New cushions

I'm not sure if I've mentioned here before that we have a pretty small house. The rooms are reasonably generously sized in inner Sydney terms, but we really could use more of them (2 bedrooms, 5 people) and we're feeling the squeeze as the kids grow. But moving house is not an option at the moment. I remember my SIL saying to me a while ago "think like a European and make good use of your space". Good advice. So we've been making a few changes here and there lately, involving trips to Ikea (of course!), some carpentary and many trips to drop off unwanted stuff at the local charity shop.

As part of that we've changed the layout of our lounge room and I couldn't stand the look of our tatty old cushion covers so I finally got my act together and made a couple of new ones.



I had been saving some lovely off cuts from Cloth to use in a Lotta-style quilt (still not game enough to tackle that one!), but decided to use them for this worthy cause instead. Julie Patterson from Cloth is my favourite Australian textile designer, I just love the way she captures the beauty of Australia and she also uses lovely fabrics - textured linens, cottons and hemps. Each time I have been to her shop I have picked up a scrap pack and drooled over her fabrics by the metre and also her new bed linen range. If money was no object I would have her things dotted all over our house... Yes, I can picture it now... an architect designed simple holiday house somewhere out in the bush (bellbirds singing in the background), plenty of wood, steel and corrugated iron, minimally furnished and beautiful soft furnishings by Cloth, ahh! Anyway, enough of the daydreaming ;-)



In this one I used a piece of Julie's Currawong print, teamed with a couple of others in sympathetic colourways and backed with oatmeal coloured linen.


And for this 2nd simpler design I used a lovely piece of white print on oatmeal coloured linen, added in a vibrant orange strip and a textured chocolate brown cotton. I teamed it with a piece of grey linen, which I kept thinking must be wrong as I was mixing warm and cool tones but I love the contrast and thought I'd just go with what felt right.

I'm looking forward to another trip to Cloth to re-stock on the scrap packs for that mythical quilt ;-)

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In other unrelated goings-on, I met up for the first time this morning with a bloggy friend, the lovely Fran from Lovely Little Sweet Peas. It was so nice to meet another like-minded craft nut and blogger and talk craft, kids, Etsy and all things in between :-). Fran has a great Etsy shop selling her fab kids art satchels and has also been selling them to local shops. Good on you Fran. And thanks for spending time with me and my 2 crazy littlies!

Creative business - 'Cloth'

A quick shot of Cloth's front window

On the weekend I had a quick visit to the Cloth shop to buy fabric scraps to use for some projects I have in mind. The artist/designer/owner Julie Patterson happened to be there. I've watched her business grow and noticed her pop up in the media now and then, and always admired her style. She's a design icon to me. Once I got over a bit of shyness I asked her some questions about creativity and business.

The many beautiful fabric designs created by Cloth...

Including Australian native plant designs

I'm always curious about how people started their businesses, how they keep motivated, where they see the business going, how they balance creativity with the boring stuff like admin, all that sort of stuff. But as I didn't want to monopolise all her time I kept it brief, and what she told me I found both inspiring and disheartening.

Yes she loves what she does and wouldn't do it if she didn't. I can tell from her work that her heart's in it. Her inspiration seems endless and she appears to delve into all sorts of artistic pursuits. But, as expected, she said it took a long time until the business was really doing well, and it's an uphill slog to keep it that way, or something to that effect.


Small pieces of screen printed fabric in hemp and linen, and cute covered buttons...


... and a scrap bag ready to be turned into goodies - I'll show you what I end up making with it

My future work/life balance, career and family life is always on my mind. I know I can't go back to what I did BC (before children) as it's not family friendly enough, and also I don't want to - I'm ready for a change... but how do I try to be creative, look after the family and earn some money at the same time? That's my dilema. It was interesting to get Julie's opinion on having a creative business based on art and design. Plenty for me to think about...

If you have any tips or thoughts I'd love to hear them.