Etsy Treasury FRIDAYS

SquidWhale's back with a vengeance! Our studio's finally set up, we're working on some new exciting products for the Turkey Red Collection just in time for the Holidays, and we're back to blogging after a long hiatus.

We've decided to begin adding a few weekly blog articles to our repertoire. From now on Fridays will be ETSY TREASURY FRIDAYS! Woot! We'll be celebrating our love for these thoughtfully curated collections of handmade and vintage goodies by featuring one Treasury we made this week and one we love.

First off, the lovely peodra on Etsy curated this Treasury, NIGHT TALES, earlier this month and we LOVE it!  We're so excited she featured our altered vintage doily, Mice with Black-Eyed Susans! It also has lots of our favorite Etsy sellers, including Plundered (vintage shop by Margaux Kent of The Black Spot Books & Philly friend), Yokoo, Restless General Store, Swan Bones, The Pin Pals ... the list goes on and on. Poedra has amazing taste and a wonderful new jewelry shop on Etsy.  Keep up the great work!

And now for one I made (Sarah here). I made my second Treasury just a few nights ago, MINOR TRIUMPHS, MAJOR DISASTERS.  I was in an interesting state of mind when I crafted this, but I like how it turned out.

ENJOY!
<3
Sarah
SquidWhale Designs

BEFORE ...

As of August 1st, SquidWhale Designs has a home base! WOOT! Yippee!!! Wazooo! HOT YAMS!

We're across the hall from the Midwives Gallery at 1241 Carpenter St. in South Philly. We LOVE the artist community in our building, the location (near the Italian Market!) and our friendly landlord, Steve.

Our little space needs some work to make it into the clean & styley design studio we envision...




This week we purchased a brand new iMac and printer (!!!). We haven't set it up yet, so it still feels like a dream. Tomorrow we're going to purchase paint and other supplies to pretty up the floors and walls. Some day soon we hope our little home will look like some of these amazing work spaces ...



All dream work space images found via Design*Sponge

We have some key items in mind to prettify our space ...






This lamp was gonna be for Mouse Trap Vintage, but I decided it will be for SquidWhale Designs studio.

Stay tuned to see our progress!

We've Been Treasured !

Crystal from The House of Hearts created a Treasury inspired by our Turkey Red Collection AND gave us an artist shout-out. It's our first Treasury feature and Beth and I couldn't be more excited! Click on the image above to see "Turkish Delight". Clicks on the featured items and comments will help it to get a spot on the front page of Etsy. Oh, and Crystal has an awesome Etsy shop filled with vintage Treasures! Go seeeeee!

Also cause for celebration, Beth curated her first two Treasuries yesterday! She was nice enough to feature items from my Etsy shop, Mouse Trap Vintage, in both. Looksie:

THE FAIREST OF THE FOWL


A FISHERMAN'S TALE


HAPPY 4th!

<3
Sarah

REDefined Opens this Friday!

This Friday, June 11th marks the opening of REDefined, the Midwives Collective & Gallery's annual members show and the official launch of SquidWhale Design's first collection, The Turkey Red Collection.


Beth designed a postcard for our first collection. The mouse print on the left is my first true repeat pattern. The one on the right is one of Beth's lovely abstract floral motifs. Both of the originals were painted in gouache on illustration board and scanned. In our show you'll see an installation that includes an 8'x8' section of hand-painted wallpaper, a collection of pillows made from our fabrics, an upholstered chair, embroidered vintage textiles and a limited edition Turkey Red City Mouse Pin (The City Mouse Pin will also be for sale in my Etsy shop by Sunday night!).

About the REDefined ...

REDefined: Annual Members Show

REDefined
Annual Members Exhibition and Fundraiser for Midwives for Haiti

June 11th - July 10th, 2010
Opening Reception Friday, June 11th, 6-10 PM

Midwives Collective & Gallery
1241 Carpenter St., 2nd Fl., Ste. 2

REDefined is a show about “red”. Some of us appreciate the beauty and visual impact of the hue, the lightfastness of the pigment, the passion it conjurs up, its political implications or the moods or emotions it has come to represent. However the word is interpreted, this is one show that will truly define who the Midwives are. We all rigorously explored the depths of our artistic limits to present our works in the forms of painting, installation, textile design, sumi e brush painting, embroidery and photography.

