Open Studio! Mucked up again! :)

It's getting a little ridiculous, but we seem almost incapable of getting our Open Studio dates correct.

I blame Sixto. As he has been majorly busy with his Masters & teaching & generally being freaking awesome, he hasn't reminded us we have one by his usual way of a gorgeous (unsolicited!!) illustration appearing magically & unexpectedly in our inbox! :)

(We ♥ Sixto)

Sooo...

UPDATE! No Open Studio this weekend coz it's Easter (duh, I&S.) - instead we're going to have one on Saturday 17th April - that's two weeks later, people!

Yay!

xx Teegs

Little Harvest Softies Workshop - Giveaway!

Win a Softies and Screenprinting workshop pass!

We have two pieces of super duper exciting news. The first is that Little Harvest (the lovely ladies teaching screen printing workshops in our studio) are also conducting a Softies and Screenprinting workshop and are giving away a free spot in the next class!! If you want to go into the running, go here!


Softies and Screenprinting class with Little Harvest


Softies and Screenprinting class with Little Harvest

The other bit of exciting news is that Little Harvest are now our permanent studio mates here at the Ink & Spindle studio!! Yup, they moved all their gear in a week or so ago and the studio is already looking so much more exciting, vibrant and creative due to their presence! It's so nice to have some extra creative ladies sharing our space. Even though they're here mostly when we're not and we're like ships passing in the night ;)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A quick funny story:

Lara C (me) & Lara D (harvest) were talking on the phone the other day and the conversation went like this:

Lara C: "It's just so great to have new shelving in the studio and now everything has a home!"
Lara D: "Yeah I come from a very organised family. My mum's a librarian."
Lara C: "OMG, my mum is a librarian too! What does your dad do??"
Lara D: "My dad's a mathematician."
Lara C: "OMG my dad's a mathematician too!"
Lara D: "Yeah he does statistics type stuff."
Lara C: "Yeah he does! How did you know that?"
Lara D: "No i mean my dad does statistics."
Lara C: "No way! My dad does statistics stuff too!!"

I mean what are the chances! (insert "your statistician fathers could tell you that" joke here). Not only do we share the same name but our parents share exactly the same occupations. Crazy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

xx Lara

(Teegs Edit: Also, two Lara's = confusing for me.)

Little Wren in Macedon

Little Wren - Macedon

How fantastic is this!? A gorgeous self contained cottage studio called Little Wren in Macedon. Such a lovely fit-out, and it features our Blue Wrens fabric on the curtains and blinds!! Thanks so much to Josie for choosing our fabric and emailing us with photos :)

Little Wren - Macedon - with Blue Wrens blinds and curtains!!

Little Wren - Macedon

Little Wren - Macedon - Blue Wrens blind!

Little Wren - Macedon

Organic cotton/hemp goodness

New unbleached cotton/hemp basecloth - oooooooooh

2010 seems to be the year for doing all those things we've been wanting to do for ages. Releasing a proper collection of textiles was one of those things, the other was to start printing exclusively on organic textiles and phase out our old cotton/linen basecloths.

The biggest challenge was finding a suitable replacement for the darker natural cotton/linen cloth. But finally we have!!!



The new unbleached organic cotton/hemp basecloth is just beautiful! We've printed quite a few runs on this basecloth now but we still go "oooooooooh" every time we do! It's just that little bit lighter than the natural, and all of our prints look so much better for it.

We're slowly working our way through the range so not everything has changed over yet, but here's what we've done so far:


Blue Wrens in Inky Blue


Ginkgo in Snow & Olive


Lace Fans in Robins Egg


Ginkgo in Snow & Deep Red


Bonsai in Deep Red

We hope you like it as much as we do :)

Dear Fii's Tamarillo Deliciousness!

You must see what the uber talented, uber wonderful Fi has made!

Last month our Dear Friend visited us here at I&S HQ, and after she swore not to blog about it ;) we insisted Fi take away a piece of our then-not-yet-released Tamarillo Rooftops in Snow! And just look at this:

How fantastic is she? Love it, love it, love it, LOVE IT!

Check out Dear Fii's gorgeous Rooftops post over here for even more awesomeness!

xx Teegs

Tamarillo!!!

Introducing - the Tamarillo collection!!

It's here!!! Finally! We are super excited and proud to announce our VERY FIRST COLLECTION!



Tamarillo - cushions & lamps

It's been such a long time coming - lots of plotting, planning, designing, printing, sewing, making, photographing. And we're sooo happy with how it's come together!


