Fabric pattern

By Hand London is running a competition until tomorrow midnight, to design a fabric pattern for their new pattern line. The theme is Once Upon a Dream - it's pretty dreamy to combine illustration and fabric! I think this went too kiddy really - might be nice for a child's shirt or dress? And I was trying to make it adult, darn it! I was thinking of toile colours and patterns... anyway, here it is. Wish me luck!

Butterfly friend for moth, by Karen Wall!

Karen Wall, who made the beautiful moth from Ambrose Goes for Gold that I blogged about here, has made a butterfly to go with him! Isn't he completely beautiful? I love the photo of them both together - combining children's books and sewing, what a lovely thing.

Thank you Karen!

They reminded me again of the work of one of my favourite artists, Mimi Kirchner. I covet her sailor and lumberjack dolls... she's just posted a round up of her dolls from 2014, so now is a good time to check out her blog if you haven't seen it before!

Beautiful moth!

Karen Wall, who wrote that her sons like my book Ambrose Goes for Gold, shared these photos of the completely beautiful, brilliant moth that she sewed for them to play with. Isn't he incredibly great? I'm really inspired to have a go at making a character myself, although I'm not in this league of sewing! 

Also on her list is the caterpillar, the butterfly and the ladybird - if she does manage them too I can't wait to see! As a mega novice, I'm filled with admiration for Karen's sewing skills.

Thank you so much for sharing Karen, your moth RULES!

Check him OUT!

Lovely stained glass window wings.

Moth cuddles!

Original moth. Who could do with taking some sprucing-up tips from Karen's moth. Also, its nose is like that because it's a super cool hummingbird-hawk moth:

(Not because, as some may have suggested, I get confused between moths and elephants...!)

Dare you play...

ZEBRA CROSSING???

I'm enjoying colouring this spread, now that the BITTERNESS of last week's Photoshop meltdown has been healed by sweet sweet time! I was rushing, so probably not saving as often as I ought, and had an "end of file name" error message, which corrupted the whole file... much colouring lost! But I guess it's useful to have a wake up call about my saving and organising habits.

And still keeping up with the sewing! This is a top in progress, carrying on with the bright buttons look.