New beginnings

I have launched Mill Town Molly as a real business and here are the photographs of my launch at my local village fete.
I am selling my stitched vintage products at the Percy House Gallery in Cockermouth here in Cumbria for the moment. I hope to take them to craft and vintage fairs in the North in the new year.

I am also currently studying on an online course called Make it in Design run by Rachel Taylor who is a successful surface pattern designer and illustrator.rachaeltaylordesigns.co.uk Once I have completed the course I hope to concentrate on my surface pattern designing.

I am currently working on my signature style and hope to be selling items made from the fabrics I have designed under my own name of Fiona Ashford in Cherry Didi in Keswick from February 2015, and my designs will be for sale and licence from May 2015.
Here are photographs of some cushions made from fabric I designed while studying on my Foundation Degree.

My latest creations

Here are some of the things I have been creating since I left my job and want to set up in business soon selling things like this.

 Tea Cosy

Scarf

Cushion

and lots of Lavender bags

Just looking for venues to sell them at, this will be my way of getting by before I launch my surface pattern design business selling the wallpapers and fabrics that I design.
Just been to see a local Interior designer and she was so lovely and loved all of my designs.
Guess I'm about to jump, lets hope that net appears!

Inspired Tea Cosy

I was inspired just before Christmas to make a tea cosy for a work colleague, she loves bunnies so much. This is what I made.

For quickness I used the outline from a Crafty Individuals stamp

of moon gazing hares. 

I had planned in my head the layout while driving home from work.

The hares are in natural linen, and the rest just scraps of cotton. All are bonda webbed onto the recycled bed sheet fabric, and then machine embroidered.I really must make a box to photograph my work in, sorry about the dark shadows!

My Mill Town Molly logo of an Allium seed head and the words "from lovely old stuff" are on the reverse.

My tea cosies are lined with a fabric which has been given to me or I've bought it in the past from a household auction.

I hope you have enjoyed my tea cosy as much as I enjoyed making it.

We have sold our house in the city and are hoping to move very soon into the countryside where there is a ready make studio right next to my bedroom. If I can't sleep I'm sure to be found in there doing what I love.

Tilda 'Sweet Christmas' Envelope book.

Hi there, I know I haven't posted blogs often enough but I've been busy. Now though I've a little time to post a blog from my sick bed, the old body has decided to let me down and give in to a bout of Pleurisy. Nothing has ever slowed me down like this before. I'm determined to beat it though and hope to be back at work to teach a workshop I have arranged on the following book I made just before Christmas from the 'Sweet Christmas' Tilda paper stack.

Sorry about the shadow at the bottom of the picture, this is the front cover. A piece of the Sweet Christmas Tilda paper and one of the pop out die cuts too. I've added the word Noel by choosing some of the Woodware chipboard letters which I have stamped with Broken China distress ink using an old wooden snowflake stamp. Then I added a little Worn Lipstick distress ink to the sides of the letters and glossed them up with Anita's 3D Clear Gloss.

I've also added some sparkly flowers from Papermania's capsule collection and some flowers from Woodware. But if you wanted to make a similar book I would always advise you to add some elements of your own because if you try to copy something it never looks the same.

This is the inside cover. As mentioned in the title of this blog this is an envelope book, made from, yes you guessed, envelopes. Because it's a Christmas book, I decided to use some dark red envelopes which were in my stash.
I loved this heart die from X Cut and chose to use it for the hinge because it is so lacy and wouldn't obscure items tucked under it.
I've cut off the sides to make pockets in this book and inserted some Papermania  note cards I had bought a while ago, they went with the theme both in colour and content.
The pages of this book are made up of papers and die cuts from the Tilda 'Sweet Christmas stash, other than a couple of pages where I needed to use some of my own papers to bulk them out. Enjoy.

That's not them all but I thought you might be getting bored.

Next you will see the back cover and the book from the side so you can see the heart hinges keeping the book together.

I'd love to know if you like it, as I loved making this little book.

fi x