The 2 little dumplings are still sick (as is hubby), so I haven’t had a chance to sew anything. I have to admit that it’s been a nice break from the sewing machine - instead, I’ve been able to work on some more patterns while sitting with the girls and trying to keep them entertained :-)

My goal is to visit the fabric-printing place by the end of June and actually get at least one of my designs printed. Due to cost considerations, I need to keep the designs down to one colour. Here are 3 that I’ve printed out onto plain paper just to test the colour and the size of the repeats. I’d like to print them all onto a natural-coloured cotton rather than a bright-white cotton.

I like the elephants in red (the words at the bottom read “mon grand ami“, which is “my big friend” in French :-)). I’m undecided as to the colours for the pear pattern and the clothesline pattern - any thoughts?

I’ve also been sketching things in my notebook - mostly new motifs for patterns and new softie patterns. Below are my sketches for Mr Cheery Chimp. On the right are the original sketches. On the left is what I hope the new Mr Cheery Chimp will look like after I make a few adjustments - such as a narrower head, rounder body, and arms that are attached after the body has been completed.

Hopefully, I can work on the new Mr Cheery Chimp in the next few weeks as I’d like to write up a pattern for him and make it available in my shop.

But now I should really take some time to reply to emails (apologies if you’re waiting on a response from me!) and try to keep the flu bug away as I’ll be joining some very crafty and talented ladies at BlogMeet #2 next Friday! Wishing you a relaxing weekend :-)

Just quickly dropping in to say that the following prints are now available in my shop:

“Owl in Rain”

“‘Twas a Cupcake Tree”

“Red Bird Blue Apple”

The last print is of a mixed-media collage I did a few months ago (and is still available here :-)). The prints are available unframed - I did put them up in frames just to give an idea of what they would look like up on a wall. All are limited edition prints (50 of each).

The paper is Torchon 285 g/m2 fine art paper, which has a wonderful texture much like watercolour paper.

More prints to come soon, but first I must really get some sleep! Back to work tomorrow in a few hours time . . .

Ava loves the Alphabet. You’ll often find her leafing through her Alphabet books, singing the Alphabet song or asking her Mama to write some letters. I’ve been looking for some shirts with simple/colourful Alphabet designs and haven’t found any - so I decided to design my own (why not, right?)

Here’s 3 that I’ve finished. I’ve put them up in my cafepress shop on infant onesies and toddler t-shirts if you’re interested. I’m hoping to receive my order soon and can’t wait to see them on my little girls! heehee.

Speaking of shirt designs, on Pip (from Meet Me At Mike’s) recommendation, I popped into Genki. I was delighted to find that it was only a 2 minute walk from where I work in the city! I was excited as soon as I stepped into the shop and proceeded to look (and touch) all the cool stuff (which really was everywhere). There were gorgeous clothes and jewelry, one-of-kind softies, and a selection of very cool Japanese stuff like softies, mugs, and books from Aranzi Aronzo! But my favourite part was looking through all their incredibly cute shirts! I picked up these 2 for the girls:

You can see all their other shirt designs on the Genki website. I’m thinking of picking up some shirts for me too :-)

And last but not least, I received this bunch of goodies from the awesome Dawn of Dawbis:

On the bottom left is an original that I was able to secure through her Trade Catalog. And look at all the extra stuff she sent - gorgeous prints and additional handrawn lovelies. There’s so much I love about her work - colour, texture, skill, themes, etc. These will certainly be up in my studio very soon. Thanks so much Dawn! In return, I sent her Seahorse #4 and a few Aussie goodies :-)

Hoping you all have a safe and happy Easter.

In between sewing and doodling patterns, I’ve been quietly working away on a cafepress shop. Having a cafepress shop provides an avenue to actually use some of my patterns on various (useful) items (and not just on fabric, which was my initial intention).

I’ve been able to apply a few of my patterns to some mugs, with a tote bag and infant bodysuit also available. Here’s a sample of what’s in the shop at the moment:

You’ll probably notice that I’ve also created a new print featuring some Baby Chibi dolls :-) I’ll be adding more items little by little, however I am only trialling the shop for now and will see how it goes based on response.

You can visit my cafepress shop called ‘One Red Robin Designs‘ by following this link. I have also added a link in my side bar. Please note that cafepress lists prices in US dollars and items are shipped from the USA.

Well, the patterns that were printed on untreated, normal, white cotton faded even more once it was washed. So I decided to get a pack of these and despite it burning a whole in my wallet, the final product (below) was of much better quality plus the fabric is machine washable:

I picked up a pack at Spotlight during the Labour Day sale yesterday. I also had a few bolts of fabric in my arms but they were quickly discarded once I realised I had to wait at least 2 hours in a very long line before reaching the cash register. Thankfully, this package of fabric goodness arrived today from PCP. It feels good to add a little bit of Amy Butler, Denyse Schmidt, Prints Charming & Echino to the fabric collection :-)

I also took a break from making some softies to make a Bib and Burp Cloth set incorporating some of my boxed-apple pattern.

In January I think I mentioned that I wanted to get into baby accessories this year so I finally stopped procrastinating and just jumped into it. The bib closes with velcro, is backed with a thick 100% cotton towelling, and has cotton batting sandwiched in between for extra absorbency. The burp cloth also has the towel backing.