Tamarillo - fabric bolts in canvas and light weight

The range is available as meterage in our shop right now, in both lightweight and canvas weight. Most excitingly, the basecloth is a GOTS certified, fair trade and organic cotton, and the red basecloth is herbally dyed using madder root. How awesome is that!?


Tamarillo - cushions!

Cushions and lamps will be available for sale at our open studios and market stalls, and we'll also be offering them wholesale.


Tamarillo - floor cushion!

Head over to our shop now! There's only very limited quantities of each fabric available until we print more, so if you like one snap it up!

Younghusband love

Have we ever talked about how much we LOVE our Younghusband building and all the people in it?? Yes it might be as leaky as an old boat but everyone loves it here.

I could write a novel about all of our neighbours and how awesome they are, but our closest neighbours are Lettuce, positioned directly below us who we have lunch with most days and can yell to through the floorboards, Yong next door who comes in for coffee and desperately seeks 'something sweet' to eat mid afternoon when he's feeling low, and the Boxing Gym upstairs where we've started going for Muay Thai classes. And lets not forget Al Martinez the master puppeteer who rescues us on a regular basis with his array of power tools, metal bits & bobs and even custom made brackets to pull our table flat again after the storm. A long post on Al will be written soon!

Anyway this little bit of gushing was prompted by the talented Yong who's made yet another awesome video, this time filmed when we were printing Gingko the other day. Cute and quirky:



Thanks Yong!

Mookah wall art

Hey, how fantastic are these rooftops wall panels by Mookah? Photographed in Tracy's home - the happy customer :)

Photos courtesy of Mookah & Tracy. Thanks ladies!

P.S. - thanks everyone for your kind and supporting words re our storm damage. Things have come up well -we've done some repairs and a big tidy up and now we're back to it!

Disaster!

Just a super quick post to let you know we will be closed until further notice! :(

Unfortunately, we (and all our poor Younghusband neighbours) were flooded out in Saturday's crazy intense hail storm - all four levels! We're hoping to get things back on track, but we have a lot of clean up and repairs to do in the meantime.

Wish us luck!

xx Teegs

Sale? SALE!

As you might have noticed, this year we've decided to consolidate our textile range and release new colourways in suites! But first we need to sell a whole bunch of fabric we don't want to print anymore. Soooo, we're having our FIRST EVER (and maybe only ever) SALE! Hooray!

We've got red! We've got white! We've got black! Don't miss out on these never-to-be-repeated prices! Up to 40% off!! That's right, kids - everything must go, go, go!

Well... not everything. Sorry, I tend to get a little carried away. And now I can't remember anymore tacky sale clichés.

Anyhoo - go check out this page for all the goodness.

QUICK! DO IT NOW! Once they're gone, you won't be seeing them... ever again.

;)

xx Teegs

Eep!

Omgomgomgomgomg!

Our new fabric is *so* almost ready..!

xx Teegs

Miss Milla's Gots the Goods!

Miss Milla's is a brand new web-store, one who is devoted to offering a range of high quality craft supplies, fabrics, patterns and easy to use kits! Including ours! Hooray!

The lovely Kirsten, creator of Miss Milla's, specialises in stocking modern & funky products and has a special interest in Australian products. There's so much Aussie talent out there, it's wonderful to see a store showcase exactly that!

Anyway, head on over & check it out - nearly all our fav peeps are there! :)

xx Teegs

The Ceres Eco House!

Hey guess what?? Ink & Spindle has been collaborating with CERES! If you're in Melbourne you've most likely visited or heard of CERES (hell, it even made it into the Stuff White People Like in Melbourne list, which suits us just fine since there's plenty of Bonsoy and Lucas' Papaw Ointment floating around here).

Anyway, CERES have just finished renovating and refurbishing their Eco House, which has been set up to educate people in retrofitting older homes to be sustainable, affordable and appealing.

The Ceres Eco House

Ink & Spindle was invited to display some cushions & lamps in the house alongside blinds by Cloth and furniture by Living Edge. They had their first seminar on Wednesday night and Teegs gave a fantastic talk about the unsustainable nature of the traditional textile industry and what Ink & Spindle is doing to provide a sustainable alternative.

The Ceres Eco House living area

A hefty storm was brewing as we were leaving so we took this pic:

Ceres windmill and a storm a-brewing

xx

Lara.

The Poppies!

