Something a little different

After the success of Freddy the Frog my Dad asked me to do another piece for him, this time from one of his ex-work colleagues.   I don’t normally do pictures by adults but I’m always up for a challenge so I thought I should give it a go.   The story behind the picture is that it was drawn while Dad and his colleagues were on one of their work team-building trips to the south of France.   One of the days they were split into teams and had to do tasks throughout the day.   This drawing was the final task and won the contest for my Dad’s team.   The colleague who drew it gave it to my Dad as a memento and he has always treasured it, putting it in a frame in his home office.   So, he asked me to make a textile piece from it so that he can send it to the original artist.   Here is the result:

Starting to turn my craft hobby into a small business

Over the years I have thought about starting a business from my passion for crafting and making.   When I have made things friends have often said that I should be selling them but more often than not the things that I made would be other peoples patterns or designs - we all start out like that right? - that is how we learn, begin experimentation and then finally create our own ideas and designs.   But, especially for me, this is a long process!  I am not the fastest worker, am a perfectionist and, until now I hope, could not settle on a craft to pursue and focus on.   Also, it is hard to find an item that people want to buy.   I would rather make things to order than have loads of stock hanging around that I will never get rid of!

I had a small breakthrough about 6 years ago, I had designed some Halloween bunting which then led on to some Christmas bunting and decorations.   I was working in an open plan office at the time and so took some of my makes into work and displayed them on my desk.   Soon I had people asking if I could make some for them and as a result sold quite a bit that Christmas. But then life got in the way again, we moved and then had our daughter and making went by the wayside for quite a long time.   

Then a few months ago I read an article on the Martha Stewart website about a lady called Inez in Singapore who makes hand embroideries in hoops from her 5 year old daughter’s drawings and doodles.   This was like a revelation, I had been amassing all of Chloe’s drawings - there are a lot, she is very prolific! - and so I had a go, first at hand embroidery and then free-motion machine embroidery and appliqué which I have always wanted to get better at but found working with a hoop on the machine to be tricky.

Then the second revelation hit - I found work by a textile artist called Katie Essam.   Rather than using a hoop to stabilise her work on the machine she uses a thicker base material, calico, stabilised by iron-on interfacing.   The hoop is now a thing of the past in my studio and my work has been totally transformed.   I absolutely love my new way of working and hopefully this shows in the work that I am now producing.

I then thought that maybe other people would like their children’s artwork to be transformed into textiles too and so I asked some of my friends if they would mind me working on some of their children’s drawings. They happily agreed and I have been overwhelmed by their responses and the praise they have given for my work. Here are some examples of these collaborations:

If you also have a budding little artist at home and you have a special piece that you would like to treasure forever in the form of a unique piece of textile art please contact me either in the comments, links or via my email: annamaltoys@gmail.com.

New Project - Meet Freddie the Frog

My parents came to visit us a couple of weeks ago and brought with them a metal frog for my daughter that used to belong to my grandmother.   Chloe took an instant shine to him and named him Freddie.   They became inseparable for the rest of the day until she decided that he belonged out in the garden to look after the tadpoles in our pond!

The next morning she drew this lovely picture of him:

Then my Dad saw my previous blog post links on Facebook and asked me to transform the picture into textile for Mum.   To be brutally honest I was a bit stumped when I started the project - the picture is very bitty (apparently it is some money styled on a South African Rand note that she uses to play shops) and it felt like there should be something in the background to link it all together.   I thought I was going to have to experiment with painting or drawing in a pond-like background until I had a little search through my fabric stash and found some amazing vintage fabric that looked a bit like big blue lily pads!  

Thank you for stopping by my blog and taking the time to look at my work, let me know what you think in the comments below.