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

Blogtoberfest 17th Hip Hip Hooray!

Omg-omg-OMG! Today is our FIRST BIRTHDAY!!

I love birthday's!! Particularly ones where I (or we) receive gifts ;) So to commemorate this exciting milestone we have given ourselves some rather lovey birthday presents!

Drumroll please...

We are now officially carbon neutral! Hooray!

We are just a tad excited about this! And by 'just a tad', I mean A LOT excited. YAY!

But it doesn't end there! The other awesomely cool present we got us is a spanky new, custom built separation system for our trough! But that's a post for another day..

Hope to see all you Melbournians at our Party tonight! If you're elsewhere in the world, have a drink with dinner tonight and give us a 'cheers'! ;)

Right now we're off to the bottle-o! Tomorrow's post may be slightly less perky.

xx Teegs

Blogtoberfest 16th - This home repair book sure came in handy for repairing our chair leg

Our courier man had a good laugh today... pointing out to us that we're using our home repair book what it's meant for...





LOL!

xx Bianca

Blogtoberfest 15th

No head space for words today. But I thought these sample swatches for a customer looked real pretty when arranged in a spectrum. Mmmmmm.



See you tomorrow.

P.S. - it's 6:00pm and finally the sun decides to come out. Hrmmm.

xx Lara

Blogtoberfest 14th - a happy shop is a full shop

It's a little bit exciting whenever we release a new print, although I have to say we've been a bit slack in terms of busting out colourways for this one! I'd love to hear what colours you'd like to see it in but for now let me introduce Chalk in Burnt Orange!


Chalk in Burnt Orange

This print has already made it's way onto some Mattt bags with good response!

Meanwhile we've also recently updated our shop with some favourites that tend to sell out rather quickly. So if you've been waiting for one of these, they're back in stock :)


Birch in Charcoal on Black


Birch in Robins Egg on Cream


Sumor in Charcoal on Black


Seeds in Olive on Cream


Bonsai in Red on Cream (also available on Natural)


Birch in Red on Natural

Blogtoberfest 13th - Lonsdale house

Yesterday my friend Maz sent me an email suggesting that we use our blogtoberfest blogging for a worthy cause. A great suggestion.

Most Melbournites have no doubt heard about the demolition plans for the beautiful art deco Lonsdale House....

Lonsdale House, earmarked for demolition

...to make way for Myer's redevelopment of their Lonsale St store. It's tragic. It's the beautiful older buildings that give our city it's character, and we only have 200 somewhat years of history to work with here peeps! Leave new development & glass facaded monstrosities to places like Docklands where there's no other option.

If you agree that Lonsdale House should be preserved then sign the petition NOW! It's going to be submitted to the Minister for Planning THIS FRIDAY 16th so it's your last chance.

Save Lonsdale House. Do it.

Blogtoberfest 12th

Leaving it a wee bit late to blog today! But we got totally distracted today whilst the ever talented Jem visited and made some modifications to our trough (more on that soon!) and Angus our impending new neighbour downstairs shared a desk and a laugh for most of the day. Oh and Teegs came back to work for the day which always brightens things up! She's feeling better but still needs to rest up a little more.

So thankfully we have a pretty picture or two to post! I still owe Leonie from Raglan Guld a post about the fishermans pants she made for us (which we forgot to take a photo of whilst all wearing them at the Stitches show!) but in the meantime here's some pretty things she's made:

Pincushion by Raglan Guld (Bonsai in Olive) oh and find the tutorial here!


Tote bag for Leonie's mum by Raglan Guld (using Antique Keys)

And do check our Leonie's custom made fishermans pants, they're awesome.

Blogtoberfest 11 - some finished projects!

Every now and again we are lucky enough to get an email from a lovely person who has made something fabulous with our fabrics. We also sometimes stumble across a blog post or flickr photo of the same and we are are always slightly surprised, although thoroughly delighted, to find our fabrics being used!

"Hooray!" we say to each other, "someone has made something!"

I'm not joking, we really do. Sometimes I do wonder what happens to all the fabric we have lovingly printed, rolled up, cut up & posted off...

So many people promise to send us a picture when they've made something... but we rarely get any pics!! :( Or worse... the fabric goes in to "the stash" never to be seen again...

We're not that scary are we? C'mon, show us what you've made!!

Well lucky for us, two people have!

See this wonderful everyday bag, made by Di of Clementine's Shoes:

Sumor in Charcoal on Black

And you may remember our friend JacRan, well, she posted this on Where The Wild Things Craft! How awesome is it?? Yay Jacinta!