Big thanks to everyone who voted for us in The Poppies, we are totally stoked to have won the Peoples Choice award for Fav Handmade Textiles!

YAY!

Please do check out the other winners - there are some seriously radtastic peeps out there!!

(Would write more things, but we have a gazillion metre's to print today, yep, a gazillion!)

xx Teegs

Custom Ginkgo

Often it's with a raised eyebrow that we agree to print a custom colourway for a client - one that we'd never usually print for ourselves. So you can imagine our reaction to being asked for Ginkgo in Lime & Fuchsia on our cream organic cotton/hemp!

But we were quite pleasantly surprised with how beautifully it turned out! This run will be turned into roman blinds. Oooh.

Custom Ginkgo in Lime & Fuchsia for blinds

xx Lara.

P.S. The above pic looks great on my screen, but terrible on Teegs' screen (not at all how it looks IRL). So if you think we're nuts for thinking it looks great, keep that in mind :)

Yarraville Market

Our stall at the Yarraville Market

Hey, just a quick thank you to everyone who popped down and visited us at the Yarraville Market last Saturday! We had a great day and it was lovely to meet new customers and other stall holders :)


Our stall at the Yarraville Market

Sneak peak..? Don't mind if I do!

We are terrible at keeping secrets around here, and coz we're so gosh-darn excited about our new little project we thought we'd share it with you.

But firstly... with the New Year, came a few little changes around ol' I&S HQ! We took a moment to sit down and reflect on the whirlwind past 12 months, and made some interesting decisions.

Firstly, dear Bee decided that she wanted to pursue her career in marketing in more depth and so she has left I&S. It was a big difficult decision but in the end it was for the best. But fear not! We are still going to print her designs and they will be available in our shop & at shows as per usual (and we're all still friends!) ;)

Secondly, we decided to consolidate our fabric range, so once these guys are sold out, that'll be the last we see of them!

Thirdly, and most excitedly we have decided to release textile 'suites' this year! They are going to consist of carefully selected colourways & designs! ...and maybe the occasional new design- if the business ever gives us time to draw again :)

So that's enough jibber-jabber, you'll be wanting to see the pics!

Our new, 100% organic & Fairtrade, herbally dyed, UPHOLSTERY WEIGHT fabric!!! And some colour samples.

Ooooh-er! Same deal as above, only it's regular weight! Perfect for all those craft projects...

Goldy-orangey-goodness. Oh yes, it's delicious.

ROOFTOPS!! In SNOW! On RED!

Like I said, sooooo gosh-darn excited.

So these'll be released in a couple of weeks. We'll keep you posted, of course.

YAY!

xx Teegs

Yarraville Arts Festival & Market!

Hey everyone! In a piece of shameless advertising, we are going to be taking part in the Yarraville Arts Festival & Market this Saturday the 13th Feb! Yay!

It's going to be a showcase of all the amazing talent located in Melbourne's Inner West, and we're chuffed to be a part of it! We're really looking forward to getting out of the studio (for the first time in ages) and meeting a whole bunch of people face-to-face, both stall holders and festival goers :)

So if you're in the 'hood, why not come down and say hi?

It's promising to be a pretty radtastic day with heaps of stalls, food, kids stuff on Anderson & Ballarat St's - but don't forget to nip in to visit us in the safety of the Masonic Hall! We'll be hiding out with all the other sensible folks, in case of Melbourne's fickle weather ;)

Hope to see you there :)

xx Teegs

bolt of cloth

I love it when we sent bolts of fabrics interstate and overseas, and I love it even more when our wholesale customers choose lovely fabric combination that just go so well together. Like these two below:


Fabrics off to Utopian Creations in Adelaide


Fabrics off to Bolt of Cloth in Christchurch

xx Lara.

P.S. - check out our new unbleached organic cotton/hemp fabric in the top picture. It's slightly lighter in colour than our cotton linen and we're going to completely switch over to this basecloth soon. Then we'll have a 100% organic range of textiles - yay!!

The Poppies - we won!!!

Favourite Handmade Textiles - People's Choice



1st Ink & Spindle
2nd Dottie Angel
3rd Skinny Laminx


Oh my gosh, we won Favourite Handmade Textiles in The Poppies people's choice awards!!! And also came #3 in the Jury's selection under Favourite Eco!

Wow, we are totally chuffed. To be up there with such amazing talent, it just blows us away. Thank you SO MUCH everyone for voting for us! And make sure you head over there to check out all the other talent. Very inspiring stuff.

xx