Panda print

 This week's Spoonflower Design Challenge is called Comeback Species and is celebrating the fact that many supposedly extinct species have made a comeback with the help of conservation efforts. I chose to create a design using the giant panda. I've created pandas in varying poses on a green background, surrounded by bamboo and I've also tried them on a blue background and a pink background which can all be found in my Spoonflower shop. Which one is your favourite?!

Happy Monday

Happy Monday! I hope a good weekend was had by all. Mine was lovely, with a great combination of city visits and country walks. On Saturday I went to the Tower of London and I loved it! I hadn't been since I went on a school trip when I was about ten years old and I was very impressed by it. There is lots to see and even the views over London and the river are really spectacular from the ramparts. It reminded me of what a great city I live in. On Sunday I went for a lovely brisk walk in the Oxfordshire countryside, ending up at a pub for lunch. It's a stunning time of year and the leaves on the trees were all changing to vibrant shades of orange and red.

On Friday I ventured to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace to check out what's going on. It's always great to see everything under one roof, to see the fabrics I've designed and to also see what other people are doing.

It was great to see that bright colours were very popular. I loved the selection of scarves above and the use of the kantha stitching. I might use that technique for some of my Cheeky Leopard scarves.

It's always great to see the Liberty floral fabrics. They come in all shades and look so pretty lined up.

I love a folk-inspired print and have designed a few in the past which you can see on my website here. The one above is a lovely multi colour version.

There were a lot of quirky novelty prints at the show. I loved the polar bear print on yellow and the multi colour umbrellas.

Higgs and Higgs had a selection of lampshades made out of the Sophia fabrics I designed for Makower UK. They looked really pretty hanging up.

These cute panda bear heads would work well in a nursery. I love the gender-neutral yellow and mint green colour palette.

I came home with some beautiful sari fabrics from Bazaar. One piece is a vibrant pink colour and the other piece uses softer pinks. I love the combination.

 My sari purchases came in this pretty little bag, also made from sari fabric! I can't wait to get creative with the fabrics I bought and think both pieces would make stunning clutch bags.

It's countdown time!

Oh my goodness, I just realised that in three weeks time I will be in Tokyo!!!!! How exciting?! It's also a bit nerve wracking as it means that I now have a limited time to get all my bags ready for the show.

I will be selling my wares at the International Bazaar, which is held at the Tokyo American Club on Wednesday 5th and Thursday 6th of November. It's a show that I have done for the past five years and I love doing it as it means that I get to see old customers, meet new customers and catch up with the lovely friends I made whilst living in Tokyo. Of course I also plan to do a fair amount of shopping and am looking forward to coming back to the UK with a collection of new kimono and obi fabrics to play with. The Oedo antique market will be on while I'm there and it's one of my favourite markets, held in the grounds of the International Forum.

Here's a little taster of what I will be taking to sell at the International bazaar. Each item shown here will be exclusive to the bazaar only. Each has a Japanese influence and most of them are made from tenegui fabrics that I collected whilst living in Tokyo.

 These three coin purses are all in shades of blue and depict traditional Japanese images including a fan and lucky cat on the front purse, storks on the middle purse and sumo wrestlers on the back purse. Check out those buttocks!

 I couldn't resist this panda fabric and gave it a black and white spotty lining. The middle purse shows aikido fighters (I also have a purse made from ninja fabric!) and the back purse has chopsticks and rice spoons on it.

I love this fabric depicting kokeshi dolls. Kokeshi dolls were something that I enjoyed collecting whilst living in Tokyo and I have a lovely little collection of them. This fabric is bright red and has a black and white lining. The purse at the back is a tenegui fabric used for Kodomo no Hi (Children's Day) and has a sweet, simple image of a boy and girl on it. The inside has a blue and white spotty lining.

I have also made some kimono fabric purses and will be mentioning those on my blog in the next few days.