Spring Sunshine Fabrics for all your Craft and Sewing Projects

Perhaps February is a little bit early in the year to introduce my 'Spring Sunshine' collection of coordinating fabrics? 

But after months of winter gloom, with one storm after another, I hope it might spread some much-needed 'sunshine' on grey and dreary days! And today is a lovely sunny day, at least here in Wales, with daffodils in the gardens and parks!

'Spring Sunshine'? - where did that name come from? 
I never decide on a name for a collection until well after I begin designing - and then, as often as not, the name just drops into my mind and refuses to budge. With this 'Spring Sunshine' collection, it was not only the watercolour daffodil paintings that I used as the main motif but the coming together of the yellow flowers, the fresh greens of the leaves and the sky blue background that seemed to speak of sunny days in early springtime.

(Without the brighter, more 'golden' yellow, the colour palette could have been rather bland.)

The main pattern in the collection is a floral 'mini-print' pattern of Daffodils on two background colours - sky blue and teal.

Custom Spring Daffodils on Sky Blue Pattern Fabric by poshandpainterly

Custom Spring Daffodils on Teal Pattern Fabric by poshandpainterly

There are also customizable versions of the 'daffodils' patterned fabric available from my Posh & Painterly Zazzle store that invite the customer to easily choose their own background colour -

Pretty Yellow Daffodils Fabric to Customize by poshandpainterly

Then there is the pattern that combines the main 'daffodils' pattern with a stripe -

Custom Daffodils Stripes on Sky Blue Pattern Fabric by poshandpainterly

These fabrics could all sit very comfortably in a pretty, nostalgic setting - even adding a 'country cottage' look perhaps? 

I think they would be perfect for the soft furnishings in a little girl's bedroom too!

They would, of course, combine perfectly with any of the other fabrics in the 'Spring Sunshine' collection. But for a charmingly 'retro' effect, you could mix and match them with either or both of these Polka Dots patterns, secure in the knowledge that the colours will harmonise with the floral patterns -

Spring Sunshine Green and White Polka Dots Fabric by poshandpainterly

Spring Sunshine White on Green Polka Dots Fabric by poshandpainterly

These 'pin-striped' patterns continue the light, bright, sunshiny theme of springtime and as well as combining well with the Floral and Polka Dot patterns, they could be used alone in a more 'modern' decorating scheme -

Custom Spring Green Stripes on Sky Blue Pattern Fabric by poshandpainterly

Custom Spring Green Stripes on White Pattern Fabric by poshandpainterly

Custom Spring Stripes on Teal Pattern Fabric by poshandpainterly

The final patterns in this 'Spring Sunshine' collection, the chic chevrons, are altogether more 'modern' and trendy when used by themselves.

Spring Sunshine Chevron Pattern Teal Green Yellow Fabric by poshandpainterly

Spring Sunshine Chevron Pattern Blue Green Yellow Fabric by poshandpainterly

But even so, they combines well with the other patterns in the collection, as you can see in my 'Faux Patchwork' pattern -

Spring Sunshine Faux Patchwork Patterns Fabric by poshandpainterly

I first started making patchworks more than forty years ago and at about that time - in the early 1970s, when boho/hippie-style was all the rage - I had a favourite dress made of a faux patchwork patterned fabric, in red, white and navy blue. 

It was a tent-shaped mini-dress and I was able to carry on wearing it as a maternity dress when my second daughter was on the way. I loved that dress so much that, even after hemlines dropped and it was no longer in fashion, I could put it on over my other clothes to wear as a painting overall! I think it may still be stowed away in a black sack in my garage . . .

So it's hardly surprising that, when shopping online for some new bedlinen more recently, I was immediately attracted to a faux patchwork duvet set! 

And that started me thinking about the possibility of making faux-patchwork patterns on my computer . . . 

Daffodils Pillow or Cushion: Faux-patchwork by poshandpainterly

I do this now with almost all of my pattern collections. 

