My Little Pony T-Shirt

I’ve waited a long time for the right pony T-shirt , so when I found this in Primark I couldn’t pass it.  Featuring an original 80′s first generation pony (Firefly), and some seriously 80′s stylings I knew this was the one for me.  It’s quite a long T-shirt (not  great when you are a short-arse ) so I’m including another full length pic of this one so you can get the full effect.

Ponies Forever!

So what do you think? Can I pull this off? Or am I pushing it? LOL
I’d never noticed til now just how 80′s my T-Shirt tastes are.  And I have many more that didn’t make the cut this week. Enough T-shirts for a sequel, T-Shirt week 2!!!  So it’s over to you, leave me a comment  if you want to see more

Space Invader Skull T-shirt

Not sure why I got so excited about this men’s T-Shirt from Primark. Maybe it’s because it marries two of my favourite T-Shirt motifs ? (80′s retro and Skulls on everything. ) Or maybe it’s directly related to my reading Ready Player One right now. Either way, this T-Shirt (which is practically a dress) really made my day! Pass me the John Hughes Box set…;-)

‘Punk Kiss’ by Simon Gane

I bought this T-shirt some years ago from a very talented illustrator called Simon Gane. It was his collection of ‘Punk Strips’ published by (the now defunct) Slab-o-Concrete, that first caught my eye. I really loved the attitude and his stylish line work!  He’s come a long way since then, you can check out his very sophisticated drawing  skills over on his blog : www.simongane.blogspot.com

Reproduction Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You’ 1981 North American Tour Tee.

I’ve never really been a fan of gig T-shirts or of wearing band logos, and when this became a trend a few years back it felt kinda disingenuous. I don’t feel comfortable wearing a T-shirt of a band I’m not actually a fan of.  However I really like some classic band logos, they kind of take on a life of their own and stand for more than the band, they stand for rock and roll itself! So I was just about able to let myself off with this one (after all who doesn’t like the Rolling Stones?)

Lydia from BeetleJuice is Utterly Alone, by Megan Lara

I’ve been seriously addicted to T-shirt designs lately and finding websites like TeeFury have only fuelled the fire. This is an excellent site where each day they present a unique design for sale for 24 hours only. For only $10! Its amazing! I promise you’ll have a total geek out at some point on there when you flick through past designs. I saw this Beeltejuice design by amazing digital artist Megan Lara and had to have it. (I ordered mine too large and had to customise it, so now more a tank  than a Tee now. Not bad though eh? )

God help me if I see Labyrinth designs !!! (This site is a heart breaker when you’re poor!)

Books 7 & 8 are the fully illustrated embroidery books Sublime Stitching and Embroidered Effects by Jenny Hart- I think these are the most amazing books for beginners. Simple easy instructions for stitches, tips for working on different fabrics, plus lots of project ideas and iron on transfer designs that come with the books. These would be my go- to books for any embroidery issues except I read them on loan from my lovely friend Louise. (Thanks Lou). Luckily there are a lot of resources on Jenny’s website that I can refer back too! www.sublimestitching.com

Book 9 , The Craft Business Handbook, by Alison Mc Nicol was sadly a let down. I often found the info too vague, and other times downright unnecessary. I don’t want to completely slate this book, but some of the tips here would have you trying to run before you could even walk (its well seen that the author’s own craft business failed). Suffice to say I’ve read much better tips and info on-line through the likes of Etsy and Oh My Handmade Goodness books. Also a book like Screw Work Lets Play is much more motivational for those starting at ground zero. Skip this one.

And finally Book 10, Indie Craft by Jo Waterhouse. (Check out the cover art by Jenny Hart!) This book really deserves a blog post all of its own. This book is an overview of the Indie craft ‘scene’. Loads of great pictures of mainly textile crafts but across various disciplines. I read this to give myself some context of the contemporary indie craft movement, and found that not only is this better than most contemporary art, this work  sits very comfortably along side my interests in independent publishing, low-brow arts, and counter-culture. I’m both inspired and impressed at the weirdness out there. Here are some of the delights inside:

I discovered the cute Lumplings of Amy Rue – www.amyrue.com

The ‘manbroidery’ of William Schaff – Click here for his flickr gallery.

