papernstitch - red seed studio

 
I'm on Papernstitch! So exciting to be having an exhibition over there. Check it out. I've got lots of new things in the shop - some lovelies for you, some for friends. Lots of things at the moment are one-offs or limited editions. Lots of pieces on sale as well - so go have a look-see.

I'll be having a few markets over the next two months, so you online shoppers have first choice. Jump in quick!

Ok. I'm off to set up some screen printing right now. Some new tea towels and.......
I'm trying to decide what colour to print with - what colours are you loving right now?

oh toasty toasty {inspiration}

Last week, Sam came home from town, with the mail*, and handed me the two new catalogues from Toast. I know I've mentioned these lovely lovely catalogues before. Check them out, please do. They send these for free.

The styling is so so me. I love every bit of it. The mood, the colours, the light. And oh those settings. One of the big things about living in this country of mine (Australia), is that we are so far away from places like Morocco, Spain, France, Italy.... 

Toast, being a UK company, can just flit off there for their photo shoots. Oh. Oh. Oh. Those locations. 

I really love the styling, and never realised before my Shannon Fricke workshop, that it was by Twig Hutchinson. Oh, have a look over at her site. Now. I'm waiting here for you to look.

Anyway. I'm loving looking through the Toast catalogues, both the house&home and the Early Spring fashion one. Simply lovely. And so so continually inspiring. I have the Christmas one on my bookshelf, and flip through it often - to gaze at the luscious deep velvet dresses and shoes and.....

* Now that we live in the 'country' we have a mail box in town, at the main post office. This means no daily mail box check, only whenever we go into town once or twice a week. Sometimes I miss that feeling of hearing the mail delivery (wo)man driving down the street and stopping at our mail box, and running outside to check. But, then the up-side is that there's the anticipation of waiting to open the mail box with our key and peer inside the box. Sometimes a parcel slip means we have to head into the post office and hand the slip over, stating our box number, and then waiting while the ladies go off to find our parcel. The anticipation of a parcel......
HA - I just thought..... Does anyone want to do a parcel swap with me. Something little, something special, something thoughtful, something crafty, or a magazine from your country/town...... something something something. Email me if you like this idea {redseedstudio@gmail.com} or leave a comment.

planning a new dress

We're heading off on our holiday in just a little time. {Sam + me, no kids, 4 glorious days of no kids. Did you hear that N.O. K.I.D.S!! And we're staying at a lush looking 4 star resort over the bay of Tauranga. Yah to the NZ-Aussie$ exchange rate}.

Going to my dear friends wedding. And a wedding is an excuse, no a need, really, for a new dress. Being a fabric + sewing + designing type of person I really have to make my own, don't I! No flitting off to buy some off-the-rack mass produced thing. Oh, no, not for me. 

As I'm running out of time before we leave (and also planning our house packing, and still have to make the wedding gift) I'm designing something simple to make, with no darts and minimal zip / button hole details. I'm hoping to sit down tonight and start a prototype (a muslin or toile), so perhaps I'll have something to show you soon(ish...). 

As we've got a new camera (oh it's lovely), I don't have any photos to show you of anything from our daily happenings. Still haven't worked out how to get the photos from the camera to my computer (think I might have to go via Sam's computer, which has more editing programs than me). So, I'm leaving you with a few images from wedding dress inspiration - things that are feeding ideas in my mind. It's a casual garden party wedding in Summer time NZ; so I'm aiming for something simple and pretty, enough twirl for dancing and walking through lush NZ fields and  visiting  a really very pretty.pretty.colourful.warm.bright.home. (and meet a blogger who I've loved reading).

I love the soft suppleness of this. The silk is just the most beautiful colour. Of course, I won't be using silk as I'm aiming to use what's in my fabric piles. (Some lovely herb-dyed organic cotton + vintage kimono pieces, perhaps).

This one is on a similar idea, but with more structure at the waist, which is what I need for my body. So the dress don't look, as my husband said, 'frumpy'.

And I can't believe how much I love love love this beauty. Even the colour (which would never work with my skin tone) is something I'd consider for another time.another dress. But I think it's the layer upon layer of tumbling frills.

*all images used with thanks from original sources.

