While waiting for Peter to finish more wood blocks for me and the arrival of the organic fabrics, I could not resist experimenting with more green dots. In this case brightening up a plain old duvet cover. As usual that has fired up a whole bunch of new ideas for me to mull over. For which I will need to find a good reliable source of organic cotton sheeting. Back to more googling for me, not that I need much of an excuse.
Inspiration can be found anywhere, today for instance it was between my hand and our youngest's hot chocolate. It is the colour green, this particular green, the green that is in our kitchen, our bedroom and even the sitting room. A green that Nicola and I seem to be obsessed with at the moment.
I am a little obsessed with spots and dots at the moment. So not surprisingly our first items up for sale are spotty lampshades. To see our new shops click the links on the left and you can visit us on Etsy and Felt. While I am waiting for Peter to complete more blocks I have been experimenting with stripes, with the help of a lazy cat. Not quite right yet, but getting there.
Many of the houses on Napier hill have decorative fretwork on gable ends and on veranda posts. Some very simple and some very fancy. I find them interesting and have been taking snaps of them for years. I am not sure how, but the back of my mind something is mulling. 
I love the the bird motive below, at least that is what I think it is.
After spending a couple of weeks experimenting with colours, patterns and blocks, here is our first prototype. The first of many that will be appearing soon. By next weekend I hope to have a few of these spotty lampshades up on our shops at Etsy and Felt. What do you think, we would appreciate your comments and feedback?
At the moment we are a bit of a kitchen table enterprise, this is where the prototype printing is happening for now. Block carving takes place where ever its quiet, in the garage, at the kitchen table and in the study. You can tell by the small piles of sawdust. 
Eventually we hope to build a light filled workshop and studio in the garage. 
The inspiration behind our Napier Rose range of textiles was taken from the above leadlight from the Art Deco Rothman building in Napier. I took this photograph on a visit to the building with friends a few years ago. I have used the outlines of this rose already as a template for a quilting pattern. The plans for the Napier Rose textiles are underway and Peter is working on the blocks.
Over the next few weeks we are going to post some of the images that have inspired our designs. Starting with the iconic Norfolk Pine.
My first batch of eco friendly, non toxic fabric inks arrived yesterday. I could not wait to try them out and start mixing some colours. As yet we haven't got any of our printing blocks completed. That wasn't going to stop me - a bag of potatoes later I had one or two dot blocks and a petal/leave block. You can tell I am the one with the inspiration not the artistic talent.
