Here are a few photos I took at the weekend, at Frugal Cool’s eco market in Musselburgh. This was my stall, with my new banner and doll’s house shelves put into action for the first time.

These are just some of the wonderful goodies which were available; all Frugal Cool’s designers are chosen for their commitment to sustainable style, and all work within 35 miles of Musselburgh.

Above is the lovely Blackbird Alley stall, with a great selection of pretty cards, bunting, teacup candles and many other handmade treasures all made by Joanna Reid.

Lots of great gift ideas from the frugal Cool collection, and furniture given a new lease of life from Caroline Key of TRASH furnishings. The record cabinet in the corner was fabulous, and like all the other pieces was restored to a very high finish.

Picture by Joanna Reid

And Here I am making my ‘OMG I’m getting my picture taken’ face.

The fair was loads of fun – there were lots of nice folk to chat to and I was glad the new cats proved quite popular…looking forward to the next one already…

Yesterday was the grand opening party of The Spider & The Fly. It was my first chance to visit the new pop-up shop, and have a proper look round.

It’s a real treasure trove!  It was brilliant to see work in the flesh that I’ve been admiring online for ages on sites like flickr and etsy.

The Spider and the Fly was thought up by Emily Chandler, who as well as hand picking all the lovely handmade art, craft and design work, has worked very hard decorating the shop in record time too! There’s so much to see and many things I’d love to have taken home with me!

I loved these brooches, but I’m sorry I don’t know who made them (if I find out I’ll give them the credit they’re due)

And these wonderful brooches by Jenny Mccabe, Meplusmolly, lostintheforest and others.

I saw some of my cats have found a temporary home with, amongst other things, knitted moustches to keep them company!

These girls are Julia’s daughters (no relation) who sang very sweetly for everyone – they were brilliant!

And there were cakes…yes all in all, it was a pretty good way to spend a Saturday night!

You can find the Spider and The Fly at 65 Bread Street Edinburgh, initially until the end of September. Keep an eye on the website, which has details of exhibitions and workshops, to be hosted there.

At some stage I’d like to get back to blogging more regularly…honestly I really would, but it seems that in order to get the important (to me) stuff done, other things have to be neglected.  So this is a messy catch-up style post, with a wee bit of everything shoved in for good measure!

I’ve been busy sewing cats, like Pattie Pussycat  seen above, who is now available here I’ve also been  making some things for The Spider & The Fly, which is an exciting new ‘pop-up’ shop and gallery, you can find at 65 Bread Street, in Edinburgh. It has a great selection of new design, art and craft work…find out more here. The cut-click mail art exhibition, which I made this for, is also being hosted at The Spider and The Fly,  so if you’re in Edinburgh over the festival it’s a definite MUST see!

Next month I’ll be setting up my stall at Frugal Cool’s Eco market and Summer Fete , at the Loretto gallery in Musselburgh.

I love the Frugal Cool ethos and am very pleased to be doing my first fair this year at this event.  Right now I’m working my socks off, making lots of purses, brooches, and cat creatures to fill my table.  I’ll just be there on the Saturday, but it’ll be a great weekend so be sure to add the date to your diary ;-)

What else have I been up to? Oh yes…I’ve been back to life drawing sessions, after a gap of 20 years!  I decided it was time to knock the fear on the head and just do it.  The drawings aren’t up to much yet so it might be a while before I’m comfortable about showing them to a wider audience but I’m happy to have made a start.

I’m still trying to find the time for painting…there’s a small board on my easel just now…

I’ve had a couple of interesting things in the post recently. I signed up for this  travelling sketchbook project (in a moment of madness) and now have a completely empty grey moleskine sketchbook staring blankly at me…or is it me staring blankly at it? Also, Spoonflower sent me a sample of this and it turned out well. The colours are just  how I wanted them. It’s a very large repeat and I can imagine it as curtains for my bedroom. May be that’s slightly extravagant for my finances to cope with right now, but I’m going to order a small amount of it soon and try it out as cushions covers.

Of course,  I’ve still found time for my favourite indulgence - procrastination, which has taken the form of posting to another blog on tumblr. Tumblr is great for quick posts and I’m mainly using it to post photos by other people, that I find inspiring. I’m looking for more tumblrs to follow,  so if you have one let me know.

That’s about it for now… won’t leave it so long next time.

This is something I’ve been working on recently- a hand embroidered envelope  I’ve submitted to  the Cut-Click travelling mail art exhibition, which will be hosted this Summer by the Spider and the Fly pop-up shop in Edinburgh.

I have a small stash of padded envelopes, from etsy purchases. I keep them in the hope that they’ll get recycled. This one came from Finland, and I liked the stamps  which were on it – red roses…and took my inspiration from them. I thought they fitted well with handle with care , which ties into the ‘mail’ theme.

I began by covering the surface with many little straight stitches to make it feel more interesting . The envelope was quite hard to stitch through at times, especially on double thicknesses, and occasionally little bits of the plastic bubble wrap interior poked through.

I was happy to let the design grow as I sewed.

As soon as I hear about all the details of the exhibition, like where and when, I’ll be sure to let you know!

Since I first heard about spoonflower I’ve  wanted to have a go at designing my own fabric. I would really like to have a couple of my own designs printed, to make up into purses and accessories, and use along side the brightly coloured recycled fabrics I use…So the other day I was browsing in the spoonflower flickr pool – and saw so many fab designs , I  thought it was about time to try myself.

