indie art & design + Peppermint magazine

Thankyou so much to Carolyn from indie art & design who recently interviewed Carly and I (Umbrella Prints) for the 2nd edition of Peppermint Magazine.

Here is the interview it went up yesterday :-) ...

Work it

Pattern-House blog

I missed Pattern-House too so....now that I have caught my breath I reckon...it's back!

Thanks to the four loyal fans (!) who urged a return to my quiet exploration of all things pattern. xox

It's Crafty

So excited to finally have a proper look at this gorgeous book. So excited in fact that I stopped talking to customers and sat mute in a corner savouring every page of this delicious book like the kid in Never Ending Story.

Pip has done an amazing job of bringing Meet Me At Mike's all about and in such a positive, generous, sassy and upbeat way. There are 25 projects by 25 different Australian crafty people (one is by Carly) and features beautiful images of ephemera, vintage objects, favourite items collected by the designers and Australian fabrics (including some by Umbrella Prints). I would love to make every one of these projects and I think I will actually be able too because the instructions are simple and clear and dont make me hyperventilate like some patterns do.

Meet Me At Mike's is available in bookshops tomorrow and here now.

Little Things

I can't resist joining in! Pip's Words and Picture's theme for this week is Little Things...

Three generations of feet and a little moment looking at the littlest snail in the world.

Friend

G and Truffle are best mates

I promised Brooke some photos of my mum's sausage dog a loong time ago. They may have taken a long time but I didnt forget! Brooke's beautiful hand sewn sausage dogs were our very first Tandem partnership (Tandem#1 Umbrella Prints X BooBook) .....so... extra sentimental. x

Design Ride

first sketch

We have been having a lot of fun recently with Ceeb (our Tandem #3 Umbrella Prints X Ceeb Wassermann) and a wonderful custom order from the US .

Our Elephant motif by Carly for Umbrella Prints comes from within our fabric design; then hand saw pierced into silver charms by silversmith Ceeb Wassermann and has now been adapted into earrings of differing sizes for a customer with symbolism in mind.

There have been so many emails flying around between us all but now being complete and on the way it is a very satisfying feeling to have been a part of a design ride like this. This collaboration also sees the birth of a new sized Elephant charm-Wee Elephant (weeny).

Our Elephant charm family includes Mumma Elephant and Bubba Elephant and Wee Elephant. We are more than happy to get creative if you have particular ideas for them.

Too Far Away

My sister Holly is crocheting stockings in Berlin. Dear Holly is also the person who we have dedicated our new colour 'flamingo'. Thankyou for inspiring us to go even brighter Holly xox

Preparation

Jenny from Ciuccio is sewing up a lovey storm in preparation for next week (more on why later). Jenny's latest lovey quilts (tandem #2 Ciuccio X Umbrella Prints) use our Elephants fabric printed in seaglass with other mixed blocks of colour. Having held a few of her quilts myself they strike me as really balanced-the combinations of colour are different and gorgeous. Good luck Jenny!

Rolling Stripes

I don't know if I was charging up positive mental ions the other day when I put down some thoughts on 'inspiration' (I posted the beautiful Indian Jaipur painting from a shop in the US), because the next day I walked into a shop in the Adelaide Hills (Nairne) and found myself surrounded by heavenly Indian and Raj artifacts of a very similar type. I cannot believe I have never found this shop before, it is really wonderful- Upstairs Downstairs.

These beautiful smooth stripey rolling pins are for rolling ciabata.

Perfect Circle (Hydrangea) in silver

Last week we felt a bit deflated after printing my Perfect Circle design in black and not liking it one iota. This week we have chosen to print it in one of our new colours, 'silver', and suddenly this design has come into its own. We are thinking dewdrops on spiders webs, aluminium, moons, reflections, armour, metallic, bubbles and mustangs. Silver, printed on a darker linen base cloth, looks subtle yet strong and modern. We will have it up in the shops next week!

Tea for 30

I wish I could print these all as fabrics. But until then these patterns stay on my teapot brooches :-)

Design

image from wlarmadillo

Ive had a big day a wonderful day! A bit of work mixed with a lot of play.
Im too fagged to talk much about it except to say there is a small truck load of new Umbrella Prints fabric and product down at Little Bird @ Elliot (North Tce, Port Elliot, Sth. Australia). Kate's shop is a pleasure and so are the pasties from the bakery down the road.

Tomorrow has been especially penned into my diary and reads DESIGN. The most important part of my work with Carly should be about designing but seems to be taken up with phone calls and driving and sending and answering and selling and packing. I am not complaining but now that time for designing actually has to be allocated I feel sentimental for the old times when I carried around a sketchbook full of doodles and drew non-chalantly on the bus in between catnaps.

Speaking of design isnt this armadillo just a perfect design!

G's sheep

Nets, Vines, Sky

Inspiration

Carly and I were asked recently about what inspires us both and we answered 'everything'. Probably a one word answer for what could have been a day long conversation. It is so worth thinking about that though, why you are drawn towards some things and not others. There are just so many beautiful things around and plain or 'úgly' things too that can inspire. There are just so many talented creative people around doing their thing where can you possibly start?

We were talking about it yesterday on the phone. I remember a dance teacher doing some choreography with a group of us back in high school. She ( I cannot remember her name :-( ) asked us to think of something you do at home like a duty- washing the dishes, vacuuming, anything...doing your shoelaces and then make the movements, and then make them larger and then take out some of the details and see if you come out with any interesting new movements, Then see what happens if you repeat that movement over and over, what does it look like, combine it with music, make some parts of the movement slower/faster.

She was amazing and I suddenly realised that ANYTHING can be the source of a new idea. The movements in dance are patterns just like that in a patterned textile except movements in 3 dimensional space. Its the same with music being a pattern or a map of sound.

Or, if your stuck for an idea pickup the nearest thing to you... in my case its a pencil...and really look at it.

There are lines and 6 angles to create an almost round linear object. There are two dark ends the pencil tip and the patterned black end. There's gold writing and numbers and little symbols- I dont know what they are. The inspiration within this pencil could evolve into a body of work and patterns that could keep you busy for ten years!

I could draw lines with dark and light parts, some filled with text, I could look at the little motifs in gold and create all sorts of different new shapes by repeating them in different directions. I could think about the shape of the pencil and the potential imagery that could come out of it by way of line or shade and introduce that into a more static simple line repeat. Then you have colour and scale and the possibilities are just endless.

Im blabbing again. The beautiful objects in the above photographs come from jhterrygallery ; whose online catalogue is a most beau and inspiring collection to me.

Naughty or Nice?

image Dear Olive

I have tried to teach G to be considerate, mindful and 'nice' to other people but upon rocking up to kindie today I noticed that many of the children around her were pushing, shoving and virtually stepping over her to get to the cut up pieces of fruit/the bus door/the whatever.

Scary thing is it's the same in the big world too.

On a similar theme, which has bemused me for a while now, I was at Ikea with G and she was near a table when an object fell off the table (not because of her) and I asked her if she would pick it up and put it back on the table. My Dad who was with us cracked a small fruity at me because in asking G to do this I was teaching Grace to (verbatim) "lick a*se" not "kick "a*se" (he's from Glasgow).

And its all a bit confusing. Like if your child is being badly bullied at school these days your meant to say don't hit back and give a list of verbal and behavioural alternatives; when maybe flattening the bully would end it and faster.

So....do I enrol G in meditation/movement class or karate!