So while I was at the IKEA catalogue launch earlier this week, I had a quick look around the Tempe store. With limited time on my hands, I had to pick my perusing carefully. So I headed straight to the rug department. My black and white striped Stockholm Rand is one of the favourite things in my living room and it gets loads of compliments. Over the years, I’ve owned many an IKEA rug. This week, these four caught my eye.
Artisan printmaking meets timber craftsmanship in this new range of sustainable lighting. Quince founder Michelle Koop teamed up with a local Melbourne craftsman to extend her lighting range with a collection of ball table lamps in touch-me timbers and her own textile designs.
Each table lamp has a ball-shaped solid timber base in sustainably harvested Victorian ash, which has been handcrafted to Quince design specifications and finished in Danish oil for a contemporary edge. The spherical bases are the perfect accompaniment to Michelle’s hand printed shades in her signature borrowed-from-nature muted palettes and motifs.
The team at Signature Prints are in the process of developing new colourways for their beautiful range of wallpapers – and last week I was lucky enough to get a preview. With a weakness for Florence Broadhurst designs and admiration for the art of traditional process, a visit to the showroom and tour of the workshop was one of those rare and wonderful surprises.
If you’re even remotely considering the idea of wallpaper, can I be so bold as to suggest taking a trip to their showroom. The papers are beautiful in the flesh and everyone is super helpful. Soon to be launched, I can’t wait to see the whole range. In the meantime, I’m in lust with these two!
It’s worth noting that for roughly one feature wall, you would likely need at least three rolls – also the minimum quantity for which you can do custom print colours to match Dulux or Pantone, with their range of base papers (there is a small surcharge of 15%). I suspect the new range will be a treat, but hurray for bespoke offerings and the world of possibilities.
Ooh, and of course there’s all the fabrics too.
There are sales EVERYWHERE at the moment but this one looks like an extra special goodie for a few reasons. First, Publisher Textiles‘ stuff is really cool and hand printed here in Australia. Second, the prices are going to be amazing (cushions with inners for $20, lampshades for $25 and fabric $10 a metre). Third, they’re going to be hand printing textiles so you can see exactly what goes into their work for yourself.
Next Friday and Saturday only, 10am to 4pm. Take cash! | Unit 1, 87 Moore Street, Leichhardt, NSW 2040.
Textile designer extraordinaire Julie Paterson of cloth fabric is selling last season’s fabrics at a bargain price and is even providing the creative inspiration for what to do with them!
“Lately we’ve been getting some lovely surprise parcels in the mail. It’s because we’ve been updating our swatch books and our retailers have been kindly sending our old fabric samples back. Forgotten designs, discontinued colours, early prints, are all flowing back into the shop, much to our delight,” she says.
Julie’s bundled them all up according to colour and they’re available for sale on her online shop. If you’re craftily-inclined, check them out before they all get snapped up!
And look what clever Julie has already whipped up herself! This funky shoulder bag is called a ‘Swatchel’. Love it! Why don’t you try making one of your own?
Georgie Armstrong is a textile designer making lovely things in an ethical way here in Australia and I like to support a small creative business.
How cool is this bunting in her Ledger fabric design? You really could incorporate it into a lot of schemes and, unlike most bunting, it isn’t uber girly, so you can probably get it past the man in your life too. You can also buy cushion covers in this design or just buy the fabric and do whatever you like with it!
Her latest creation in the Plume teatowel ($22) and I was lucky enough to be sent one this week. The problem is, it’s so pretty I don’t want to dirty it up so it’s still sitting clean and folded in the kitchen drawer!
Georgie hand screen prints everything in the old school way and is committed to ethical trade and being environmentally conscious. Check out all Georgie’s wares, which include baby slings and bibs, bags and more at www.georgiearmstrong.com
Meet Textile designer Tamara Schneider of Funky Wombat Textiles
I first came across textile designer Tamara Schneider when one of her lampshades caught my eye online. It was so beautiful I couldn’t stop looking at it. Seriously. Gorgeous.
She owns the amusingly named Funky Wombat Textiles and her designs are far more sophisticated, beautiful and grown up than the name might perhaps suggest.
Tamara started off studying fashion in the nineties. But as much as she loved Westwood and McQueen, it was the textile designs and processes that really excited her. When she moved to Melbourne in 2006, she finally enrolled in a textile design course at RMIT and so it began.