Hopefully I'll be back soon with some photos of our holiday times.

knowledge :: heart

“All the knowledge I possess

everyone else can acquire, 

but my heart is all my own.”

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe).

{quote via here}

{can't remember where image is from, sorry - I'll let you know when I find the link}

oh my oh my

These pieces are so intricately.amazingly.beautifully.colourfully.upliftingly. wonderful. aren't they.

I've had the pdf on my desktop for so long. Love opening it and looking every so often. Oh, to wear and feel and see any of these pieces.

*images are from
Rittenhouse x Husmann / Tschaeni (top) {go to about page to find more downloadable catalogues}
Rebecca Wolkenstein (last two)

Also see Husmann Tschaeni blog. oh my. oh my.

printing blue ..... and still not sure of a name

Some screen printing today, in the printing shed. Skirts.  Like this one here. {thanks Kim, I actually really quite like this photo; not often that happens!!}

The backs of the skirts are beautiful soft black hemp + organic cotton. The fronts are a floaty white hemp + organic cotton - which I hand screen print. Each one is totally different, due to the way I print them. I couldn't even replicate any particular bits if I wanted. It's like a magic that evolves from the mix of ink on screen and pull of squeedgie.

Red / black or blue / black. Each had white relief marks on it; frayed, raw, edges, strands, string, twirls, swirls. And little bits of stories in the ink.

I love lifting the screen and looking at each bit. Picking out sections that I like best. Enjoying the mix and swirl and drifts of colour. Seeing the stark white underneath. The edge of the screen. The soft corners, where the ink didn't touch, or just softy whispered past.

Sylve helped me today. It was good to have someone else in the printing shed with me. Someone working out thoughts with. Talking with my sister is like thinking aloud, a ramble of conversation and ideas and advice and being able to say little bits that might not make sense until someone else turns a new light on them.

Mishi helped us too. Spooning the ink onto the screen. And washing the spoons afterwards. And getting so wonderfully grubby with blue.black water (and chocolate brownie combined with babycino at the cafe after).

I'm still trying to come up with the best name for these skirts. I have been calling them The Art Skirt, but not sure that's exactly right (except that doing each one is a one-by-one piece of art). 

I'll show you the finished skirts in a week or so. When they're back from the sewer, and I'm back from my holiday. {We leave for a week's holiday in Cairns on Tuesday. YAH}. And some of you will be able to see them in person at my upcoming big big big fun fun fun market (which I'm super anxious.scared.excited.anticipating.breathless.dreaming.planning about).

the collection {or high fashion & tomatoes in the compost}

I've made a simple little montage on our 

website, showing a preview of our new 

fashion collection. 

I'm working on a small collection to start, 

but am already designing new pieces that will probably 

become the start of an early Autumn range.

I do hope you like what you see. 

I have my fabric arriving next week,

and some other samples hopefully this week.

There will be lots of cutting, 

printing, 

sewing and

labelling

happening over the next few weeks + months.

{I have started asking some friends

if they may like to help me with the sewing... we will see}.

Anyway - we have a new website being built, so until then this is all you'll see

(unless you see me in person around the place. 

I'll be here and here over the next week, 

and why wouldn't I be wearing / showing off my newest pieces).

***************

Okay, I'm off to dig up the tomatoes that are growing out of the compost heap. We're finally planting a little garden space at Ari's school. It's only taken since the start of the school year (February!) to get this sorted. I got to school this morning, to the wonderful sight of two of the mums digging in the soil, and all the rest of the parents (some big burly dads included) standing and watching them. There was a spare shovel or two sitting idly around....

a sneak peek {kids view}

Here's a few images from the first fashion shoot ever for my first fashion collection ever. These are not the images from the photographer (my talented brother-in-law, Ben), but taken using my camera. Ash  and Ari took them. Sam was the photographer's assistant and I was the stylist / dress-pinner / kid wrangler. And my gorgeous rocker-chic, skater-girl, sweet smiling sister was the model.

 I'll hopefully have the full shoot to show you in a few days. I'm super excited about how it turned out. Like.a.real.fashion.shoot. {does that mean I might be a real designer....}

* I do think these kids are both shaping up to be good little photographers. Perhaps they need to spend more time watching Ben, and seeing the results (hmmm..... guess I should print their photos onto paper, rather than just viewing on the computer screen).