Leslie's patchwork chair

I've been meaning to blog about this for ages, but how gorgeous is this patchwork chair that our pal Leslie from Onegirl made. So, so frakking cute:


Leslie's patchwork chair


Leslie's patchwork chair - detail

Of course there's a few familiar faces in amongst those fabrics - so chuffed to be a part of this gorgeous piece of furniture that lives in her girls' room :)

xx Lara.

New wovens - yay!!!

Okay so we were excited about releasing our new Jersey range (thanks everyone for all the positive feedback!) but we're also super excited about some new wovens in our collection! Especially our new Flowering Gum print. It was really challenging yet fun to turn this idea into a reality (I blogged a bit of the creative process over here).

Introducing our new wovens (more to come next week!):

Flowering Gum in Red Orange & Stone

Flowering Gum in Olive & Robins Egg

Little Forest in Sage & Lime

Seedling in Saffron

You might have noticed that we've introduced a new colour into our range - Saffron. We decided to update our previous "Gold" colour with a yellow that's more of an orange-yellow than a green-yellow. So you won't be able to buy Birch in Gold anymore, but instead we have...

Birch in Saffron

Lace Fans in Saffron

We hope you like them!

xx Lara.

New Organic Jersey Range - YAY!!

You might have noticed from our recent blogging, tweeting and facebooking that we're super super excited about the new range we've been working on.

Not only does the range consist of 4 completely new prints (yay! we found some time to do some actual designing!)... but it's printed on lovely 100% organic AND AUSTRALIAN MADE cotton jersey! Read more about our jersey basecloth here.

Introducing, for little and big people alike...

Pirates & Sea Creatures in Aubergine

Seedling in Apple

Little Forest in Teal

Bicycles & Trams in Saffron

Little Forest in Saffron

Bicycles & Trams in Apple

Pirates & Sea Creatures in Teal

Seedling in Aubergine

We hope you love these new fabrics as much as we do!

We will be releasing them on our woven basecloths in the not too distant future too. Plus stay tuned for more new-ness and exciting new colourways over the next couple of weeks!

xx

Lara & Teegs.

Open Studio - tomorrow!

Hey everyone, just a reminder that our Open Studio is on tomorrow! Here's a sneak peek of some of the new fabrics that will be available for sale. They'll be up in in the shop during the following week :)

Some of our new jersey prints

Some of our new wovens

Hope you can make it!

Open Studio - Saturday Feb 19th!

Hey everyone! We have an open studio this coming Saturday and we're VERY excited about it for a couple of reasons!

1) We will be launching our NEW JERSEY RANGE!! All new prints on all new fabrics, with a special focus on the little ones in your life. If you'd like a sneak peek of our new prints on jersey come visit us on Saturday!

2) Dana from Twiglet has moved into our studio - yay for a new studio buddy! Her wares will also be for sale PLUS she is having a garage sale of vintage fabrics and remnants!

As always there'll be printing demos and tea & bikkies too.

Saturday February 19th, from 10am-1pm at the Ink & Spindle studio.

Hope to see you here!

xx Lara & Teegs

Jenny's bedhead

Hands up if you know the very lovely Jenny Butler who now helps Lucy out at The Design Files!? She's awesome, and check out this amazing bedhead she made from an old reclaimed fireplace mantel and some of our Birch fabric!

Jenny Butler's bedhead

Jenny Butler's bedhead

P.S. - that colourway of birch is discontinued but we can do custom prints of 5+ metres for anyone who desperately wants it. It does look amazing! And how cute is Jenny's bedroom!

Thanks Jenny!!! xx

New and exciting...

A bit quiet over here on the blog whist we work on some very new and exciting things. Here's a little teaser...

New and exciting things in the works...

Should be ready to launch in a couple of weeks. Yay!!

xx Lara.

Flood Relief - thank you!

Hi everyone, just a quick note to say a huge thank you to everyone who bid in our Flood Relief Auction, we were blown away by your generosity. And an extra big THANK YOU to Sheryl from One for a wish who placed the winning bid of $360!

And of course another big thank you to Toni from Make It Perfect for co-ordinating a whopping 300+ auctions/raffles/sales across blogland. It's not too late to enter one of the raffles if you still feel like donating :)

xx

Inspiration

Yet again you guys never fail to blow us away with the gorgeous photos that land in our inbox. We're always so very inspired by the things you make with our textiles. Here are some of the most recent submissions:

This amazing reupholstered armchair blew us away when it landed in our inbox.
Reupholstered by Flourish and Blume for Elissa at Evoke Yarn and Fabric.

Gorgeous skirts by Elissa at Evoke Yarn and Fabric

Birch bag by Leanne at Belyn Design

Ginkgo yoga bag by Leanne at Belyn Design

Another amazing roman blind handmade by Adele, plus an ottoman made from the leftovers of her two blinds.

