Fiona Hogarth

Despite the recent heatwave I still managed to get these new coin purses and napkins sewn in time for my market yesterday. The choice in print was actually suggested by my grandma, who requested a coin purse in blue, so I'll probably make another couple and give one to her.

I had plenty of fabric so I thought I'd make a few napkins as people at markets have asked for them before. The holly print ones I've made before have been popular around Christmas but I thought that I'd at least give people another option.

Although I've restocked a couple of my tea towel designs since I posted my camera was out of action as it got broken and I had to send it off to be repaired, so I haven't updated the Etsy listings photos or posted here about them. Thankfully I got it back a couple of weeks ago though so I can start updating things again.

Over the past few days I've been making some coin purses as my stock of them was getting fairly low. This camellia design's turned out to be fairly popular in that size so I've made a couple more of these. I've also made a couple in a blue rope print which I'll post about when I finish them off.

I started thinking about doing a mushroom related design quite a while ago and did some drawings back before Christmas but only recently managed to actually carve a lino block and get it printed on fabric.

It took me a while to work out how to structure it and get it to repeat but eventually I settled on this brick repeat, which as suggested by the name works like a brick wall. Usually I go for the vertical version which is called a half drop but I think this works better for this particular design. Colour wise I thought about using a brown but these mushrooms were more of a light brown/beige colour so I thought a mustard/ochre shade would be better. It's all come together in a way which felt pretty effortless, which makes a nice change for me.

I found just enough of this old screen printed squash fabric to make a couple of coin purses in time for my first market of the year, which was last Sunday. As I didn't sell them (or anything else actually) they're up on Etsy now with my other pieces here.

I'm hopefully going to have a new print soon but I'm still working on restocking some pieces. This time I've printed some more rope print tea towels. I've printed them in green and yellow before but I think this blue is my favourite for the contrast and being in keeping with the nautical theme.

I planned on taking a couple of weeks off after Christmas before I got back into sewing and designing but instead I ended up getting the same annoying cold/virus which worked its way around my whole family and it took me a bit longer to get back into it.

Slight post deja vu here as I made some of these tea towels at the end of October but I sold two of that batch so I thought I better make some more before my next markets. I'm planning on making some more festive napkins as I sold a couple but other than that my making's probably over for this year.

Hopefully I'll be able to spend more time finally working out my funghi based design in the new year as I'll be taking a break from markets until around March. I think it'll be a productive time, although I tend to have good intentions and then find I get distracted.

I got three of these seaweed print tea towels sewn today so they're already up on Etsy along with my other pieces here. This is one of my favourite print blocks to work with as it's so easy. The only difficulty tends to come with making it look random without being too chaotic or leaving too many gaps, which I am getting better at.

I've been wanting to do a mushroom related design for a while but I didn't have any references to work from, as I prefer to work from photos I've taken myself rather than looking for them online. There's a stump from an old eucalyptus tree in my garden that's been colonised by these funghi which appear in the autumn, so now I can make the most of that.

I didn't plan on making these pouches as I was going to make some with my sunflower print out of the offcuts of these napkins I made, but I found some of this old squash print fabric which I'd squirreled away and forgotten about and decided to work with that instead. I had enough to make two coin purses in each colour, plus a large and medium sized pouch.

I've already put all of these on Etsy for now with my other pieces here. I do have a couple of markets coming up in October so I'm hoping they'll sell well there.

I've been back to printing sunflowers this week. This was another job I've been meaning to do for a while but kept slipping down the list of priorities. I've had people asking for a while about linen tea towels so I thought I'd give them a go to see how they sold. It's actually a linen blend fabric which is slightly less expensive than pure linen but still feels and looks great.

I chose this sunflower print because it's my most popular print by a long shot and I thought it would look good on the fabric, which is more of a beige than the cream cotton I usually use for tea towels. Prints can differ quite a bit depending on the fabric and it is more challenging to get a bold print on this one but some people do prefer the more subtle prints anyway.

I got three of these pine cone print tea towels sewn today and they're already up on Etsy along with my other pieces.

Somehow I worked out this repeat, put it on a block and printed it without posting about the design process. I actually tried out a couple of different repeats before I decided on this one, which is two different five spot repeats layered over each other. These spot repeats are a good way of creating a scattered pattern which has some structure and looks neat. It's also much easier to put this together first than trying to measure it on the fabric or do it by eye.

With the block I considered carving out the white space but decided it was better to go for the negative which I think works nicely and still retains most of the detail in those fine lines. I wasn't sure what colour to go with but I had this green already and it seemed fitting.

My first attempt at this print wasn't actually that successful as I attempted to line it up by eye from memory, which isn't that easy without practice. Once I'd worked out a guide for myself it was much simpler and this second attempt was much better.