Category Archives: Art, design, illustration & craft

Ursus Americanus

ursus americanus Ursus Americanus

A very exciting box of goodies arrived last week, full to the brim with Ursus Americanus t-shirts! You might recognise the bear from the necklace that I brought out a few weeks ago. I had fun with the hand-drawn type on this one, Ursus Americanus is the latin name for the American black bear.  Hopefully this’ll be the start of a few more t-shirts designs appearing in the next few months! Check out mine and Adam’s modelling capabilities, Adam demanded that I get this shirt produced in men’s sizes too!

I have one more usage for this bear design which should start manifesting in the next few days (just waiting on some materials to arrive), and I’ve just got finished on another necklace design for the great outdoors range!

I’ve also been working on some bits and pieces for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, including this corgi brooch. I didn’t want to get too far into the whole ’2012 Diamond Jubilee’ thing, but thought I’d make some little things that could encompass the Jubilee, Olympics & general Britishness. Although, saying that, I have been doodling some laurel leaves and diamonds for a little screen print…

corgi MED Ursus Americanus

I’ve had a pretty busy week so far, working on some new web design work & catching up on a few Finest Imaginary projects that I’ve been itching to get finished. I’ve also been sorting out the next installment in my Working For Yourself series which I’ll hopefully be publishing tomorrow!

PS. You can get free shipping on finestimaginary.com with the code ‘freeship’ right up until Valentines day! Don’t say I don’t treat you well ;)

Light and Dark – Quilting progress

It took me soooo long to decide on what quilt fabric I wanted to use for the chevron portions of my quilting project, I knew I wanted something traditional but not overly chintzy and something that was nice and colourful, but not one specific colourway. Ebay has a variety of sellers who purely tout ‘quilt fabric packs’ so I spent an evening scouting them all out and finally picked a ‘floral’ pack that I thought looked quite pretty.

The fabric for quilting is just basic cotton, I think, nothing really special about it! Anyway, it came in pre-cut squares which I then sliced in half to triangles. Here’s how the construction will look for a panel…

quilt fabric Light and Dark   Quilting progress

Can you see the chevron? It’s pretty subtle, and it’s made form the contrasting light and dark quilt fabrics… it’s actually more noticable when the image is blurred slightly…

quilt fabric blurred Light and Dark   Quilting progress

I’ve just started sewing the triangles back into squares, using a smaller seam allowance than the usual quilting seam allowance of 1/4″ (god damn quilting rebel! I’m using around 1/8″ instead… booya!). It’s going well, next step is to press the seams and connect the squares into the panels!

A New Project

I decided that I wanted to try my hand at quilting this year, for the one and only reason that I wanted an amazing quilt to snuggle under on the sofa (right now I’m under a spongebob duvet.. which is great! but pretty embarassing when visitors come around.. ahem).

So I’ve bought all my materials (a huge piece of wadding, the patchwork fabric, some special other bits) and I’ve gotten a rough design together…

quilt A New Project

I’m going to be chipping away at this for the next few months I think, I’m already worried about how I’m going to do the actual quilting part (I’ll definitely have to move my sewing machine into my lounge rather than in my tiny craft room), I’m tempted to go down the tying route depending on whether I can move the quilt under the sewing arm or not!

The Great Outdoors

I just realised I never posted about my new collection of items. I started working on some pieces related to ‘The Great Outdoors’ in December, and the first of them are now available in the shop. It’s inspired by, obviously, the great outdoors, especially places like Yosemite in the USA… I don’t know why, it’s years since I went but it just kept springing to mind while I was working on these. It’s also inspired by some favourite creatures on mine, including the badger (after I’d made the badger moleskine I was getting requests for a necklace..!).

I’m going to be expanding the range bit by bit, and it’ll soon include some illustrations that I’ve been working on a bit & some new moleskine designs.

great outdoors The Great Outdoors