Open Studio Dates

Thanks to everyone who has been bidding in the Allsorts Quilt Kit Flood Relief Auction! Don't forget to keep bidding until next Monday :)

It's been Organisation Central over here at I&S HQ of late & that means we've got our Open Studio dates set for the entire year!! Impressive, no? ;)

The Open Studio's are all on Saturday's from 10am til 1pm.

You are welcome to come in & chat to us, see our space, watch a printing demo, discuss the process, ask a zillion questions, stroke some fabric! Now there's a drawcard :)

So come along!

19th February

9th April

11th June

13th August

8th October

10th December

Come visit us!

xx Teegs

More flood relief :)

Hey everyone,

My god we are so impressed with your generous bidding on the Quilt Kit! Thank you so much! The bidding is open till next Monday :)

For those who can't afford to donate quite so much, don't worry there are some slightly more affordable options! We've just donated some goodies to the Craft Relief online shop - all proceeds will go to the QLD Flood Appeal or the RSPCA Flood Appeal.

So please head over to Craft Relief and snap up some gorgeous handmade goodies (keep checking back as more things will be added daily!!!) and know that you're supporting great causes at the same time. How awesome is that.

Thank you to Therese from Ena & Albert for setting up the Craft Relief shop!

xx Lara & Teegs

It's the FUTURE!

Guess what?! We made a Facebook Page for Ink & Spindle!

So exciting, right? Our thoughts exactly... Wanna give us some FB lovin'? Look to the top left err, right of your screen!

Thanks a million, you guys :)

xx Teegs

(Lara & I still don't know our left from our right. We both missed that one.)

Flood Relief Auction!

I don't think there's a single person out there who hasn't been affected or moved by the devastation going on up north. I'm personally such a homebody and love my housey 'things', plus we love our local community so very much, so can only imagine how heartbreaking it must be.

To help out we've decided to participate in the QLD Flood Appeal Auctions organised by Toni from Make it Perfect with the auction below:

------------------------------------
FLOOD RELIEF AUCTION!
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Allsorts Quilt Kit - Blue/Green





Valued at $125 this Allsorts Quilt Kit (details here) is up for auction with 100% of proceeds going to The Queensland Government Flood Relief Appeal.

How it works:
1) Leave your bid in the comments of this post - please supply contact details!
2) Bidding starts at $50!
3) The highest bidder will be asked to send a donation equivalent to their bid here and provide a receipt of doing so. We'll then post the Quilt Kit to the winner!
4) Bidding ends Monday 24th at 9am

ALSO - a list of all the other actions will be posted on the Make it Perfect blog on Monday.

Thank you everyone and happy bidding!!

xx Lara & Teegs

Hello 2011!

Hi everyone! Happy New Year! Hope you all had a great holiday break :)

We're back in the studio this week getting all our ducks in a row for the year ahead. Lots of tidying and planning and designing going on - it's all very exciting after spending a lot of the last year just fueling the machine that is I&S. There a times when it's felt very draining and not creative at all.

But one of our goals for 2011 is to "be creatively fulfilled", so we're going to make it our mission to allow more creative time into our schedules. Hand in hand with that is improving our creative space and sprucing it up a little, and where better to start than our website:

Some nice pretty pictures on the home page and an updated about page that sounds a bit more like us :)

Stay tuned for lots more developments!

xx

Teegs' playing dress ups..

Since it's holidays & all, we figured I could get away with posting a little non-Ink & Spindle related shenanigans!

2010 for me, has been the year of the dress-up: there's been pirate, ball-going belle, gangster's moll, Jessica Rabbit, and then over the last couple of months I've been busy with some extra-curricular activities (not that kind, you guys! Sheesh! The sewing kind!) & the following are some pics of the fruits of my labour.

Backstory: You may remember back in October we posted about our fav new neighbours here at Younghusband, Revolt and how they were throwing a big ol' opening night party which, quite conveniently for me, happened to coincide with my birthday! The other awesome thing about the opening night was that it was Steampunk dress up!! And all my friends were gonna be there. Yay!

It was all I needed to go a bit mental in the costume department, to be quite honest.

I happened to have some rather lovely silkpaper faerie wings which I had made a couple of years before & with the skills, assistance & workshop of the amazingly talented Master Sam (he is my armoury/metalwork teacher) we steampunked them up a bit & made them all wind-up, clockwork-y..

It became the basis for my whole costume: Militant Woodland Nymph Princess!

Militant because I had a gun, Woodland because I was all green/brown & am a lefty-hippy-type, Nymph because I'm a redhead & Princess because it was my birthday. And because I had a crown..