Blue Wrens in Teal

Thanks to both lovely ladies for letting us share their creations with you! Check out their blogs for more pics and the stories behind the projects :)

xx Teegs

Blogtoberfest 10th - You're coming.. right?

Hey everyone!

Just wanting to remind y'all that it is officially only ONE WEEK to go til our Fantabulous 1st Birthday Party! Hooray! We're pretty excited. Even if Lara said she was boycotting booze.

Aaaaanyhoo, so if you are in (or can get to) Melbs next Saturday night from 8pm, you should totally come!

We'd really love our party to be a celebration for everyone who has supported us through this very interesting and challenging year & helped us achieve so much - ie: YOU! I don't think we could have, or would have, come this far without the seemingly undying support of blogland so we hereby invite you to attend - and don't worry if you haven't met us yet, we're probably much nicer in person ;)

** Pretty please email me an RSVP if you'd like to accept our invitation: info (at) inkandspindle (dot) com - before Friday 16th Oct

BYO welcome, but the first few rounds are on us! ;)

xx Teegs

Blogtoberfest 9th - New Designs!

Hiya! This week, behind the scenes here at I&S there has been a lot of emails & text messages shooting back and forth between the three of us as we *attempt* to coordinate the daily posting requirements of Blogtoberfest! So far so good. Now it's my turn again :)

So I thought I'd share with you a couple of new designs I've been working on - yay! :) Luz suggested I mock up some cushions to show you & I may have gotten a little carried away... I tried to recreate colours in our range, but I was having trouble remembering any other colours besides Snow, Charcoal & Deep Red! Or else they were just too difficult to show accurately.

Think I'm content with Geofloral, but Lace Fan might end up looking a little different.

We would love to hear your thoughts & feedback on these though, so please do leave a comment today :)

Geofloral in Snow on Organic Natural

Geofloral in Deep Red

Geofloral in Charcoal on Black - I like this one!

Lace Fan in Snow on Organic Natural - ooh I like this one too!

Lace Fan in Deep Red on Natural

Lace Fan in Charcoal on Black

Please do let us know your thoughts on these!

Thanks so much :)

xx T

Blogtoberfest 8th - Lou's first day

Some news! We have two extra hands at Ink & Spindle!!! Well, obviously those hands belong to a person, and that person is Lou, our very first employee :)


Lou & Lara printing

Lou started her first day at Ink & Spindle yesterday and will be helping us print one day a week. We've had people ask if they can come work for us before but Lou just happened to ask at the right time (sorry folks). She called when we were in the middle of morning tea talking about how it'd be nice to have another person around to help share the printing load.


Printing Birch in Robins Egg

The funny thing is that Lou is the only person in our studio with an official textiles degree. From Massey University in Wellington no less (we do love a good kiwi accent around here). And she's exactly the same height as us. Which is basically our #1 criteria, apart from being nice.


Reach! Hmm this photo makes it look harder than it is!

Welcome Lou!

Blogtoberfest 7th - Cushion making tutorial!!

Cushion covers with invisible zips - tutorial over here!

Happy Wednesday! I've been so looking forward to writing this post because I've finally made a new tutorial to share! I love making tutorials but it's been such a long time since I've learnt anything new to write about.

But this weekend Pete's mum showed me how to sew cushions with invisible zips and I was blown away by how easy it was. I mean zips = hell. Usually. But this process was so easy. So, if you want to know how, head to my blog over here:

How to sew a cushion cover with an invisible zip - A Tutorial!!


Sewing a cushion cover with an invisible zip - tutorial over here!

Enjoy :)

Lara xx

Blogtoberfest 6th

We're only 6 days into Blogtoberfest and already struggeling for words ;)

Whilst Teegs is at home -in pain, the poor girl, I hope she feels better soon- and Lara is having a creative outburst with her new *totally awesome* sewing machine, I've been keeping myself busy working at my other job and with watching movies. I've seen the September Issue and Valentino lately, which are great movies and the last one made me appreciate the world of Haute Couture -and the pricetag that comes with it- a lot more. The dresses are beautiful, the dogs are cute and funny and the relationship between Valentino and his partner Giancarlo Giametti is amazing!



I was lucky enough to win 3 double passes to see Valentino, after receiving a newsletter from Living Creatively in which it said that Hopscotch was giving away tickets on Facebook. Yay for free tickets!

Talking about movies... tonight we're off to see 'Fame'. Not sure what to expect but I'm sure it'll be a fun night out.

