Domestic Goddess

I'm not really a domestic goddess; my house is actually a mess right now as I am busy preparing for my new fabrics launch next Tuesday evening. I have been shooting the fabrics in my studio and this photo came about purely by accident when Emily commented how cool it looked. I was ironing out the centre fold line and it reminded us of a 50's housewife. Can't you just imagine her pressing her curtains to perfection?



Hubby installed a curtain rod on my back wall and with the help of crocodile clips, I was able to quickly hang up the different fabrics to photograph in their entirety. My studio is located in an industrial unit so there was plenty of natural light once we opened the high roller-door all the way.



This is my pineapples design now printed on organic cotton twill. I would love this in my kitchen! I have custom-mixed this colour myself and have named it "Sunripe Yellow". Do you like that name? The yellow we used for the striped fabric is being called "Lemon Sorbet" courtesy of Melissa Healy of Futari Design who suggested it. I love coming up with names for colours - it's one of the fun parts of my job.

Thank you to everybody who has been leaving comments in regard to on-line shopping. The comments are so useful and I will be revamping the website with those in mind. Click here If you would like to offer your feedback too and have a chance of winning my beautiful hand-printed table runner.

Befriending the Beast

I finally got around to using my new (actually pre-owned) textile dryer last week. This was a major achievement as it was delivered to me without anybody having demonstrated its use to me. When I studied textile design at Sheridan College (Canada), our school studio had a heat-box which was like a giant oven for curing the fabrics. So there was some initial apprehension and procrastination before I decided that my first fabric order of 10 metres (for somebody else) was the right time to take the leap and get over my fear of the unknown beast. I certainly didn't want to be ironing 10 metres by hand in order to heat-set the inks although have done so in the past.




Now I love it and wonder how I could have ever lived without it!? I was smart enough not to feed the fabric through without performing the necessary technical tests and you can see by the colour of the two samples below that you can't trust the manufacturers' guidelines. The swatch on the left is the same white linen but came out quite scorched, even though the colour is quite nice. Once I worked out the correct temperature and belt speed, the successful white fabric swatch was immediately washed in boiling hot water and beaten around. It was very professional; much like those machines you see at Ikea beating the chairs to death. I was so pleased that it remained totally colour-fast.

I will be listing this pineapple fabric and others on our new on-line shopping site soon. There will be a category of natural printed fabrics and another for organic fabrics.