September blues

As September is the start of the busy stock building season for me its easy to get stuck in a repetitive rut as I spend large stretches of time doing the same thing (block printing, sewing, heat setting, cutting measuring, the list goes on) in regular cycles.

I decided one morning to stretch my wings and instead of the scheduled sewing slot I had lined up, to try and make a mini  carry all tote.

I had a batch of linen washed and ready to go. I even trialed a rough template for the shape bag I had in mind. It didnt work though so I decided to tweak my existing tote template.

I picked three tjaps with strong patterns to print the linen with and mixed up a soft oyster grey ink and a deep olive green for the other patterns.

I wont bore you with the inbetween bits Ive covered in previous posts about the process of printing and sewing the fabric up - best to skip to the end and show you one I finished....

Tools of beauty

Now my studio is nearly complete Im able to hang my tjaps and wallpaper blocks properly on custom made racks on the wall. Problem is my collection is larger than my wall space. Some of the square tjaps are now stored like this in my spare wall hung units and the free form and larger ones - mostly the big florals and pairs are wall hung.
And of course my love affair with wallpaper blocks is ever present...
These beautiful antique blocks are massive in scale, some are over 2 ft in width alone and are all intricate metal pins and lines set into a huge slab of wood - oak was commonly used.

 They are the hardest to print with but often the most beautiful patternwise.  Im making a small batch of special large fabric hampers to stock in my shop at Christmas (yes Im thinking that far) which I will use these blocks for.

Surveying the after effects of the wettest July on record on my garden  -which is lush to start with and now has become a dense jungle. Perhaps a drier September will mean I can cut back and prune but in the mean time my children love the ability to lose themselves (literally) in it.
As fairly typical with long narrow London gardens you need to screen the neighbours and city noises out - in my case we`re having trouble making out where our own house is from the back of the garden. Perhaps its time to thin the bamboo out..

Summer is in full swing but a humid wet one at that. It dampens my mood somewhat and makes being creative difficult.
However Ive decided to make some plushies (an unusual term if you`re English) out of my owl linocut.

I printed some in yellow and red and then block printed some fabric for the backing. Naturally being me I forgot to sew my label into some of them - something I only realised after I had stuffed and sewed them up...

The final print...

So here`s the giant orchid - my first print of it and it came out great so I made a few more, mostly on indigo linen for trugs and a couple on olive green linen.

 I also decided to print my pineapple lino pattern on unbleached linen to see how thats looks - its normally on white linen - came out great too. Note the lego scattered in between the fabric as evidence of my chaotic family/work life ratio....my two year old was busy applying the glue stick to our rather laid back cat and generously dusting him with glitter whilst I printed. Pity he shot out the door before I had the camera ready.

And on a rather unrelated note - how cute are these little cardboard boxes that i picked up for a quid at my hardware store on sale. perfect for keeping all my rivets and grommets.

 Yes, how exciting is life....

Orchids Everywhere

Right now is not the time to crete new patterns. Now is the time to be practical and sensible and try and create a basic level of stock for my existing patterns...
So on that note I started drawing a giant orchid pattern.
I have wanted to do a giant orchid for many months - the orchids I got for mothers day  bloomed their socks off and have put out secondary  stalks with more flowering buds. They were almost teasing me...

My achilles heel is that I am incredibly impatient. Most of my lino patterns are quick outlines and then the extra detail I usually carve directly on the lino. I started this drawing last night and within a hour the large orchid was pretty much carved but I decided to wait till the morning to draw and carve the little one as it was getting late.

A use for remnants

Now the weather has cleared up and we have a stretch of warm dry days ahead, Ive decided to clear out the mountain of remnant fabric cut-offs from my print runs. I decided to start with the lino pattern remnants - most of which I havent printed as main items such as tea towels or scarves for a long while due to my workload.

Most I have to be honest were too scrappy or odd in size to do much with, but a handful will be perfect to make more fabric baskets and mini organizers with.
I sat on my living room floor surrounded by small piles of useful and useless. after a while I decided I needed coffee and cake. Then more cake....the task at hand was more than a single sugar hit could fix first time round.