The crochetdermy (crochet/taxidermy) of fellow Northern Irish artist Shauna Richardson – click here for gallery

Cross stitch on metal objects and unexpected items by Severija www.severija.it 

And many strange creatures! These ones are by Tania Patritti and this is her lovely blog: Ninon

Hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into my recent reading activities, and hopefully it won’t be too long before I’m adding more books to my 50/50 list!  Wishing you a fabulous weekend.
b.x

These chunky  A6 sized hardback notebooks are lovingly hand padded, covered with fabric.  Individually embellished with felt and embroidery, they also include a ribbon for book marking. (Cover is non-removable). These little books are not ruled and can be used for notes or as sketchbooks as the user prefers. Truly one of a kind, even when designs are repeated no two are exactly the same. They make very special little gifts. I’ll be adding more to my on-line shops over the next couple of weeks. The first to be listed is this one :

And she’s available now in my Folksy shop. Click here to see the listing: Pony Fabric Notebook

Books 1,2 & 3 were Big Break Detectives, Death by Chocolate and Six Million Ways to Die, the graphic novels for kids by lovely Irish writer and illustrator Alan Nolan, which I read while researching my interview with Alan for Inis Children’s Books Ireland.   (Me and my 11-year-old nephew both liked ‘Six Million’ best). Alan’s latest book in the series has just been released and you can read all about it here: Destination Homicide

Book 4, was also a kids book from O’Brien Press  ’Marco Moves In‘, printed for world book day. Sometimes I read kids books just to sample the market, (I’m still labouring under the illusion that I will one day create one of my own.) This is a  story of a bear who shows up one rainy night on the doorstep of a lonely boy. Sweet, but wasn’t over awed. It would have been nice to see the illustrations in colour too.

Book 5, Confessions of a Conjurer by Derren Brown, the first novel length book on the list! I really enjoyed this unusual memoir, it made me laugh, it made me think . Its gives some very confessional insights into personal quirks that I think  we can all relate too and it occasionally made me frustrated by Brown’s unorthodox use of lengthy footnotes. But that would be just like him, distraction is everything in a conjuring trick.

Book 6, Dave Eggers  Short Short Stories. Since I’ve been on a six-week flash-fiction stint on Elephant Words, I decided to read some highly acclaimed short fiction to see how the pro’s do it. This was a very engaging and entertaining collection of  x short stories published as part of Penguin’s 70th anniversary.  One of the stories in particular took my breath away. You can read it here: What The Water Feels Like To The Fishes

Thus concludes part 1! Join me on Friday for Part 2 featuring ‘Craft Books’…

Now a few weeks ago my friend Julie of Whos Got the Button blog shared a post about the two versions she owns of this book (one from circa 1930 and one from the 1950′s she reckons, although it can be hard to tell, the books weirdly have no author credits and frequently no publishing date printed anywhere in the book.) I think mine may be from the late 50′s/early 60′s judging by some of the styles:

Groovy stuff, what decade is this?

I bought this book on-line and had no  idea which edition I was going to get.  It’s a fabulous handbook for tips and techniques, a real ‘text book’ if you like. Primarily I bought it for the embroidery info:

But as you’ve probably guessed from the title, the book features all sorts of needlecraft including dress making, alterations, patchwork and quilting:

Suggestions for quilting design, and patchwork and appliqué patterns.

Not much has changed eh? I really liked these simple patterns for overall quilting designs-

Simple but effective quilting stitch patterns

Much as I’m thrilled with this book, (that cost me less than £5 including the postage). I still lust after the 1930′s version that Julie posted about. Consider me on the look out- this book hunt ain’t finished yet!

Lily of the Valley – vintage embroidery pattern

I’m all about the Vintage embroidery this week. I recently discovered this  fantastic free resource for vintage embroidery patterns: Hoop Love Vintage Transfers group. Their sister group New Embroidery with Vintage Patterns run a monthly stitchalong for which I stitched up this vintage Lily of the Valley design. It was so simple and elegant it just spoke to me. And I just knew it would me my first project to try out on black.
I’d originally intended to fill in the stitches, but the clean lines just looked better so I left it this way. Clean and simple, but  difficult to photograph on black!