Saffrons Blog

This is the first sighting on the nesting own on fabric. I can not wait to have a roll of that to play with.

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We've got two new ranges coming out in June, here are the designs of the first one, the Owl range. We have printed these on 112 cm wide fabric, so you can buy them by the meter.

These fabrics are currently being printed and will be for sale in a few weeks we will send out a newsletter letting you know when they are for sale.

The owls on trees is a new version with smaller trees and more flying owls.


The trees mignon now a two colour tree with one row of the trees flipped.


The gingko blossoms are smaller and more compacted.


And the new nesting owls, it's a large repeat of 64 cm and 112 cm wide, great for the center of a quilt or a wall hanging. I am going to make a jacket for my daughter out of this one.



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The last few months have seen some exciting  changes in the direction of our business, but we're excited to have teamed up with Kathryn Broomhall, sales, and Jim Broomhall, for production and distribution. So the wholesale side of Saffron Craig fabrics will now be handled entirely by Jim and Katherine. What a treat. Katherine makes you want to sit down and relax drink tea and laugh, while Jim is a ball of energy so I know he will be thorough.
The retail side of the fabric sales will continue to be available through my website and you should see the fabrics up here very soon.

As a matter of fact, today Jim received the new strike offs for my next range. Katherine and I have just spent two hours admiring the workmanship and design. It amazes me how much better designs appear in the —well, on the fabric—compared to on paper.
I thought I might share a sneak peak with you. A strike-off is the first print, where we approve colour and fabric, the printers have done a great job so it is all going ahead. We now have to wait a couple weeks to see it printed on a roll of fabric. Then I will be selling 112cm wide fabric, on beautiful quality cotton.

If you would like to sell the new range please email me and I will ask Katherine to visit you with the fabrics.
Katherine left me with the fabrics tucked under her arm off to see Sydney shops.  Love it!!!



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4pm Sunday and it occurred to me to take a photo of the table we are working on.
Sequoia and I are having a creative Sunday, water colouring my drawings, scouring magazines for blocks and writing ideas into my sketch book.

Fun and oh the sun is out. Yay.




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I started with these fabrics and it took its own path.  I love all the colours, so warm so snuggly I hope it gets much use. Gaia might even take it to Italy when she visits her mum? I have yet to hand stitch the elephants. I love making quilts for people.  A baby girl is my favorite!






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On Sunday we gave Gaia a baby shower at the beautiful Buddha belly amidst the 100-year-old Fig trees and the hand carved Balinese timbers. Out of the 20 women who celebrated every single one gave Gaia a hand made gift. Hand beaded crystal jewelry, embroidered or appliquéd clothing, knitted hats, woven basket, bees wax candles. Yes we know Gaia is having a daughter called Jamilla which made it fun for us. Gaia gave us all a hand made soap and made cards, which she wrote exquisite quotes on the back for us all. What a special day.  This is the quilt I am finishing for Jamilla.





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Sequoia turned 4 on Sunday and I think I had the best party I ever had. Sunshine breeze, a relaxing lovely birthday largely thanks to Fairy Sparkle who had the children doing laps in the park giggling and amazed.
Well truth be told we baked for 4 days beforehand, starting with making sugar flowers with Sequoia instead of molding Playdo. She cut out the love hearts (licked a fair share which we gave to the ants). We tried to use organic ingredients and make everything as fresh as possible.  Still, on Saturday night we were adding sugar flowers until midnight and putting ginger bread men intocellophane bags as the party gift. Of course I woke up at 6am, an hour before sunrise wanting to see her face when she sees her mountain of gifts. It was great!

I designed her invitation too, which I found fun to do, one in pink and one in yellow for the boys.
Then this morning I made another cake for her to take to Kindi. Oh I do love to bake.




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I finished another quilt! This quilt was designed for a one year old, whose mother loves green, and although it is for a boy she asked me to steer clear of blue.

So I thought "great" I can use the green Sunburst and combine it with the purple Trees and the grey Elephants. It needed splashes of red, so the red Elephant made her stamp and the orange Sunburst made a few circles, yes a bit of blue too.

I love the drunken path quilt block, so I used that making 55 5-inch blocks. When I was putting it together I realized it will teach the child early geometry, circles, semi circles, etc. I used the Little Pictures fabric for a 5 inch boarder in green & purple and orange & red.
 
When I finished the top I found a beautiful children’s fabric I had bought from www.kelanifabric.com.au and added it as a border, I think it brought unity to the quilt.  The most fun was quilting it, stitching for hours listening to TV and FBI Radio, my favorite radio station. It’s a community station much like RRR which I loved when I was in Melbourne.

I stitched around each block again using pearl thread in multi colours to give the quilt texture. I really had fun making this one.





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We were very pleased to see Ruth Buchanan used one of our red Bird in Tree panels for her stunning Joadja quilt, featured in this issue of Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine. We feel very honoroured, having started to design fabrics just a little over a year ago.

Thanks Ruth for letting us know, and of course for using my fabric!

You can get the Red Tree Panel from here.



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Font is so specific, it says so much and it invokes so much feeling. For years I have been searching, trying to find that certain font which says Saffron Craig without it being my actual signature. A typeface that represents me as a designer but is not too crafty or retro.

The difficulty to make my name look right is getting the right balance of the first letters S and C and then the double ff in Saffron.  Some typefaces have nice ligatures (joining of double letters) but then an ugly or unbalanced S or C. Or the other way round, capitals are nice but then ff is really awkward.

I like modern script and sans serif fonts, with space and clean lines, long flowing f’s and curly C’s. We even tried combining my favourite letters from two typefaces but of course the spacing and weighting was wrong. Did you know a new typeface with all its variations can take years to design?

Keeping our eyes open we subscribed to a font website last year and each month I get to view what’s new in the world of font.
And then there it was!  Well-done Hubert Jocham, type designer from Germany! Finally someone’s got it all right and I have a new logo.

As you might have seen in my last newsletter, I like it in green with fairies around it. You know how much I like sprites?

So, what to you think about my new logo?



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