And finally, here’s another little pattern I’ve been working on:

And apologies for the dodgy photos today - having trouble with the natural lighting :-)

A few more patterns that I doodled during the past week and finally transferred onto the laptop. The first one is inspired by our wooden floorboards, which I was cleaning after Ava spilled her drink on it (yet again :-)).

I’ve also been sewing but don’t have anything really to show for it. I received a special request to shrink down some of my soft toys to a smaller size and I’ve spent the weekend trying to do so. Despite my best efforts, the end result was disappointing - wonky toys with very little appeal (at least in my eyes). It proved that I certainly work better with larger items and don’t have the skill and gift to make beautiful small things, for example, like Myra :-)

The cooler weather has brought with it a sudden craving for rice pudding - but not just rice pudding, a Filipino chocolate rice pudding known as “Champorado“.

You can find the recipe here. Can be enjoyed warmed or chilled. The best rice to use is Glutinous or Sticky Rice, which I found at our local grocery (also readily available at Asian Grocers). You can also use Jasmine rice. Sweetened condensed milk is the perfect topping :-)

Hope you all had a fun weekend - we’re hoping to take the girls to the city tomorrow and join in on the Moomba festivities.

Here’s another pup with a patchwork belly - Misha. She’s almost done with ears, collar, and crocheted flower pinned in place and just waiting to be sewn on.

She’s made from soft suede twill and a variety of cotton prints. You may also notice that I have used one of Carla Sonheim’s delightful mini-art transfers (from her shop) on the belly.

Thank you very much to those who left a comment on my last post regarding printing on fabric! I do have Bubble Jet Set on my list of options but am a little paranoid about using it since it contains chemicals including formaldehyde and I have little ones running/crawling about :-) I didn’t get a chance to go to the craft store today to have a better look at some fabric sheets or Bubble Jet Set so I tried the least costly suggestion - printing straight onto untreated fabric.

I took a piece of plain white cotton, ironed on some interfacing (to give it more weight and stability) and trimmed all the fraying edges. I tiled together a strip of my patterns onto an A4-size page using my graphics software and when setting up the Print properties, under page type options I selected “Transparency” as the printing under this option is slow and less prone to smudging. I put the fabric (with interfacing) through and here’s the result:

And a close-up:

It’s not perfect, but it turned out better than I had expected. There is a little bit of smudging but I think that can be resolved by a little printer maintenance :-) As you can see, the colour is not as vibrant as the actual image and the light blue came out as green - this could in part be due to the fact that my printer was low on a few inks. I did intentionally make the pattern smaller to test the printer’s capabilities in terms of maintaining line definition and it did quite well, with minimal colour-bleed.
I’m currently drying it out and then will heat-set it before the next test - washing the fabric. I’ll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, I did want to share with you a picture that my 3-year-old drew of me a week or so ago. It’s all creased because she scrunched it up into a ball and gave it to me as a present :-)

Thanks so much for the kind words about Rufus and my week of photos! Every single comment is much appreciated and is a wonderful encouragement. Thank you.

I’ve been spending a bit of time working on a few very simple patterns. I’m loving all the fabric goodness that is available but sometimes I can’t seem to find a colour-way I like for a particular theme or, even if I do find it, it turns out to be way beyond my budget. Plus I like the idea of making something a little more unique by using a pattern I have designed myself.

So here are 4 patterns I’ve come up with -

There’s probably a little more tweaking required and I’ll be experimenting with some other colour-ways. I’m also trying to figure out how best to get these onto fabric since I only want small patches. I hope to pick up a pack of ink-jet fabric sheets and see how that goes but if you have any recommendations, please feel free to let me know!

Here’s another merging of fabric and ink drawing - this time a sketch of a robin in a tree and some red, retro print fabric.

From this:

To this:

You can see a larger image of the print in my Flickr Gallery.

I decided to take a little break from sewing and wanted to make more collages. After drawing up some sketches I started to think about merging the pencil and ink drawings together with fabrics digitally, so that the fabrics ‘colour-in’ the sketches in the same way that I cut fabric into shapes for fabric collages.

I did a few sketches and then laid out the pieces of fabric I wanted to use.

It took me a while to figure out how to achieve the effect I wanted on my Graphics program - basically it involved merging the image of the sketch with the images of the fabric and then removing parts of the sketch so that the images of the fabric could come through. After a few nights of playing around with the fabrics and sketches on the screen, I ended up with these 3 illustrations - I can’t really classify them as collages.

“Two Trees” - this one merges a pencil drawing of trees and a Japanese fabric print of lanterns and lights. I then digitally filled in the background with solid colours.

“Mama Owl’s Moonlight Serenade” - this ink drawing came about while I was toying with some original patterns for an owl softie I want to eventually make. The sketch is merged with a Japanese fabric print of colourful chrysanthemums.

“Elephant Jungle Song” - this ink drawing is influenced by the one above and is merged with a retro fabric print. This one would look right at home in a nursery or child’s bedroom I think.

I think the Owl one is my favourite of the three - it also took the longest to complete. I’m happy with the results and I’ve got a few more sketches in mind to try out as well.

Oh and Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mums! Hope you get showered with lots of love today!

And just wanted to say thank you to all of you who drop in and leave your wonderful comments and suggestions - they really make my day and motivate me to keep creating, learning and growing. Thank you so much for the encouragement - I am working through them and hope to email you personally with a thank you soon (if I haven’t done so already!)