And in my photo-editing program, it's very easy to make sure that the colours and 'lights and darks' are evenly distributed for the gentle, almost 'shabby chic' look that I love!

You could use this lay-out of the fabric pieces as a pattern for your own patchwork project. Or, if time is at a premium, you could even just quilt along the lines between the fabric shapes!

Here are all my 'Spring Sunshine' fabrics, together in one place, in my Posh and Painterly store on Zazzle -

Click on the image below to see the full Spring Sunshine collection.

Spring Sunshine Fabrics
by Posh & Painterly

If you like my 'Spring Sunshine' collection, you may also like to visit my Posh & Painterly store to see my Home and Fashion Accessories featuring these patterns, as well as some very pretty matching border patterns.

Spring Daffodils Border and Polka Dots Pillow by poshandpainterly

By the way, 

my 'Spring Sunshine' collection of fabrics is now also available for sale,

 along with many of my collections, 

on the 

WOVEN MONKEY 

website

The days are finally starting to lengthen and spring is not too far off. The birds are singing, reminding me that there's work to do out in the garden . . .

So I'll wish you 'Happy Sewing' - 
and see you next time!

Visits and Vexations - June Work in Progress

Planting them in November has really paid off -

not only flowering much earlier but longer stems as well!

June is usually one of my favourite months. 

View from my back bedroom window!

It's the time when my garden is at its best with climbing roses, lavender, mock orange, sweet peas and honeysuckle all giving off heady fragrances! And usually the summer is just beginning so it's not too swelteringly hot yet, just how I like it.








But of course, one of the best things for me is that my birthday is in June and that means being in touch with friends and family and, the highlight, my son coming down from York for a few days.

As well as helping me with some chores in the garden that would have been practically impossible for me to do by myself - yes, the Dog Rose hung down over the road at the front again, like a floral curtain! - when that was all tidied up, we went out for our usual walk. For once we remembered to pack a picnic lunch and we ate it in a beautiful, quiet spot in the Linda Vista gardens:

Wonderful Californian Poppies in Linda Vista Gardens

Then we set off across Castle Meadows, right up the lane that passes under the Heads of the Valleys road and comes out in Llanfoist, across the road that leads up to the Big Pit, and onwards and upwards to the Brecon and Monmouth Canal at Llanfoist Wharf! 

I was surprised I was able to walk that far because of the problem I've been having with nerve pain in one of my legs. But we had bought some Nordic Walking Poles as we came through town, as recommended by the physio who's been treating my back - and so on we went, up the steep, slippery, rocky path up through the wood on the side of the Blorenge!

The path ran alongside this little stream
so you can see that it was fairly steep!

This year I've been particularly lucky - my younger daughter has been over from Sweden for a few days, bringing two of her children, her eldest boy and my one and only granddaughter. As I haven't seen any of them for more than four years, that has been a special treat! 

They were only able to stay for a few days because her husband had bravely volunteered to look after the other four boys - aged from two to fifteen! And unfortunately the day we picked to go for a walk and to visit a few local 'sights' was the one and only wet and drizzly day we've had for weeks. 

The River Usk at Abergavenny, from the Castle Meadows

Looking towards the Brecon Beacons from Abergavenny Castle

And the historic Tithe Barn and Abergavenny Castle were both closed! 

But the two grandchildren had fun skimming stones in the River Usk and we visited the Tithe Barn the following day.

But sadly, this year, Zazzle have cast a shadow over my favourite month. They have decided to withhold 30% tax from any 'non-resident alien' designer - that's us! - who doesn't get an International Tax Identification Number from the IRS. And, quite apart from this being a lengthy, tedious and quite expensive process, the IRS has told us that we don't actually need this number to qualify for the Tax Treaties between our countries that would mean that we only pay taxes in our own countries. So that's an ongoing, time-consuming, stressful bone of contention.

