Never Too Late

It's never too late... to bribe your kids into helping you that is. Many challenges have delayed our production this week; table runners cut the wrong size (look out for new fabric packs as a result), manufacturers with 'sick' staff and the list goes on..

I was anxious to push things along so had to recruit my son, Valerio, into helping me today. 'Big Deal' I hear you say. Well, yes it is as he is so NOT the crafty type. He is more your mathematician, chess/poker playing, computer games kind of guy.

So I had to do what any desperate mother would do, resort to bribery. A mattress for his new lodgings was negotiated. Don't judge me. I have read many a blog post from you crafty mammas where child labour has been used to achieve market readiness. Admittedly, my son is no longer a child but traditional methods still work.

Doesn't he look sweet placing the freshly-printed tea-towels through the textile dryer? All put through twice!

The other one didn't get away without contributing either. Elessa (who accompanied me to the Valentino exhibition) returned to Melbourne on Monday night but spent a good portion of the day wrapping dozens of soaps. Oh, what good kids I have. Thanks Possums!

Recycle Everything!

The hardest thing about running a small business is watching your cash-flow and the never-ending expenses. I really needed something to safely catch my printed fabric as it came out the other side of the textile dryer.


I was thrilled when my partner, Voyt suggested that we recycle the wood from the pallet that the dryer was transported on, to be used as the frame for a fabric-catching box. Yay! Saving the wood, a little of the environment and money - especially when the labour is gratis.


Voyt is not a carpenter but I was impressed with the (simple) box-frame he made.


Emily, our in-house patternmaker/machinist used some discontinued fabric to make a clever, washable slip-cover for the fabric-catching box. And as you can see - it works perfectly as it catches a heat-cured Thea & Sami linen cupcake tea-towel.

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.