Creative Uses for Tea Towels

A friend of mine bought one of my Knit print tea towels at the June Handmade Markets with the intention of using it as upholstery fabric. She has just sent me some 'before' and 'after' images of her ottoman:

Before (above)

After (above)

She says "This little ottoman has got a new life now and all because of your beautiful screen printed fabric!! I think it looks wonderful with your nice stitches pattern on it. Thank you very much Kate!"

Other people have told me that they buy my screen printed tea towels and frame them, and others have bought the tea towels with the intention of turning them into cushion covers.

I think they are all such fabulous ideas - and it's lovely to see my designs inspiring creativity in others x

Environment Inspired Art - Article

Ive just managed to get a copy of this article which was published a couple of weeks ago in the Canberra Northside Chronicle - it discusses my inspiration for my work 'Modern Tree (Hope)' which was created for the Footprints Exhibition.

Click on the image to see a larger version of the article.

Enjoy!

Interwoven Exhibition at Gaffa Gallery, Sydney

My work has been selected to be part of Interwoven, an annual exhibition curated and coordinated by the Design Institute of Australia.

I drove up to Sydney on Wednesday to set up my works for the show. I was allocated a small room which had three walls - I decided to transform the space into a Lounge Room using my fabrics, as curtains, upholstery fabric, cushions, lampshade and as wall art.

Three of my designs are featured: Gingko; Knit; and Cloud stitch.

To make the fabric lengths look more like curtains I hung an old stained glass window between one pair (above).

And a small painting of the view from my kitchen window between the other.

I also commissioned an Creatif Upholstery to transform an old chair I found using some of my knit fabric - he did a fabulous job! The lovely Jane from Honi and Lemon, also transformed some of my Gingko fabric into a lampshade (you can see it in the top photo - more pictures of this to come, I promise!)

The exhibition is on at the Gaffa Gallery in Sydney from 16 - 27 June 2011.

Gaffa Gallery is in a beautiful heritage listed building in the CBD and is spread over three floors. There is a small cafe on the ground floor - delicious aromas of ground coffee spill out onto the street and waft through the space - along with a divine gift store also on the ground floor. It is definitely worth a visit!

Ill be going back for the 'Meet the Makers' on Saturday 25 June 2011. Maybe Ill see you there x

Sneak Preview of News Designs at the Handmade Markets on Saturday

Its almost time for the fabulous Canberra Handmade Markets.... count down has begun with only 2 sleeps to go before the BIG day.

I have been busy developing new designs and colours specially for the event!

Organic Cotton Onesie with Aqua Lyrebird

Organic Cotton Long Sleeve TShirt with hand drawn Lake Burley Griffin scene.

Lightweight Cotton scarf with new Water Urn Stitch print

Red Knit print on cotton cushion 45 x 45cm

It will be held again in the Convention Centre, Civic which is a fabulous light filled venue. A perfect outing for the cold grey Canberra winter which has descended upon us!

Come along to see all the beautiful handmade goodies - I look forward to seeing you there

:)

If you are unable to drop in to the markets - you can always browse my online store.

Modern Tree (Hope)

How delightful!

The Canberra Weekly Magazine has published an image of my Modern Tree (Hope) as part of an article on the Footprints Exhibition I am currently in at the Belconnen Arts Centre.

The show opened last Friday evening and it is definitely worth a visit.

The exhibition is on until 19 June 2011.

Repeat Repeat Exhibition

The brief for this exhibition was to create repeat lengths of fabric. Each artist could submit up to three printed lengths of material either in three different colourways or three different designs.

The inspiration for my work draws from my continued fascination of light and shadows, positive and negative spaces - for Repeat Repeat the starting point was to draw the positive and negative spaces when yarn is looped consecutively to create a knitted fabric on a large scale.

Printing the negative spaces (above)

Printing the Positive (above)

Having printed the lengths above I discovered through isolating areas of the design, interesting geometric forms emerged.

Repeating the negative space of the 'stitch' discovered in the first Knit print.

I continued to explore how these geometric forms looked when put into a repeat pattern. The result is a variety of fabrics some of which are easily identified as knitting, and others which play tricks on the eye - is the design the printed or the negative space on the fabric?

Individual knit stitch repeated on a smaller scale

individual knit stitch repeated in a different geometric configuration.

The exhibition opens on Thursday 9 June at Megalo.