Oh Buttons Jean, where have you been?

It has been over 6 months since I posted here and I very sorry for neglecting you little blog but I have been a maniaaaaaac maniac on the (textile) floor.

I scored myself a job as a DESIGNER (business cards and all) as well as continuing with my FINAL year of school. this means I have been a 7-day-a-week girl and have not had time for fun things like blogging.

It is drawing to a close now however…and to get your attention again here is a taste of what’s to come at my graduate show on 23 November.

Below are images of my Jacquard weave “Shakeup” that came fromt he sketches above. I designed and programmed the weaves in this one which was exciting fun!! It will end up as upholstery fabric very soon…

There is only 1 more week left of my diploma and if I wasn’t so damn exhausted I would probably explode.

See you next time when I am making more sense…

Tags | buttons made, buttons making

Earthly Delights

What a week… I’ve been incapacitated with the worst flu I’ve had in a couple of years at least. I haven’t been able to do anything involving vertical orientation or complex motor skills for 4 days and have missed so much school work. It’s gotten me down for sure… But today I got a nice little surprise which was a bit uplifting: seems Tess McCabe has been keeping an eye on me and has posted a lovely comment and link to my humble musings on the Creative Women’s Circle blog. Sure is nice to know that other people are looking over this way and those hits aren’t just me previewing my own work and feeling chuffed with myself! Thanks Tess!

Thus, I have been motivated to be briefly vertical and update you on exciting things pre-illness. I worked really hard on this project for the past few weeks and the previous design I posted became my first collection, Earthly Delights. Here’s a little geeze at the final designs

Colourways

headscarf design

storyboard characters

Everything started life hand-drawn by me, something I’m super proud of. I’m really happy with my final outcomes, it’s been a really fun process and has really raised my confidence levels. Yay!

I’ll be printing the first one as a length repeat in my screen print class pretty soon, photos to come, of course!

Now for recovery…

Work in progress

Autumn is approaching… hopefully I can use the upcoming time indoors to do lots of designy, creativey things and not get trapped on the couch feeling sorry for myself. If only hibernation were an option…

School is busy and buzzy. I am learning millions of things and then forgetting them straight away! But I think they are secretively accumulating in the depths of my right-brain…

I am working on designing a range for neckware using paisley as a starting point. The challenge I set for myself was to use previously unexplored colours and illustration styles. I’m pretty happy with how it’s going so far. Here’s a sneak peek at my design which will eventually become a screen printed length of material:

Holiday Crafternoons

Another long silence from Buttons comes to an end.

Hello!

Summer has kept me distracted, and server problems still abound (working on it, I swear. Word to the wise, free webhosting has it’s catches).
Buuuut! I have been distracted doing crafty things. Mostly teaming up with my Fella in the creative partnership we like to call “Piggy-Pants.”

Episode 1 goes like this: our good friends Pieta Go-Getter of go go dancing fame and Susannah of theatre making fame just moved into a new house and needed some outdoor furniture…

It’s made of 100% recycled wood and the metal table frame is an old flatpack number we had lying around. The stencil is a paper cut done especially for this project, never to be reproduced (well not exactly the same anyway…) and was a good lesson in the pitfalls of cheap spraypaint. The whole project cost us $0!

All in all it was a successful crafternoon! the girls were quite pleased and we were quite chuffed!

Stay tuned…

Days of Yore

This will be the fourth time I try to post this. I have been having trouble with my webhost… So if all my millions of fans were wondering where I was all this time – that’s the excuse. Oh, and there was a week there where I was at Beci Orpin’s house! What?! Ah, yes, I did some work experience at none other than my favourite designer’s house. What an amazing and exciting privilege! Thanks to Beci and Leah and Bonnie and Raph for their hospitality. I had a super week and learned heaps and loved every minute of it!

Meanwhile, here is my latest project: my very first range of tea towels. It is called Days of Yore and is hand printed by yours truly on 100% cotton tea towels. I printed a batch of 4 sets of 5 to see how they would be received. Hopefully getting into the print room again soon to print some more and maybe start a bit of an online shoppe. Ok enough chitter chatter, check em out:

Hope you like ‘em. Tell me what you think…

Coming up Roses (or, Heroes are people too: parts 2, 3 and 4)

Hello!

It’s been a while. I’ve been ultra busy at school – three weeks to go and it’s all piling up. My house is a mess, there is fabric all over the place, my blog lies neglected and out of date and my brain is full to bursting! It’s not for the worst though: My burgeoning foray into the world of textiles is rolling along and exciting things have happened…

This very humble blog has received visits from a few of my personal heroes including Lucy Feagins of the very best design blog The Design Files and Emma of environmental and textile superstars Harvest Textiles… Thanks to you ladies for the ever so nice things you’ve written to me and helped me out with.

I also totally crashed my textile crush, Ink & Spindle’s second birthday party this weekend and hung out in their most inspiring studio. Thanks to Lara and Teegs for humouring an excitable student!

I’ve also had a swell opportunity to have my folio (i have a folio?!) looked at by the Shine Group. It was a little intimidating to be showing my work for the first time to a slick design company but Joel gave me some really useful advice and direction.

The textile industry is proving to be a veritable magic garden of nice people. To all involved and to myself I say “keep up the good work!”

More posts to come to show you what I’ve been busy with all this time I haven’t been blogging. Til then, here’s a hint…

PS …sorry for rambling… I’m a bit excited….

I don’t hate my own phtography

My mum is a photographer. A good one. I have never been a photographer. I didn’t have to, my mum takes the photographs. I didn’t really have the “eye” for it… until I had to study it for my course. Apparently my eye ain’t too bad, if I do say so myself, which I have before, on this blog even. Our latest assignment was a “model/fashion shoot.” I’m guessing it’s to learn us to take photos of our own garments if we make ‘em and wanna market ‘em. Also, it’s just good practice.

So Juju kindly agreed to be my victim. Turns out she’s a bit of a dreamboat to photograph and the whole thing only took about an hour and we ended up with about a bajillion shots and nobody cried. Here’s the final selection…

Getting out there

Today I was profiled on the Creative Women’s Circle blog. It was pretty exciting! Getting all out in blogland and letting people look at my stuff. Check it out!

Thanks to Tess McCabe who runs the CWC for the invite! And hello to anyone who might flutter by because of it!

Toile de jour

Finally, here are some of my very own designs for you to have a squizz at. These were for the “contemporary Toile de Jouy” project at school. (Now do you get my clever french pun for a subject line?!) Jouy is short for Jouy-en-Josas which is a place that made the first toiles. Toiles are textile designs that comprise of scenes or vignettes.

So there’s your history lesson. If you look closely you will see each vignette that makes up my toile story and you will see that it’s about the zombie apocalypse. Tacky, yes but I had to get the zombie thing out of my system, you understand. Besides, it’s a real threat to our future as far as I’m concerned. You only need walk the streets of any major city to see the effects starting take hold…

Below that are the coordinates that we had to design. The brief consisted of two ogee based designs and two diamond based.

I was pretty chuffed with myself for finishing this project. Hope you will agree!

Still Life

I can’t stand painting or drawing still life but for some reason if you put a camera in my hand I am compelled to to photograph it… Something about the willing and patient subjects perhaps? Plus the colours make me happy. These are some of my recent favourites.