I can't leave this post without any Ink & Spindle-ness, so here's what we finally got to see last night.





Lara's Birch trees at the Precint Hotel in Richmond, how exciting to finally see it for real! We met up with the Living Creatively team and Jenny and had a great evening out.

Blogtoberfest 5th - Lara's quilt!

This blogtoberfest thing is going to be quite a challenge! Where are we going to find 30 posts worth of interesting vaguely craft related content from when we already struggle to post once a week?!

Luckily I just got a shiny new Janome for my birthday and have a backlog of crafty projects to work on. If I get cracking I can post about them here as suitable blog fodder!

So it's extra good timing that I just finished making the quilt that I started 16 months ago and had to abandon for lack of a Walking Foot (and they didn't make any for my old Elna Lotus).

A lot of the fabrics used in this quilt are old discontinued ones from my old range, but I suppose if enough people ask super nicely we may reprint them ;)


My finished quilt!


My finished quilt - zoomy close-up shot

I tried to take some pretty, stylised shots of the quilt and realised taking photos of quilts is hard. But I persisted:


Draped all pretty like on the couch...


... and with Jhoanna's Peg Bear on my new old 1960's armchair. Hmm I think this is definitely it's home to stay.

Blogtoberfest 4th

Another day draws to an end - already?!

Today consisted of me mostly just sleeping and whispering, preeeetty boring to do, then to read about, I know.

However I was able to have a Twitter conversation with Felix (no, not the cat) who suggested I might delay my bedridden boredom by watching Deadwood! Not to everyone's tastes, he said, but whatev's. So Brendan was sent off to the video store to hire me some DVD's and came back with Season 2... but I shouldn't have told Felix this because he made me promise that I under no circumstances was to watch them out of sequence. Ooh. The passion.

Deadwood

I may have sneaked a look at the first episode tho and here are my first impressions:

- Damn hard to understand their ye olde, goldrushy times, American accents!

- Seriously awesome costumes! I love anything with a corset. Anyone else feel like they were born in the wrong century..?

- The detail is amazing! Not just on the clothing, but the sets, backgrounds, everything!

- They have terrible potty mouths

Luckily for me, dear friend Louise came to the rescue and Bren is over at her house right now fetching me Season's 1 -3! Hooray!

That's my day - what are the other two doing? Well Luz has disappeared for her b'day - no doubt we'll hear all about it whence she returns!

.. and Bee, well, I think she should write about her very first weekend as an Aussie herself!

Ooh - Bren's back! Time for dinner and DVD's ;)

See ya! xx T

Blogtoberfest 3rd

OMG! Bee got her permanent residency!! Hooray! Hooray!

I know she already said so, but seriously peeps, we've all been quietly (or not so quietly) wishing for it to come through for months, so Thursday was rather a big day for all three of us!

Congrats, Bee, we are indeed very pleased to have you, permanently! ;) Yay! Ink & Spindle shall live.

We'll now only refer to you as 'Aussie'. No more 'Dutchy'. Well til the novelty wears off anyhoo - ha ha.

So we've signed up for Blogtoberfest, the dealio is we're blogging every day - good for me as I have little else to do for the next little while! Bad for you coz as I have little else to do, the reading may not be up to it's usual (dare I say, hilarious?) level ;)

...er... right...

...moving on...

Have a look at my latest fav colourway - how good does Sumor look in olive green??

I love the translucency of this ink of the natural linen, and how you can see the variations of the fabric through the ink, it's just beautiful. I hope we'll be printing some more green as soon as I'm back at work!

xx T

Blogtoberfest

Yesterday I received this message from - a probably still heavily drugged - Teegs: "Ooh! Can you sign us up for tinniegirl's blogtoberfest? and blog for today? I'll do the rest if you like! It'll be fun :)"

Well, we're one day late, but here we go. I have absolutely no idea how we're going to do this with Teegs all tonsil-less and sick at home and Lara off to celebrate her birthday and some well deserved days off... but we're joining Blogtoberfest 2009! Hopefully it won't involve as much beer as Oktoberfest, we're more the type for tea, biscuits and blogs. (jelly & icecream for Teegs)

There's one bit news, worthy to share with you all... I am now an Australian Permanent Resident, whoo! I'm staying ;)

The rest of the month you'll probably be reading about birthdays... because we have lots of them, all exactly 1 year and 20 days apart. Except for Ink & Spindle, that's somewhere in between mine & Lara's. So put your party hat on to celebrate Blogtoberfest and lots of birthdays! Cheers!

xx Bee