I bought a pack of indigo blue fabrics from the African Fabric Shop, a UK based supplier. She has some lovely fabrics including batiks, shweshwe and wax prints.
These fabrics were apparently made in Manchester (UK) until the sixties or seventies, after which production moved to South Africa. I love the gloriously dark indigo colour and the strong geometrics.
They come thick with starch and like cardboard. Lots of dye comes out when you pre-wash. Mine are now hanging on the line and will be used to supplement the blues in my EPP project. I have some blue on my hands and I notice some of it is transferring on to the keyboard, so I think I may give them a second wash just to be on the safe side.
Linking up with Molli Sparkles Sunday Stash. This post would be too dark without this button!
Liberty fabric will always top my list, but I could not resist these totally modern and graphic fabrics at Tikki London. Although this wonderful shop is only about 4 miles away from me, I had never visited before. I just had to put that right after reading this post about fabric stores in London on the Needles and Lemons blog.
The shop, in Kew (south west London) is quite small but I could not believe how much the owners have managed to get in there. Anything I could not see was produced as if by magic by the friendly staff. After about an hour I ended up with some fat quarters, a pattern for a bag and some threads. I will certainly be visiting Tikki again before too long.
Some of the fabrics are from the Architextures range by Carolyn Friedlander for Robert Kaufmann. I've seen a lot about this fabric online, but the fabrics look even better in real life.
As soon as I got this bundle home, Number One Son asked me to make a cover for his iPad mini with the Architextures fabrics. So I cut two 6.5 inch wide strips a bit longer than twice the length of the iPad to allow for a flap. Then I sandwiched them together with some lightweight polyester wadding (batting) which was leftover from another project.
My original plan was to quilt it with diagonal lines in orange but in the end I decided it might look too busy. So I left it unquilted and simply sewed up the edges. It is finished but still needs Velcro - I thought I had some somewhere but could not find it. Must get organised!