On a more productive note, I had an interesting request from a physiotherapist who specialises in Mind-Body 'treatments', Georgie Oldfield. I've never met Georgie except online but I've been receiving her newsletters for about five years and she was kind enough to order some of my greeting cards back when I was printing my own. Georgie has decided to create an Adult Colouring Book to raise money for her 'Hardship Fund' and she wondered whether I could contribute some pages to colour. 

Of course I was glad to contribute and started to trace some of my designs - but had to send the scans to Georgie in their rather raw state to give myself time to prepare for my daughter's visit, which I didn't know about when I said 'yes' to Georgie! But she has assured me that she knows someone who will 'clean them up' and I'm looking forward to seeing the book when it is finally published!

Here are a couple of them with contrasting amounts of detail!

I actually wouldn't find trying to colour neatly inside the lines in the least bit relaxing - quite the opposite! I'm more of a 'broad brush', splosh-the-paint-about kind of person. But it's surprising what Photoshop can do with a messy, untidy scribble! 

So this month I'm going to show you how totally absent-minded, half-watching-television doodles can morph into a whole collection of patterns!

This is how it all started!

And with some help from Photoshop, these pencil-drawn motifs became the basis of this set of related patterns:

- which then enabled me to make a faux patchwork:

Nostalgic Indigo Faux Patchwork Pillow or Cushion by poshandpainterly
 

I've also been experimenting with adding scanned Broderie Anglaise - which I've always loved and often used when I made little dresses for my toddler daughters, many years ago:

Custom Indigo Floral Faux Lace Pillow or Cushion by poshandpainterly
 

Custom Indigo Floral Faux Lace Pillow or Cushion by poshandpainterly

The next thing I worked on was creating a border pattern from the original motifs - I've noticed to my delight that our local dress shops are full of border patterns, reminding me of a nightie I had in the Seventies that I wore as a dress to our house-warming party!

First the usual square border: 

Nostalgic Indigo Floral Border Pillow or Cushion by poshandpainterly 

 - and then just a single side to leave space for some text. 

Custom Indigo Blue Floral Border Lumbar Pillow by poshandpainterly

Next I challenged myself to create something that I've wanted to try for ages - a circular border!

Monogram Indigo Floral Border Round Pendant by poshandpainterly

With or without the monogram!

Custom Indigo Blue Floral Border Drawer Knob Ceramic Knob by poshandpainterly
  

Finally I had plenty of choice when it came to make 'Indigo' greeting cards!

Indigo Blue on White Floral 101st Birthday Card by poshandpainterly
 

Custom Floral Faux Lace Get Well Card by poshandpainterly
 

Custom Blue and White Floral Mother's Day Card by poshandpainterly
Find more Floral Cards at Zazzle

500+ gifts and cards from the
'Indigo' Collection
HERE

Yesterday, the final whole day before my daughter and her children started back home to Sweden, the weather started to really hot up. 

So we were able to relax in my little garden - after my tall, handsome grandson had helped with dead-heading the Alchemist rose, always a huge job and difficult for me to reach. 

And today the temperatures are soaring - quite unusual for June and much too hot for my liking. But it's perfect for drying the mound of towels, sheets, duvet covers etc in the open air that always result from having people to stay. I think the fourth load is in the machine at the moment and at least a couple more loads to go!

Once all the laundry's done and the house tidied, I should have a chance to get back into my work routine and hopefully make some inroads into my long list of ideas for designs and patterns  . . . maybe! (Much depends on Zazzle.)

Poppies by the roadside near Abergavenny Bus Station!

Work in Progress: Best Laid Plans . . .

Tissue paper painted with acrylic - click HERE for tips about making collage

They say that 'Life is what happens when you'd planned something else' and that's certainly been the case for me lately!

Early last month I decided to take a break from my usual routine of uploading my designs to Zazzle and other PODstores to give myself time to catch up with the ever-growing number of designs and patterns in my 'pending' folder. I also wanted to take a step back to ponder the possibilities of a change of direction after Christmas.

So I quickly finished up my new October Birth Month Flower gifts and greeting cards and took myself up to my attic studio to paint and make collages, right away from my laptop where all the tedious uploading, titling, describing and tagging takes place.

