazing, super-ace fabrics!!

Yay! Details are as follows!

10am - 1pm
Saturday 30th May
@ I & S HQ

(ie: Suite 206
10 Elizabeth St
Kensington, Vic)

There might even be cheese and/or other misc nibblies... but only if you promise to be good.

xx Teegs

back in the day...

Harking back to the Stitches & Craft Show Melbourne days of yore, here's some pics we stumbled across from when we were interviewed on stage and had some of our fabric in the 'craft parade'.


Oh gosh don't we look all serious and grown up here? Ahhh if only you knew (actually you probably do, reading this here blog).


Bee's Sumor in the craft parade

Oh sorry, I forgot I was supposed to be having a weekend. I'll get back to it...

xx

Lara.

we print too...

To prove that we indeed do more than write extremely lengthy (albeit sweet) blog posts *pointed look at Teegs*, here's some printing pics! We haven't posted any of these for ages...


Lara & Teegs printing Bee's Sumor in Deep Red


Pass me that squee....

And, most excitingly, Like Butter have been at it again, building things to make us more efficient, like these nifty handles for lifting the screen that double as a prop for screen flooding (if you have no idea what I'm talking about don't worry you're not alone).


New handlemajigs

A quickie!

I mean a quick post, people!! Geez, dirty mind much..? We're scrinters, remember?? ...although... no, no, I kid, I kid!

*sigh* Larz is gonna squeal at me for that one.

Ok, so you may be able to tell from that mini rant that we (I?) lost all equilibrium whilst in Brisvegas, and have yet to regain it. Though I am hopeful.

We had such a rad time up there in our fab city apartment

Me, exhausted at the end of Travel & Set Up Day, armed with sofa, tv and cup of tea, pointedly trying to ignore Lara & her camera. But check out the view!!

Tho we mostly just worked at the show:

Larz & Bee lookin' perrrdy at our stall - I love to make them pose..


Then make them laugh, so you can see them for who they really are: awesome, fabulous, gorgeous, giant dorks. (hmmm.. payback, ladies?)

But we also got to hang with a whole bunch of awesome peeps too!! Mel (& misc family) and Julie from Thread Den, who were next door to us;


the hilarious and indomitable K Doran; the hilarious and generous Winterwood (aka Sandra); a few of our newest favs, Jus, Fi & Nikki (we heart you guys! See pic below); the fantabulous Red Seed Studio duo Ellie & Sam; the amazing, felty Holly; the gorgeous Thea (& Sami); plus some new friends, the beautiful and knitting Megan;


the crazy and bright Louise; jeweller extraordinaire Helen! Plus a heap of other Brisstylers, of course! Just going through our pics, made us realise we were less than snap happy! We've hardly got anything to show you at all, sorry about that!!

We even had a whole day to explore Brissy ourselves, tho unbeknownest to us 'southerners' (we were called that a million times over the week) it was a public holiday so practically nothing was open!! Lucky for us tho, Jus, Fi & Nikki invited us to go with them down the river on the City Cat (it's a like a bus, but it's a boat! Some have been known to call it a "ferry"):

Justine is hiding at the very back, behind Larz, you can just see the top of her lil red head (woots for us gingers!)

We disembarked at Bulimbah for lunch & books (also where I bought the girls the awesomest, tackiest pressie I could find - Twilight badges. Hells yes), then we returned up river to the City, where we said au revior to the lovely trio and headed back to our apartment for a quick rest, before heading out to a fab Viet restaurant in West End for dinner, called Dakbla. Highly recommended.


Big fat Eastern Water Dragon, just hangin' on Southbank

The next morning saw us sadly packing up our apartment and dragging our (much lighter) suitcases across a bridge and to the train station. We did make a detour into the city again, before we left for good, to purchase Lara an iPhone (she has become one of us... one of us...) as her old nokia gave up the ghost, finally, and via the ladies section of Myer so Bee could buy a new outfit (while she was deciding what to get, I stated chatting with a chick who worked at Cue, where I learnt that they make 95% of their clothing in Sydney, and it's all official and union and stuff - who knew!? Not I, obviously.)

We took a bit longer than we were meant to in the city so we bolted back to the train station, and headed out to the airport - just on that, why the hell don't we have a train to the airport here?? Someone start a petition, already! - where we ran in to Mel & husband who were on the same flight as us! Yay! Yay, because they were polite enough to *offer* us a lift to my place when Larz innocently enquired how they were getting home. We live quite nearby to each other so it ended up being no biggie. :)

So that was the end of our Brissie gig! And my quickie has turned into a longie, if that's even a word, so... I'd better stop typing now - Adios!

xx Teegs

Away...

We'll be away from the 27th of April until the 5th of May. All shop orders will be posted as soon as we get back & organised again. Thanks for your patience!

If you are in Brisbane... please come and visit us at the Stitches & Craft show Incubator stall 160/161.

See ya!

Twitter

Hey peeps, Bee just put links down in the sidebar to each of our Twitters (sorry there's no I&S one, none of us cbf'd atm), so if you want to hear all about the inane happenings of our lives, then go ahead and follow us!

A hard workin' day at the studio

Bee, Jac and Teegs hard at work

Today we were blessed with the company of the lovely Jacinta AKA JacRan! She kindly offered to lend a hand if we needed it, so we took her up on her offer in exchange for a yummy lunch and some fabric of her choice to take home. It was fun to have a visitor for the day and some help with folding & packing fabric for the show- thanks again Jacinta!!

Bee decided to document the day with some photos (something we always forget to do). Here's some more pics:


Lara cutting charcoal birch (and trying not to get too much boob in the photo) (Teegs edit: haha, compared to the usual boob levels, mission accomplished!)