This was my first attempt at my own design, using a doodle from my sketch book, which I edited with photoshop. My intention, was to produce something monochrome, but I can’t seem to stop myself from adding zingy colours! My photoshop skills are limited so everything takes me 10 times longer than I think it should…but I’m happy with the cheerfulness of this.

Spoonflower lets you buy a small swatch to check how your design prints out, before you commit to spending more on a larger length of cloth. I’m going to try out a few more ideas over the next few days before  hopefully choosing one or two for printing.

I went AWOL again – I decided to take  my Summer holidays early, and a couple of weeks ago I took a trip to London to see the quilts at the V&A. It’s a great exhibition, the full title of which is QUILTS 1700 – 2010 Hidden Histories, Untold Stories, and I really loved that it covered all the things I’m really curious about…such as who the quilts were made by, for whom, how and why.

There was a broad mix ranging from exquisite embroidered silk patchwork bed covers from the eighteenth century, and patchworks made for warmth, utilising every scarce scrap of fabric available, to more recent art quilts and artworks influenced by patchwork and quilting. I love them all…well most of them. I am in awe of the amazing skill and patience need to produce these beautiful treasures.

I know a lot of people don’t like ‘art quilts’  but for me, if the composition, colours, textures, stitches, or story speaks to me then I can respond to that, regardless of whether it’s an article made for practical use or to be displayed on a wall in a gallery. I don’t think that either is of greater value…and I feel the same way about the debate concerning art v craft.

London was lovely and warm, but grey, so I didn’t take many pictures. Wandering around, just soaking up the cosmopolitan atmosphere , was lots of fun for a small town girl like me.

Last week Robb and I had a mini break in our campervan – England again, but this time, the North. We explored the coast of Northumberland, which was very beautiful…around every corner there was another castle, and picturesque shoreline. Which makes me wonder why most of my pictures are of wheels, cans of beer and sausages?!!?

This is typical of what happens when I decide to work on a theme – I drew, and battled with watercolours, mucked around with paper and glue and ink for a couple of days, then got distracted.  I sanded the front door, got caught up watching all the political coverage, gave the door its first coat of black paint, prepared and painted a shelf in my work room, thought about , and started embellishing some recycled envelopes for a mail art exhibition, and missed the deadline…

So… I thought, time to get back to the tulips, which are already starting to fade in the garden. Yesterday I was unsure how to proceed, so instead pulled out some embroidery threads and leftover fabric scraps and started playing -not a tulip in sight! Lots of fun though, even if it wasn’t the plan.

Update: 3 tulip purses finished and available.

Happy May Day! Lots of reasons to celebrate…there’s all the ancient traditions relating to fertility, and the end of Winter. Then, more recently it’s become a well earned holiday for workers. Hope you’re having fun however you’re spending it!

I’m celebrating too.  I’ve finally added some new Spring inspired stock to my shop and I’ve started working on some sketches inspired by tulips.  My plan is to work more on them next week and see where they take me – could be new purses, brooches or perhaps something else…

When I opted for the name materialised I though it was a good play on words because :

1. It’s connection to things fabric related.
2. Because materialise is defined as meaning :

• To become fact, actually happen -  like my dream of having a creative life.
• To take shape: become tangible – like the things I want to make , whatever they me be.

Occasionally I’ve felt trapped by no1. So I’m hoping to be a bit more experimental in what I produce- definitely more one-off items, because that’s what keeps me interested and fulfilled, maybe…more paper…more paint…more glue! Definitely more celebrating the creative process and less paralysing fear that I’m not making what I’m supposed to.

This is a small expression of how I’m beginning to feel again, about fabric, thread, paint and paper.

I’ll be adding it to my shop on Saturday, along with a few  more one of a kind embroidered brooches and purses.

After an  extended absence I’m feeling the urge to dust the cobwebs from my blog, start writing again, and see what happens…

I’ve been playing around with the templates, which always a good distraction when there’s work needing done, and I’m not sure where to start. No doubt, I’ll be playing around a lot more so it could look weird from time to time as I dive in and change the code (without making a back-up), which isn’t always the best policy if you don’t have any actual computer knowledge apart from what you’ve gleaned along the way…and that could fit on the back of a postage stamp…but, it’s fun, especially when things go strangely right.

Spring is growing up all around. I’m savouring every tulip and daffodil that appears, after the long, seemingly endless Winter we’ve had. The glowing mass of orange/red above was spotted in the park this morning.

I’m full of schemes and plans…but my head still needs more spring-cleaning, so I can make them actually doable.

There are a few things I’ve already started working on. This clutch was a new pattern, quite a simple shape, but bigger than the pouches I’ve made before, so it could be used as a make up bag, or for a night out. I’ll be making more of these and will be updating my shop with more new items sometime next week.

Until then, well this weekend in fact, some of my artworks, textile creatures, dress brooches and purses are available at Frugal Cool’s Spring Eco Crafts Market, at the Loretto Gallery in Musselburgh. This wonderful event is returning to the Loretto gallery after a highly successful and popular fair before Christmas…It’s a pop-up shop full of beautiful hand picked jewellery, fashion, vintage, handmade, recycled, art, fair trade and organic – definitely a great place to find original handmade gifts. Well worth a visit if you’re in the area.