Through one of her lecturers she met Paul Simmons, one half of legendary Scottish design studio Timorous Beasties. “He was out here doing a trade show and we got invited to meet him for coffee. It was truly one of those geek groupie moments, especially for me as I had known about Timorous Beasties for so long. Eventually I got over the giggling schoolgirl thing and had a really nice chat.” A year later, when she was looking for a work project to finish her diploma, Tamara booked a ticket to Glasgow.
“I could try to downplay it a bit and be cool or something but the truth is it was brilliant. The energy that Paul and Alistair [McAuley] bring to the design process is amazing. It really helped me focus the things I had learned at school and gave me a bucket load of confidence as a designer. It really opened my mind to the many ways of combining old and new technology.”
She got back to Australia in August last year and soon started up Funky Wombat Textiles. “Now I’m doing my own designs for my own label with my own customers, so yeah, pretty much living the dream. Was it always my ambition? I’m really not sure, but I know that I’m enjoying working in my own business far more than any job I’ve ever had.”
There’s a lot of Aussie flora and fauna in her designs and this wasn’t intentional, although she admits to loving “wildlife and all associated bush junk,” adding: “My dad is a mad bushwalker who used to drag us out every chance he got when we were kids, so I was constantly exposed to the beauty of the Australian bush. I guess wildlife seemed a natural place to start when I began designing.”
Being environmentally friendly is important to Tamara. “I’m constantly looking at ways to improve the sustainability of not just us, but of all the other parts of our supply chain. To that end the majority of our production is digitally printed. It’s kind of counter-intuitive but it turns out that the machines are better environmentally as they can actually do things far more efficiently than we can with hand-printing so there’s much less waste. Also all of our inks are water-based so no harsh chemicals and we are always watching for new innovations that might help reduce our carbon footprint further.”
Funky Wombat Textiles turns one next month and it has grown steadily. “We recently started to work with some interior designers but the majority of the business is still with people looking for something to lift a room or a nice gift. The custom side has been the real surprise, not so much for what the jobs are but rather where the clients have come from. We recently completed a wallpaper job for an office in London, and have just been contracted to design more wallpaper for an apartment in Stockholm. One of the best things I did was integrating the supply chain early in the piece so we can be really responsive to our customers’ needs and turn most of the custom orders around in a couple of weeks.”
Tamara says it’s increasingly hard to predict interiors trends and she doesn’t care to. “There are no longer two or three oracles of wisdom for trends, there’s probably 3000, and while I find it good to get ideas I find it really hard to say that this year ‘polka dot flamingos with flaming red beaks carrying orange shoulder bags’ will be the trend. When I want to see what is happening now I’m more likely to come to a blog like Interiors Addict, where I feel some sort of connection with the author because I liked the things I’ve seen there, rather than try to make any kind of sense of the other 3000 articles out there.
“I’m not so much into trends but rather assisting people to create a style that they can relate to and want to live with. To me that’s what interiors is all about.”
Now that you’ve built a strong foundation by introducing aspects of your personal style, story and colour preferences to your home, you can continue to build upon this by adding even further depth and complexity to the space. Patterns and texture play a huge part in impacting your overall look and feel and they’re some one of the final steps towards achieving your desired ambiance.
Tip
Soft furnishing fabrics are used to make drapes, cushions, tablecloths, lampshades and bed linen, as well as to upholster furniture. They play an integral part in tying all of your elements together and are a simple way to add a personal yet finished look to your room. Other products, of a more striking nature, include tiles, vinyl wallpapers and 3D wall panels. Texture – a surface’s tactile quality – creates mood. For example, smooth and shiny textures reflect light and create bright, stimulating environments. Coarse and matte textures absorb light and create warm, relaxing environments. Create contrast where needed!
Task
Create ambiance!
Pick a room that needs work in the ambience department – preferably a bedroom or spare room that has a larger space with which to work
Choose between new curtains or cushions for this room keeping the information in my tip above in the back of your mind
CURTAINS: Visit some fabric houses in your area and give your final choice to a curtain maker or visit their showroom and pick from a catalogue
CUSHIONS: visit a home decorations store and pick out a variety of new cushions or throws to refresh the bigger pieces in your room.
The result? Added layers that assist in refreshing the overall ambience of your home.
We’re bringing you one interior styling tip a day for 10 days from Martina Hrubes of Ruby In Design.