Coral & Tusk Update

Lucky me! My very perceptive mum gave us our very own Coral & Tusk Cushion! She did some excellent detective work when we were last in Moss Vale visiting the lovely Made by Others store. Apparently I picked this guy up in the store and my mum took note. It's looking lovely on our upstairs couch.

 

Coral and Tusk

Good morning friends! This morning is a porridge and chai kind of morning, with rain and wind and heavy skies in Sydney. I have big plans to get some things made today, the weather making it easier to be indoors. However I've just heard that rivers are flooding in other NSW areas, which can never be very good.

Have you seen these little creatures from Coral and Tusk? Quite a few of these are in my virtual shopping cart, with the hope of at least one making it's way to our home!

The way the studio operates reminds me of when I worked as a commercial textile designer - lots of chat and cups of tea... Their video shows how lovely the Coral and Tusk Workroom is...

 

 

 

Coral & Tusk from Coral & Tusk on Vimeo.

Designer Stephanie Housley gives a sneak peek into the delightful world of Coral & Tusk, her line of pillows and accessories. See her imagination come to life as embroidered drawings in her beautiful Brooklyn showroom/production studio.

Drum Roll for the Felt Ball Rug!

Slightly embarrassingly, I started making this Felt Ball Rug two years ago. Two years? Yes. Two years. November 2010. You might remember this post mid-way through the making... No? Well, neither do I... that was one year ago. A lot happens in one year... and a lot of nothing happens in one year, particularly when one has the habit of stopping and starting projects willy-nilly.

When I purchased 8000 felt balls, this kind of rug was a rarity. I think Anthropologie had a nice looking one out last year... but now... I see them everywhere! Not quite the same as mine, but still.

Never-the-less, I am proud to announce that I am literally days away from finishing this guy up. Just a few more stitches and this rug will be ready to adorn our living room. I must admit that it's only two-thirds the size that I had originally planned (thank-you to my sister who pointed out there was no way a bigger rug was going to work in said room). But despite this small change, I'm quite happy with how it is looking.

From the above photo you might thing that Wilton just loves sitting a top of these balls. The reality is, since he ate, digested and pooped one of the balls out, he's steered clear of the rug and was forced to sit on it for the photo shoot.

Speaking of photos, my marvellous sister Hannah took all of the above. She is super talented and very generous to make time to take shots of my work. I'm going to invite her back once it is all done and dusted for a final capture of TWO YEARS of procrastination and a bit of stitching results in.

Gaawaa Miyay: Lucy Simpson, Textile Designer

I've been talking to my design students this week about developing concepts for textile design. What is a concept? What is the purpose of a concept? Where does a concept come from?

Concept is a mysterious notion - I see it as the idea that holds the design process together. It's the starting, middle and end point. It keeps you on track and allows you to communicate your ideas creatively. It may be a few different ideas joined like a dot-to-dot puzzle. It could be a piece of inspiring music. Sometimes it is a story.

Lucy Simpson, creator of beautiful textiles that make up Gaawaa Miyay (River Daughter), is an expert at visual story telling. Each of her designs respond to memories of storytelling, people and places. She draws from her ties to the Yuwaalaraay country of Northern NSW and interprets her connection through visual narration.


Next week Lucy is holding an Open Studio Night at Addison Road Gallery, Marrickville. If you are in the area I'm sure she'd like to see you there.


In the mean time you can look to these sites:


Gaawaa Miyay
An Interview with Lucy by Craft Australia
Lucy's Collaboration with Julie Patterson at Cloth.

Image Credits: Lucy Simpson & I Ran the Wrong Way

Making a Felt Ball Rug, Slowly.

Last November I made the grand purchase of 8000 felt balls from a very industrious Etsy Seller.

I'm sure like me you've seen those nice squishy Felt Ball Rugs in catalogues this year?

I thought making my own would be a fun project for the house. Almost 10 months later and I'm proud to say I'm half way through threading my 8000 balls into a rug that when I put down on the living room floor NO ONE will be allowed to tread, lie, roll or touch. Practical, huh!?

It's been a bit of an ordeal, though I find the process once I have a spare hour or two quite cathartic, something like the action of Rosary Beads, though I guess I'm praying to the felt god to get me through this one!

I just popped over to the Hay Studio site to see there Pinocchio Rug, and looks like they've come up with some nice new designs too...

Photo 1: Taken by E Peters.
Photos 2-4: From the Hay Studio Website.

How to Make Carpet Art, A Tutorial

Step One: Poor lovely glass of red wine to drink while perusing the web on a Sunday night.
Step Two: Sweep arm for no real reason, catch sleeve on wine glass
Step Three: Knock wine glass from table to floor, making sure wine spills across beige carpet in the largest surface area possible.
Step Four: Yelp and cry out to anyone else in the house while preventing dog from running into wine spill.
Step Five: Google how to get wine out of carpet.
Step Six: Husband/Partner/Flatmate must run to get Saxa Table Salt from kitchen cupboard and proceed to tip salt in strange patterns across wine spill.
Voila, your own Carpet Art Piece!
NB. Wine still not completely out of carpet, need to go get carpet stain remover, but a lot less creative than the above technique!

Sold!

This weekend NP and I sold our little apartment at an auction... an exciting moment! It's actually been lots of fun cleaning and styling our place ready for people to come and see. Buying fresh flowers from Seed and making the bed are two of my favourite things to do.

Now that we are really moving, I'm getting a some pre-emptive nostalgia... we've had such a great time living in this sunny place and I hope the next owners get to enjoy it as much as we have.

This is a shot of the driveway graffiti I did before I was an EP... I wish we could take it with us.