Over the first weekend I painted some tissue for the collages and finished the mice for the cheeseboards that Zazzle had recently introduced - I'd been doodling them in the evenings but never seemed to have enough time to paint them.

Cute Dancing Mice on Cheese: Round Cheeseboard by helikettle
 

And then, on the Monday, I made a start on quite an ambitious collage, inspired by the Folk Art Embroidery of Eastern Europe:

As you can see, although I was having fun cutting and sticking little flowers, I only made half of the heart shape because I wanted to be sure that the pattern was symmetrical.

Here's one of the finished 'Folk Heart' cushions -

Folk Art Style Floral Heart on Moody Blue Pillow by poshandpainterly

And I've even got around to making one of my faux patchwork patterns - as I worked with this one, the colours seemed to suggest the Art Deco home furnishing colours of the 1920s and '30s.

Folk Art Style Faux Patchwork Round Pouf by poshandpainterly
 

I'm still adding to my Folk Heart Collection but you can see more than four hundred greeting cards and gifts that I've created from that one collage 

HERE.

By now I was on a roll and on the Wednesday I moved on to making a collage from a hand-drawn Rangoli motif that had been sitting in my 'pending' folder for quite a while - 

The making of Rangoli patterns is part of the Diwali celebrations and you can read about them HERE.

When I drew the Rangoli design, months ago, I had based some of my motifs on traditional elements of Indian Design from my huge 'Grammar of Ornament'. 

And again, I worked out that I didn't need to make the whole pattern in hand-painted paper collage. 

Making just a segment of the pattern saved a lot of time but it also involved a lot of very accurate work in Photoshop afterwards to make sure the segments fitted together properly. Not being a perfectionist, I find this sort of thing very hard work - and tedious! But looking forward to seeing the finished pattern kept me going - and here it is!

And I think I like it even better with a black background!

But I'm afraid that's when my 'creativity break' ground  - or screeched! - to a sudden halt!

I came downstairs from putting the eight segments of the Rangoli together to boil the kettle for coffee and found an email from my neighbours telling me that they had a leak in their bedroom ceiling, close to the party wall that joins our pair of Edwardian houses. 

They asked me if I had a leak too and when I went to look in my guest bedroom (that I only use about once a week to do the ironing) to my horror, this is what confronted me:

It's not actually a leak in the ceiling, 'just' water seeped through from next door I imagine, from just below the picture rail. And I found out later that it had been 'seeping' ever since early on the Monday morning, while I was happily making my Folk Heart collage, in total ignorance of what was happening!

As if the damage to one of my favourite wallpapers, now unavailable, wasn't bad enough, a silly dispute has arisen about which builder to use. Apparently the leak was caused by the lead in the 'valley' between our two roofs being faulty and replacing that is a joint responsibility. Thanks to the internet there's now not much I don't know about repairing a 'valley' and what it should cost! 

But all this has taken up so much of my time and energy, that I abandoned my attempt to make a collage Christmas Angel because I just couldn't concentrate. 

I was becoming completely indecisive about it - which is unusual for me. So I've put her back into the 'pending' folder and gone back to the rather less demanding uploading - hence the hundreds of new 'Folk Heart' products in my Zazzle store! 

And I haven't even begun the November Birth Month flower, the Chrysanthemum.

But the repairs to the roof are due to begin on Tuesday so I hope the end is in sight. And meanwhile, I shall enjoy working with the Rangoli pattern to create lots of greeting cards and gifts. Too late for this year's Diwali but in plenty of time for next year!

(I keep looking at my wallpaper and hoping it's not my imagination that's making it appear slightly better. But I don't think I will ever get rid of the stains and all I can think of is to mix the two shades of green gouache and paint over all the tiny leaves in the pattern. Shouldn't be too difficult for a painter, should it? Watch this space!)

Close-up of an undamaged part of the wallpaper in my spare bedroom.