Sew Long Good Buy

The east london craft guerilla are holding the 5th and final outdoor craft market this saturday in the garden at the back of the Penny Fielding Beautiful Interiors shop in Walthamstow village and littlechook will be there. It is organised by the lovely Deborah Daniel who is also busy organising the E17 art trail on 10th September.

I managed to staff the pop up shop for the final saturday after a wee mix up here and there so I will be taking a selection of my lovely organic cotton children's t shirts along for my stall. I may possibly squeeze in a small print run of the linen/cotton tea towels - maybe!

More info on the market at http://www.eastlondoncraftguerilla.blogspot.com/

Inside the pop up shop

here's a little preview of whats in store for you when you come to the pop up shop!

Flower image is by Ryokan Art on canvas. Tea towel is a lovely new flower circle design by littlechook (me!) on a 50% linen , 50% cotton tea towel. The bag is by the lovely urbanknit and is my favourite one of all her bags and purses in the shop. The little kids treasure bag is a mini tote with a flock print - this one is called Tweet. The cards are by Bombus and use recycled maps and magazines.

The shelf and the elk came from my house which is looking bare with all the furniture now in the shop.

We worked hard on saturday to get all the stock uploaded onto big cartel so we can now take crdedit and debit card payments too.

New Kids Tshirt Design

made this one quite girly with a red heart and one of the pigeons is singing away. The little lady has taken to rubbing her nose against the flock shapes! I used the moo cards as the washing instructions label as the flock needs ironed on the back (although who the heck irons kids clothes!!!)

The tshirt itself is organic cotton and I was surprised at how soft it is. It is so different to the fruit of the loom t shirts that I think it does justify the higher price tag. I got some new t shirt samples today including some red organic ones from Mantis and some long sleeved unbleached ones.

I also got some Fruit of the loom v necks and I ordered a Large and X Large and I cannot believe how small they are! I can barely fit into the XL - it is sooo tight accross the chest I looked like I should be headed to the Playboy mansion. So I have scratched them as the tees for the 'plus size' collection.

I'm having more luck with tshirts from the supermarkets but the low price does make me worry about the conditions of the workers who make them.

Ideally I will buy two overlockers on ebay this weekend and will make my own t shirts eventually. My mum will be helping so we will be a two women sweatshop!

Stylish T Shirts for curvy girls

Thankfully the heat press is fully functioning so I cracked on with making a couple of baby tees today. The organic cotton tshirts worked really well and they feel so lovely and soft.

I also noticed a while back on the etsy forums that lots of etsy ladies were saying how they couldn't find any tshirts to fit them. They were looking for the type of cool, funky prints that many etsy sellers have in their shops but they weren't keen on the usual American Apparel fit. Presonally I find AA really teeny tiny even the XL size! The cut is not particularily generous for a proper bosom....

So I've been trying to source wholesale 'plus size' (I hate that term) tshirts but it's been really hard to find anything half decent. I have been shocked though at the negativity towards so called 'larger' (e.g. normal!) sizes even from companies selling plus size clothing. ("our cuddlier customers" as one put it).

So I'm trying to create something stylish, fun and beautiful for us curvy girls. I used some flock shapes today as I think the deer and birds work well and I just love stars!

Liberty Lovelies

I bought some beautiful liberty fabric squares on ebay and they arrived yesterday. I was planning to use them for vintage fabric badges but I have had so much trouble cutting fabrics with the badge cutter I have given up. The point is to cut a perfect circle but the fabric seems to blunt the cutter and the circles are not properly circular so the badge machine doesn't properly press them into the fittings.

In summary the badges look great but they fall apart which isn't going to be good for customers!

The badges in my etsy shop are made of fabric but these fabrics are much thinner cotton and they worked out ok.

So I think I may just hang onto these fabric samples as inspiration as they are really gorgeous fabrics! Liberty is one of my favourite shops in london and I especially love going at Christmas to see their window displays and their whole department of decorations. The only thing is the shop is so old it isn't that easy to manouvere a pram around the floors!

organic cotton kids tshirts

My samples arrived! They are 100% organic cotton t shirts and are also fairtrade. The only drawback is the sizes only seem to go up to 18 months. Colourwise they do white, unbleached and red. Somehow I have managed to forget to order the red ones! They feel lovely and soft. No chemicals or pesticides are used on the cotton. I am interested to find out more on their fairtrade aspect though and how this works. I am really aware that I don't want to be printing tshirts for kids that are made by kids. Not right in my book.

The manufacturer is Mantis World and their website is http://www.matisworld.com/ The website on the label though is http://www.tenderlovingclothing.com/ but it doesn't seem to be working???

No chance to add any printing as yet. I have decided to stick with the littlechook name but go for FlockStars by Littlechook. I am thinking of having a second etsy shop for the vintage cushions and using the littlechook on for all the printed, organic cotton cushions, t shirts and tea towels. So far my designs have rabbits, squirrels and deer. I am about to add pigeons, woodpeckers and foxes.

That's it for now, off to eat chicken fajitas an drink pear cider for dinner.

littlechook goes fairtrade and organic

Currently I use non organic tea towels and I am finding the quality a bit hit and miss and I keep reading in papers such as The Guardian about the damage cotton growing does through the excessive use of pesticides and it worries me.

As a designer I expect to be able to charge a fair price for handmade handprinted items so why shouldn't the whole supply chain expect the same?. So today I decided to use only organic fabrics but also to ensure they are fairtrade so that the makers get a fair wage.

Google came up trumps and took me to http://www.organiccotton.biz/

I ordered samples and the very nice Phil replied to my email straightaway saying organic fairtrade cotton tea towels were available. Yay!

They are a family firm based in Powys and their site has some fantastic pictures of the cotton being grown and made into fabrics by the local people.

I have ordered sample fabrics in a range of colours and weights. The range is brilliant with calicos, denims etc and many are handwoven. I got nostaligic for my weaving days thinking about handlooms. I miss my weavebird!

trapunto cushion

I learned about trapunto from my tutor Debby at Morley College. It's an italian enbroidery technique where sections are stuffed with wadding and then embroidered on top.

I have a couple of works in progress that I will photograph over the weekend and I'll post a step by step 'how to' cos it's a really fun technique that looks very effective.

On this cushion cover I've used a vintage cream cotton backed with a coffee and cream piece of french ticking. The design is called 'walk in the forest' and combines shades of green and brown with corally pinks for the flowers.

It's in my etsy shop as a custom listing at the moment with others ready to buy to be added soon!