Teegs prototyping Lara's cushion kit instructions (with Teegs' boyfriend's dog Bella slinking around in the background) 


How about that? Two posts in one day. On both my blogs! A miracle.

A date with the dressmaker

Teegs having her winter coat toile fitted by designer Melanie Liertz

A few weeks ago Teegs and I were in the city doing some much needed wardrobe-updating which involved seeking out new boots and jackets to weather the impending, erratic Melbourne winter. It is indeed a well known fact that it is impossible to find the perfect winter jacket when you're looking for it, let alone one that's actually warm enough for cold frogs such as Teegs and myself (Teegs edit: Amen, brother).

Sooo, with Rudd Money on the way, we decided to put it to good use - when it comes to buying local there's nothing like getting a local independent designer to make you an 100% wool, fully lined, tailored jacket.


Teegs having her winter coat toile fitted by designer Melanie Liertz

Thus ensued a trip to the Nicholas Building to visit (Teegs edit: the very brilliant and spunky) Melanie Liertz, former studio mate of Mattt before he moved to Gertrude St. Teegs' jacket we are referring to as 'The Princess Jacket' as it's all pretty (Teegs edit: you mean 'elegant') and fitted, with lots of layers. Mine is more of a military-cross-duffel jacket but also nice and fitted (Teegs edit: it's totally awesome, and has a hood!).

Teegs edit: one more note on how bril Mel is - I suffer from Idiopathic Scoliosis and as a result, am completely twisty and unsymmetrical. For those of you who have ever made a shirt or anything with a bodice, you know its complicated enough making two sides that match - Mel has had to make every single panel independently, and has spent ages moving seams and adjustiung lengths so that when its on me, I look straight! Which is totally awesome for me, but has meant a ton of extra work of Mel - Thanks Mel!

My jacket slightly more advanced than Teegs', still trying to perfect the hood

Needless to say we're VERY excited about these (Teegs edit: Hells yes!!). It's the first winter that I'm actually looking forward to. (Teegs edit: Kinda.)

All's Quiet

Though it's the calm before the storm. Since not much is happening atm I'll give you a quick run-down of happenings since the last post.

We sent our latest batch of fabric off to the heat setters on Thursday morning, then spent the rest of the day printing Birch, Ginkgo, Wrens and Seeds for Mattt - yay! Then, after a quick stop at the local booze-arium, we headed over to Matt's funky, new Gertrude St digs for a housewarming dinner Lara had promised we'd cook for him!

The deal was, Lara got him the new Jamie Oliver cookbook (she blogged about it's awesomeness), then Matt picks the recipe and buys the food, then we arrive and in a whirlwind of amazing cooking skills, prepare and cook the food, eat, then leave him with the dishes. Good deal, huh?

Oh, I forgot to mention that Matt did prepare desert - at our insistance, he melted some chocolate and cut up watermelon and strawberries... Some of you might have seen Bianca's Tweet about the choc dipped stawberries, those that didn't can probably guess it's content.

So that was Thursday. Friday morning saw me feeling a tad on the "tired" side, but both Bee & Larz were irritatingly perky. Of course. Anyway, Bee and I printed another stack of fabric for Knufflekid and that was the end of the week

Lara headed off for a lazy weekend down south-east somewhere... She gets back today so I'm sure we'll hear more about it tomoz. She was recharging her batteries before we thoroughly deplete them at the Brisvegas Stitches & Craft Show.

When I asked Bee what she did over the weekend she said, "eh, not much, let me think, shopping, bummin', more shopping, watching TV and generally being happy about going to the Netherlands." So, fishing for content, I asked her what she bought, "TV, food and a dress." *sigh* Sometimes it's like pulling teeth, people.

Anyways, I thought I would post some pics of Bella today - coz she's all big now, but it turns out I don't have the right usb cable so the pics are staying firmly on my camera for the time being. Sorry.

Ok, thats the first longish post I've managed to sneak in, in a while, so I'd better go prepare myself for some minor wrath. See ya!

xx Teegs

Modish & Little Mary Moo

We've been a bit quiet on the blog, but things have definitely been happening in the studio.

Poor Teegs was sick for the last 2 weeks (Teegs Edit: I wasn't merely sick, the words "death" and "bed" spring to mind, so much so that when I crawled back to the studio for a meeting, dearest Bee - upon seeing me after the worst of it, I might add - exclaimed "OH my GOD!! You look TERRIBLE!!! I'm sorry but you DO!!" ...You're jealous of my loving friends... I can tell) so Lara & I have been printing madly to get everything ready for the Brisbane Stitches & Craft show. Thankfully, Teegs is up and running again (Teegs Edit: Hallelujah!!) and we have managed to complete everything on the printing list. We're super excited about our trip to Brisbane and can't wait to meet everyone up there. Thanks everyone for the accommodation offers... we got a little bit nervous about not finding anything so we booked ourselves into an apartment. Should be fun, the three of us on a girly trip! (Teegs Edit: Fun, yeah right! Bee forgot to mention that it's a 2 bedroom apartment, and there's 3 of us, so I'm putting it out there right now- dibs not sleeping on the couch! You two can rock, paper, scissors for the other bed :D )

Whilst blog surfing on my couch tonight I came across this on the Modish blog.


Picture from Modish and Little Mary Moo

Such lovely bags & purses, by Little Mary Moo!

Ooh and Little Mary Moo is in Brisbane... please come and visit us at the Stitches & Craft show :)

Away...

We'll be taking a little break over the Easter weekend. All orders placed during this time will be posted on Thursday the 16th of April. Have a nice Easter!


Picture courtesy of Stpcallnmewalter