Materials and Methods - doorstop

It's amazing how time gets away from you and suddenly it's mid-November and you have heaps of stuff to do before the end of the year...less than two months of my job left (deep breaths, deep breaths)...a two week trip to India to plan and organise (more deep breaths) - finding time to be creative can be a bitch! I've been meaning to sit myself down and get a couple of doorstops made - might seem random - but it was for a good cause - I promise.

Firstly I had a pattern which I had found for free (don't you love that?) on the Selvedge magazine website - it's one by Lotta Jandotter. Awesome! Except you can't really read it as they must have scanned it at low res, and there was no actual pattern anyway, just the instructions...so I was going to contact them to see if they would send it* and then figured surely I was smart enough to work this out.

*they have been alerted and pattern is now included as PDF on the site.

I used some undyed hemp/organic cotton that was actually a pillow case that I bought on sale in my favourite Eco-store, Biome - it was for one of those massive european pillows - so after unpicking all the seams there was 2 meters of fabric to play with!! Not bad for 10 bucks people! Then I grabbed a little berrilicious hemp fabric from my partner in craft crime, Ellie, this would make the top...or a roof - yes, I think these doorstops are going to be little houses!

After numerous cups of tea and an episode of Dexter (don't judge me), I started flicking through some old notebooks and photos for inspiration.

Originally I thought about embroidering random bricks on the panels - then I remembered a stamp making class I did with Holly from Two Cheese Please and decided making a brick 'stamp' was a genius idea (less work)! So I tested it out and tweeked it before heading for the fabric ink.

After that it was a blur - one of those fabulous times when you get totally lost in your creativity...then suddenly hours have passed by and you have something to step back and admire...now I have to raid some poor child's sandpit to fill them!

To embellish I used fabric scraps I had squirreled away, but you may recognise some Aussie designed and hand screen printed textiles by Pippijoe, Ink and Spindle, Kristen Doran and Green Olive.

Finding and Keeping

Last weekend Brisbane held it's first Finders Keepers design market in the old museum. I love the old museum, I work near it and so get to gaze at it every day. This building is rather gothic looking and I remember being taken there as a very small child - it was like a junk shop of grand proportions, dusty cabinets displaying stuffed animals, collections of insects and, what looked to my young eyes, just a heap of stuff.

The museum moved to it's new home at the Cultural Centre in 1986 and it then became the home for the Queensland Youth Orchestra, and other performing arts and music groups.

The building itself has undergone a major renovation over the past few years and it's great that they are holding public events in it's lovely big rooms. I could go on about the market itself, but actually I wanted to focus on some of the images I took of the inside of this grand old dame.