Check it out you guys! I made a corset! Well technically, it's a stay (Butterick 4254). There's 12 metres of boning in that thing...

This is me on the actual night - with all my extra paraphernalia (including a glowing vial of magical potion), and with make-up & hair.. 'scuse the low res.

So that was that one. Cool, huh?

The next dress up was for Jewel of the Night - a step back in time from the 1920's to the 1950's.

With the help of my Twitter buddies, we decided I should aim for 1930's Gown'd Screen Siren.

This inspired many an internet search & many elaborate drawings & one long and involved conversation with Suzie, and in then end I quiet simply ran out of time to do the original (read: convoluted) design, which was going to involve a lot of drape & bias cutting. Two things my skill level is significantly underdeveloped in.

Then, on a night out with my dear, tiny, fellow-ginger, Kiwi friend Anthea, we quite randomly came across a rather fantastic, deco-inspired necklace & my gown appeared fully-formed in my head!

I found a pattern that was pretty darn close to my mental picture & seemed easy enough to tweak to be what I had in mind (Vogue 7365) & then a trip to my ol' buddy Nikki at Tessuti Fabrics, where we scoured the store looking for the perfect fabric (it was of course, the first one we looked at, but one must be sure of these things..!) I strolled home, over-the-moon, with 4 metres of a gorgeous, green silk. It was beautiful to work with.

And so I made this.

The front

The back

Cowl & clasp detail

You can see from the above two shots that I deconstructed the necklace so the front had little beaded clasps that matched the main pendant at the back. Y'know, to tie the whole outfit together & whatnot.

I was a little concerned about the potential for an extreme wardrobe malfunction, but the chains were all very obedient & stayed linked together, bless them.

I only have a crappy iphone pic to show you what I looked like on the actual night..


















I *really* want to wear this dress again. Will someone take me to the opera, please? :)

More pics here if you'd like to see!

Good times.

xx Teegs

Summer Holidays!

Phew! We're off on a well earned break for a while!!

The Ink & Spink stall at the Ballarat Design Exchange Market

The studio is closed from today until the 17th of Jan, however we will be posting out online shop orders from the Monday 10th Jan.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your ongoing support over the last few years - it's been one heck of a ride so far & please know that we've appreciated every single email, shop sale, market attend, open studio visit, photo of the awesome thing you made, morning tea visit, blog post, kind word & all the love you have given us.

Both Lara & I are feeling quite spent after what turned out to be a really massive (both professionally and personally!) 2010, but are looking forward to rejuvenating on this break, getting away from the city for a tiny bit & moving onward to a bigger & better 2011 - we've even got some new surprises planned for you!

Wishing you all safe & happy holidays, wherever you may be :)

Much love from Team I&S: Lara, Louie, Miki, Renae & I.

See you in the New Year!

xx Teegs

The Design Exchange - Ballarat

Just a quick reminder that we'll be at The Design Exchange market this coming Sunday in Ballarat! The market is going to be held in the gorgeous Mining Exchange building which I'm excited about. Should be heaps of great designers there so if you live nearby please come visit!

The Design Exchange market, Ballarat - Sunday 19th December

xx Lara.

More Tea Towels

Hey everyone!

Hope you're having an awesome December and not too crazy. Ours has been pretty crazy and exhausting but all good. We had a great Open Studio over the weekend so thanks to everyone who came and said hello and watched us printy print :)

Anyway, just in case you're still looking for xmas gift ideas, here's some new tea towels that we've just popped in the shop. LOVE this combination of colours - Sage, Deep red and Persimmon. Mmmmm.


New Tea Towels - find them in the shop over here!

xx!

Final Open Studio for the year!!

Hey everyone!

It's totally Christmas time (did you notice?) and to celebrate we're having a little Open Studio event THIS SATURDAY! Hooray!

We're going to have bic's n'dip & cups o'tea for you! And lollies... always lollies.

Also we shall of course be doing a little print demo & will have all our wares available for those last minute-y Christmas gifts!

Saturday 11th December 2010

10:00am - 1:00pm (printing demo at 11:00ish!)

206/10 Elizabeth St, Kensington

Hope to see you there!

xx Lara & Teegs

Wheatbags!

Organic & bio-dynamic wheatbags

Yet another shop update post, sorry! But I just uploaded our organic/bio-dynamic wheatbags and wheatbag kits into the shop and had to share!

These wheatbags came about when I promised a friend that I'd make him a wheatbag for his birthday. We loved how it turned out and thought it'd make a great kit! Plus we thought we should make a few for those who aren't inclined to sew (craziness, I know).

Anyway here's some pics!

Wheatbag kit - blue/green

Wheatbag kit - pink/red

Wheatbag kit - red/orange

Organic & bio-dynamic wheatbags

Hope you like them!

xx Lara.