A-Frame skirt and block printing action

This is the A-Frame Skirt by Blueprints for Sewing, a site I only found about a week ago and which I've been really enjoying. (I came to it through Beyond Measure, another new-to-me and super blog. Where will it all end?!?) I loved the samples of this skirt on the site, and the possibilities for colour blocking. I chose the A-line version 2, and cut it out in one evening and then sewed it up in a couple of hours.

The instructions are good and simple, and I've now done my first lapped zipper - I'm pretty happy with how neat it came out. I made the pattern in size C with no alterations, and the only thing I added were the buttons on the front - the fabric I chose, although I love it, doesn't really show off the fun pocket panels on the front, so I thought the buttons might help draw attention to them. Plus, I'm starting to think that anything I can put buttons on, I'm going to.

The fabric is really beautiful - it's a crossweave cotton from the Organic Textile Company. It has so many colours showing up from all the different threads, though the overall impression is of a dusky pink - different from the more cream appearance on the website, but I'm really happy with it. I love the fabrics they sell at Organic Textile Co!

I like this skirt a lot, and can see it being useful - I think it'll look nice with some bright tights when it gets colder. I'd like to make it again, and this time use different fabrics like Taylor's done on her samples, to really show off the nice construction lines in this lovely pattern.

I've also started dipping a toe into block printing, inspired a lot by Marilla Walker who gives some great tips on her blog. I ordered some Speedball screen printing fabric inks from Handprinted, which seems a great UK-based resource for fabric printing. I carved some shapes, and cats, out of some Speedycarve which I'd bought years back, and then let loose on some cream and white cottons. 

These were printed with acrylics and a Golden fabric medium - I haven't yet set and washed them, so it'll be interesting to see how permanent this method is.

Swimmin' cats!

I found getting the larger stamp of the cat to print consistently really difficult - it's going to take a lot of practise to make it less amateur looking. I'd like to make some bags and cushion covers from these fabrics eventually, and the handprinted look will hopefully be part of the charm, but they could do with being a little less "charming", perhaps!

This last pic was from accidentally inverting in Photoshop - I'm loving it though, and want to try some white on black cotton next and see if I can recreate this!