You can see that the White Bunny feels right at home among those awesome soft furnishings made with
Saffron Craig Fabrics! If you have been following this blog since 'the early days' you will probably know that I became friends with Australian fabric designer Saffron Craig back in 2009. After a few mails we
even got to meet at my house when Saffron and her family visited Europe! I want you all to get to know Saffron a little bit better too and I hope you will enjoy the mini-interview I did with her. Be sure to read the details about the Beetle Bug fabric giveaway at the end of this post!
(ed. giveaway has ended, comments are now closed)
To me, Beetle Bugs is one of the most stylish and original lines of fabric for kids that I have seen in recent years. Could you tell a little bit about what inspired you while you were designing this line?
SC Wow, thanks Nicole, stylish is what I was hoping for! The Beetle Bugs came about when my customers kept asking me to design a boys range."Saffron there is really not many boys fabrics out there!" kind of thing.
So I kept an eye out for inspiration, which came while playing with my daughters and her friend Matisse. Together they would look for snails and lady beetles for hours in the garden and we had every milk and yogurt container, tin can, match box, you name it filled with them (recycle recycle I say when you have kids).
We would then often sit down and draw them together until I got a sense for the style I was going to go with. Once I'd drawn the main elements such as the snails and the bugs I had fun playing around with them putting them into patterns and repeats. The colours took quite some time to decide, I wanted them to be easy to live with and harmonious so I went with a more muted, neutral colour palette with highlights of colours to add some funk.
A lot of the contemporary Australian fabrics I see (on Etsy for example), seem to have in common that the design is quirky, clean and almost graphic in design. Would you say your style is influenced by the place/country you live?
SC I think this particular style is influenced by the colour limitations of screen printing in small quantities, something a few of my fellow Australian designers seem to do. That's how I started myself before I was able to expand to commercial printing with 5 and 6 colours.
Living in Australia definitely influences my designing, I've always had a strong love and connection to the Australian landscape, heritage and culture, I studied Australian Aboriginal fibre arts at Uni. The colours here are so bright and intense and the landscape can be dramatic and there's abundant wild life, even in my backyard, so I draw inspiration from that.
Which (line of) fabric by another designer did you wish you had designed?
SC As a designer I am hoping to one day create a design which is as instantly recognisable as Orla Keily's work, her stem print is inspirational. I also think that Unikko for
Marimekko is a design I would love to have created. It is timeless and works on any surface in any colour and in any scale. Also Florence Broadhurst, an Australian Designer from the 70's, had a team of designers who created really amazing wall papers and fabrics, she is a cultural icon here and her work so wonderful, you can still buy her papers from
here.
What do you have in store for us this year?
SC I have a few more fabrics ranges coming out early this year. The first one is Magical Lands, a range which depicts my mental snap shots from around Australia and is due to arrive soon. Following that I have a range of fabrics called Imaginary Flower in plums and vanilla, which is sure to be a favourite of mine. Then we'll have some new softies and recolour the Beetle Bugs with orange (having a Dutch husband we love orange). Later on we will also be printing second colourways of Magical Lands and Imaginary flowers and maybe some new designs later in the year. So by June we should have about 40 new fabrics in total, better make some room in my studio!
I have also set myself the task of introducing a new product each month. Some ideas I am playing with is a collaboration for an embroidery pattern with yourself (ed. yes, working on that!), dress patterns, cushions, more downloadable paper designs, birthday card invites, the list goes on!
A busy year for little me.
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Thank you so much Saffron for answering my questions and donating some of those gorgeous Beetle Bug fabrics for this giveaway. If you want a chance to win a Beetle Bug FQ bundle leave a comment on this post and be sure to tell me what your favourite (or perhaps most feared) bug is (of the garden variety I mean)! On the 10th of February 14.00 Central European Time I will close comments and draw a winner shortly after. Be a snail and leave a trail (website/email), so I can find you back just in case you should win! You can check out all Saffron's available fabric ranges, quilt kits and patterns
here.
In the Netherlands we say when we are ready to definitely give up on something (skating for example) "I'm going to hang my skates in the willows". Well this week I was ready to hang my sewing machine in the willows! I messed up both the cute Saffron Craig Owl (which is like the easiest project in the world!) and my Kitsch Floor Pillow! The Pillow has a gap in one of the seams that can not be easily mended, I need to add a patch or something to cover the hole.
This morning Saffron Craig and her husband Patrick visited us. As they are staying in Holland at the moment and were planning a visit to Rotterdam we got together for a cup of coffee (tea for Saffron) and a slightly overcooked Dutch Apple pie in my still quite empty kitchen. Saffron is very sweet and lovely and I loved getting together and talking about all kinds of stuff. I showed her and Patrick the house, including the really messy parts *blushes*. Of course I forgot to take pictures during our chat and apple pie eating session so we made this very spontaneous one after all that ; )
Once this curtain was a two and half meter backdrop for some Ikea furniture, probably called Henrik or Palegg or something, in our local Ikea store in Norway. It ended up in the bargain bin and I took it home for very little money with the idea to make some cheap curtains for our former kitchen. Of course that never happened so the cheap backdrop moved with us to Rotterdam. And as I can't decide what I want for my current HUGE kitchen windows, it's an old house the kitchen is 3 meters high, I thought I'd make the Ikea curtain a little shorter and use it for one of the HUGE windows. What should have been a quick process lasted much too long and was accompanied by a lot of growling and angry looks from yours truly at the Ikea cheap curtain. Which didn't help. Anyway after I had finished I noticed something was not quite right (see photo) I blame Ikea of course...
O.k. I'm rewriting this whole post (I'm a bit of perfectionist) because I got it wrong the first time. I was under the impression that all the fabrics I showed here were by Saffron Craig but Georgia, who sent me the fabrics, corrected me (thanks!) : "The top one there with the tree silhouettes is actually from Aunty Cookie (Shannon Lamden), http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=36645 . The hearts underneath are from Saffron Craig. the red one under the hearts is Lara Cameron (I think?), and the next red one is saffron Craig again."