Featured artists:

Ellen Bonett
Kelly A. Burkhardt
Carol Deutsch
Sarah Louise Hunt
Christiana Kugel
Cheryl Rybacki
Elizabeth J. Smith

We have also created a redwork quilt that will be raffled to raise funds for Midwives for Haiti (http://midwivesforhaiti.org/). Raffle tickets are 2 for $5 or 5 for $10. To purchase raffle tickets, contact themwc@gmail.com. In addition to the quilt raffle ticket sales, 20% of the sale of any art in REDefined will be donated to the cause. Midwives for Haiti is a nonprofit organization that sends nurses and midwives to Haiti to provide a clean and safe environment for pregnant women during the birthing process.

If you can't make the reception, as always gallery hours are Saturdays from noon-5 or by appointment. Just contact us at themwc@gmail.com.

For more about the artists and their work and images of our quilt, please visit our website soon: www.midwivescollective.com.

We hope to see you there!

-Sarah (The Whale)

MAJOR PROGRESS

Whale here with my first-ever blog post!



This has been a week of MAJOR PROGRESS at SquidWhale h.q. We've finally delved into working in color (gouache painting yes!) and went on our first flea market adventure together to hunt for vintage inspiration.

Let me start by saying that I am a fine artist by training and it is not easy for me to work in the way that Textile Designers do. I usually rely heavily on layering of wet and dry media, on rigorous mark making (ok, scribbling) and a lot of adding and subtracting. My drawing tools are filthy with graphite powder.

After much erasing, re-drawing, checking my measurements and much encouragement from Squid, I finally finished the contour line drawing of my first surface pattern design. Here, it's inset into our 4 ft. wide medallion of abstract florals:



















To prepare for painting my whole motif with gouache on board which is quite large, I started with just these two little plaid mice. They're seen with some of Squid's designs for our first collection:

Our designs amidst some of our vintage inspiration found at the flea market on Saturday. Please note the color litho plates from a 1939 edition of French Costumes. They're fantastic and will most likely be for sale in the SquidWhale Designs Etsy shop come June or July:

















Detail of the most amazing hankie that echoes our color palette and design choices:

















And lastly, a little vintage embroidered linen table cloth and leather-topped wooden table for our installation. I plan to embroider a few scurrying mousies onto the table cloth. They'll weave in and out of the black-eyed susans and the french knots that look, curiously enough, just like little mouse turds...






















More soon! Thanks for stopping by!

<3 SquidWhale Designs

The Learning Curve

So, in our trials and tribulations of setting up shop and all, we're learning a lot, and fast. Whale is new to the whole business of "textile design", though she's nurtured a long and passionate love affair with the printed fabric and it's many applications (you can see her penchant for vintage calicos in her Etsy shop as well as her own unique stylistic eye). As her counter-part, I'm lucky to have earned a degree in Textile Design and thus am able to help her achieve her goals (as well as mine). Also, I'm relearning a lot of things I'd thought I'd forgotten from my college daze, and all the while the voices of my hallowed instructors ring out in my head, their advice mostly of the sassy and endearingly bitchy sort, which always makes me smile (and of course, work harder).
Additionally, new technologies like digital printing have become much more accessible and affordable than they were when I was in school, This is forcing me to learn a lot about color calibration and such. The fabric below is a color chart we printed out with our fabric printer's facilities. It is going to save us so much frustration and time and money!

The possibilities are endless!

Whale's first design is deceptively complex.

Looking over what we are cooking up, we are both very excited about what's coming. As Whale and I learn and relearn the many nuances of achieving a cohesive and conceptually strong textile print, we only make our future endeavors that much easier.

Next up we'll be getting into the hand-painted part of our work. We'll sneak-peek them for you all in the next couple of weeks!

<3 SquidWhale Designs

A Full Day in the Laboratory

Sarah L. Hunt hard at work on her very first repeated print.

Sarah measuring & remeasuring for accuracy.

An overview of our 4ft. wide one-off wallpaper print.

Elizabeth J. Smith tracing all the little details of the design.

All of this will be revealed in full glory June, 2010 at Midwives Collective & Gallery!