Vintage dress fabric from the states

Florals

checks 

 dots

 stripes

 1930'3

novelty 

I've been meaning to blog about this fabulous book I received for my birthday a few months ago.  Vintage dress fabric from the states is from the excellent Pie Books publishers in Japan, and as the title suggestes the book is full of hundreds of colour images of vintage fabric patterns - gorgeous!

All the vintage fabrics have been collected in New York, with many of the designs being still relevant for today.  It's a fabulous inspiration book, with images divided into themes covering floral, check, dots, 1930's, geometrical and novelty etc. 

You can buy the book at Amazon, or direct from Pie Books - I'd highly recommend it for anyone who's interested in vintage fabric, textiles and patterns!  

Melamine Plates - Australian Gift Guide

A big 'thank you' to The Australian Gift Guide for writing about my newly launched melamine plate range!   It's always exciting when people want to write about my designs and products, and lovely to get such positve feedback about the new design collection.

You can see the story here:

'Fantasia' canvas prints

 'Spotted Dick' 

 'Chubby Checker'

'Fish 1' 

'Fish 2' 

'Sylvester'

My dad recently sent me these gorgeous canvas prints that he'd created, which are just perfect for Jasper's nursery!  I stretched the canvas over simple wooden frames and hung the designs as a collection.

The four bright coloured prints (the two birds and the two fish) are part of a series called the 'Fantasia' collection.  Whilst the designs are very graphic in nature, they are painted by hand rather than being created digitally on a computer, meaning the images highlight the painted brush strokes and layers of colour - rather than flat blocks of colour associated with a computer illustration.

Designed to be 'patterns within patterns', the images form a kaleidoscope of bold and bright coloured shapes, with the bird and fish icons emerging from the heavily patterned background.  

'Sylvester' is also a graphic hand-drawn design, but a black and white design based on my parents cat Sylvester.  The design came about when Sylvester was walking over black and white floor tiles, and he became part of the monochromatic tile pattern as his black and white body seemed to appear and disappear over the geometric tiles.

The artworks were all printed onto canvas at Spoonflower digital printers - which are great for printing short runs of digitally printed designs onto fabrics.  You can seem more of my dads illustrations and designs via his blog, or online shop!