Where have I been?

Tags

butterfly, fabric, for children, plushies, soft toy, unicorn

I haven’t done a blog post in a while – this is because I haven’t been making anything new. Here’s why:

Embarrassingly this mess is not because I’ve just moved house, it’s layers of stuff that I’ve been shifting around to different surfaces so that I can work somewhere else. However since the rest of the room is in a similar state, there’s now nowhere else to shift to.  Combine this with my New Year’s good intentions and a birthday marking a new decade, I have been focussing on tidying up and getting things under control. It’s slow going since I can only do a little bit before I feel the panic building and I have to stop and do something else.

Since I don’t want to leave you with such a ghastly image, here’s one of the projects I’ve finally gotten around to doing. These were supposed to be Christmas gifts for my children. Yes it’s February!

My girls were very specific about the designs they wanted so I thought it would be easier to make them than to scour the shops for “a baby white unicorn, lying down, with a purple mane and a golden horn and golden hooves and rainbow wings”. A pink and yellow butterfly was easier, but I figured since I was already making one…

I got my designs printed by Spoonflower on minky fabric. Since the cost was similar to get two fat quarters as a whole yard, I did the two together and filled the background with a design combining the unicorn and the butterfly (this fabric is now available on Spoonflower).

My sewing on the plushies was pretty abysmal, so I decided to practice some more. I cut out a few of the motifs from the background fabric and made an even smaller unicorn.

I had to do blanket stitch around the outside since it was too small for an inner seam. I was tempted to put a bail on this and make it into a necklace, but my daughter has claimed this one too.

I also made another butterfly. I’m not sure if this is a pin cushion or a toy. It’s gone too.

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Arctic Unicorn

Tags

fabric, fantasy, kawaii, unicorn

I have created another fabric design for a Spoonflower design challenge. The theme is Arctic Animals. It features the incredibly rare Arctic Unicorn, based on a request from my daughter.

Arctic Unicorn Fabric design

You can find the fabric here. Voting ends on 19th December 2017, and you can find the contest link here, to see the other entries and hopefully vote for mine too.

When is a daffodil not a daffodil?

Tags

chiyogami, daffodil, fabric, spoonflower, yellow palette

The Spoonflower competitions this month are floral inspired. Given the time of year, I couldn’t resist doing something with daffodils. I used the colours from my Yellow Palette.

The first theme is “Paper-Cut Florals” so I tried to keep the shapes simple and graphic. I didn’t think the cut-out look was coming across in the preview, so I did another design using elements of the daffodil design as texture. The idea is that the flowers are cut out from ornamental Japanese paper (chiyogami).

Again some of the detail is lost in the preview, but it retains the cut-out look. If you like it please vote (open until 11 April 2017).

Mini quilts

Tags

fabric, flower, quilt, spoonflower

My fabric designing has been on hold for a little bit while I waited for my test swatches to arrive. I’m planning to do something using my spectrum palettes and I wanted to check the printed colours before I got too invested. While I was waiting I decided to fill some empty frames with mini quilts made from my previous set of swatches.

It’s the first time I’ve done quilting and I found it pretty addictive.

The mount windows are about 9cm x 9cm which is dinky, so they were tolerably quick to make.

I made these last week. Today my fabric swatches arrived, and I’m pleased with them so they are now for sale on Spoonflower.

Tangram fabric

Tags

fabric, patchwork, spoonflower, tangrams

I’m still busy designing fabrics. This time I made a patchwork pattern for the Spoonflower Tangram competition. I didn’t use all seven of the tangram shapes, but the design was inspired by the theme so I entered it.

I have some more designs in progress, but the file sizes are getting quite large and my laptop keeps crashing, so it’s slow going.

In the meantime, please pop along and vote for the designs that you like.

Mandala fabric

Tags

fabric, mandala, spoonflower

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. I have been busy clearing the project scraps from my polymer clay work boards (I couldn’t bring myself to simply mush it all into mud). So I’ve made a few beads, odds and ends and cabochons but no finished items yet.

I have just entered another fabric design in this week’s Spoonflower competition. I actually started the image a few years ago, but it fit the theme (Mandalas) perfectly, so I just needed to make some tiny tweaks for it to be ready.

Voting is open until 14th March 2017. I’d really appreciate it if you’d vote for my design (there are other pretties to see too). 🙂

Kooky Kaleidoscope

Tags

boho, fabric, patchwork, spoonflower

Here are some of the fabric samples from the first batch of designs I did for Spoonflower. Previously I wrote about how the patterns started out as a photograph of a pair of earrings.

Art Nouveau fabric sample by Cate van Alphen

Surprisingly even though the sections all came from one photograph the different fabrics make some kooky colour combinations. I think they are quite fun together.

Fabric samples by Cate van Alphen

The stripes and patchwork fabrics bring together some of these contrasting motifs.

Chevron fabric by Cate van Alphen

Striped fabric sample by Cate van Alphen

You can view the collection here on Spoonflower.

Spoonflower Florals

Tags

fabric, floral, flower, satin, spoonflower

I have finally got round to photographing some of the fabric samples I got printed by spoonflower. It took a bit longer than expected because they were shipped from USA – just be sure that if you are in the EU that you don’t pay using paypal! These are my abstract floral designs.

White Floral fabric sample by Cate van Alphen

Lacquer Flower fabric sample by Cate van Alphen

Hosta Green fabric sample by Cate van Alphen

I’m already thinking of projects that can use these 8×8 inch samples. I just need to excavate my sewing machine from under the ongoing beading projects.

Fabric design challenge

Tags

fabric, flower, Japanese, spoonflower

I have been playing around with more fabric designs. This time I made a pattern for the current spoonflower competition. The theme is “Japanese Garden”.

Japanese Lacquer Flower pattern by Cate van Alphen

I guess I still had inro on my mind when I designed this!

Your chance to vote for the winner is open till the 27th if you’d like to join in. There are over 700 entries so make sure you have a cup of tea with you before you begin.

Fabric design

Tags

earrings, fabric, jewellery design, kaleidoscope, patchwork

In my earlier post about my embroidered Bead Habitat, I referred to a slightly related rabbit hole. That rabbit hole is fabric design. For years I have cut and repeated elements to create kaleidoscope patterns, but it never seemed to be a particularly useful habit since the only printing I knew of was onto paper or canvas. Then I discovered Spoonflower where they can print on a wide variety of fabrics. Suddenly I could imagine designing my own fabrics, perhaps even some to use in making more bead habitats.

I find creating patterns pretty addictive. Don’t ask me how, but I went from this photograph of a pair of earrings…

Patchwork bead earrings by Cate van Alphen

to these patchwork and chevron patterns,

Pink patchwork pattern

Chevron pattern

via a few tiled kaleidoscope patterns.

Art Nouveau tile pattern

Art Deco tile pattern

That’s only some of the designs, from one photo, with one colour adjustment :o. That rabbit hole is starting to look pretty deep!

I still need to get some swatches printed to see if they live up to my imagination. I find the thought of using fabric I designed from an image of beads I made as a component in a necklace strangely fulfilling. It’s like making compost from kitchen scraps to grow better vegetables (even though I’m currently only growing some spectacular dandelions in the garden, I like the idea).