2015 Year in review

We started the year with a blog series called Meet the Team, which is something we ought to update, as things keep changing and growing around here! Maleeka has had another baby, Belinda’s about to have her second, and the fabulous Arlene has been replaced by the fabulous Janine as our shop manager.

In February I got to spend a lot of time printing in my studio. Here’s a roundup of all I got done, to prove it!

In March I blogged about What Making Friday is all about (a reminder to myself, really), and had a lovely podcast interview with the fabulous Abby Glassenberg, which you can listen to here.

April is when my latest collection for Cloud9 Fabrics – called Yoyogi Park – arrived in our shop, and we had fun making things up with it.  On a more personal note, Paul and I achieved a long-held goal of buying the next-door flat in order to expand our home. (The dust is still settling after that renovation, but I’ll blog about it soon. Promise!)

Much of June was spent in Los Angeles, where I had the singular pleasure of attending a Skinny laMinx pop-up shop inside the Heath Ceramics store on Beverley Boulevard. That whole trip was a big thrill. I got to meet the coolest people, including the delightful Kat & Roger.

Across The Sea in July and I got to do a printing workshop at Warren Editions, expanding my lino print experience from fabric to paper.

One of my very favourite things is to go on the Open House Architecture tours when they come around, and in August, Ilze Wolff took us to explore Customs House from top to bottom. We also got a nice showing in ELLE Decoration NL this month!

I started a blog feature called BEST THINGS this year, noting trends, colours, interesting designers, and that kind of thing. I’ve really enjoyed creating these posts, and in August, I wrote one of my favourites – all about terrazzo!

I was back in Jaipur with Ritchie Ace Camps in October, teaching pattern design and block printing to a group of international travellers. What an awesome trip it was! Upon my return, I did a mega Making Friday blog post about all the block printing I’ve been doing in my studio this year.

November doesn’t seem like a long time ago, does it? We launched a fabulous collaboration with Paris brand Lasso Shoes in that month, and we published our Celebrate! Lookbook, full of great festive table setting ideas.

They took us a little by surprise, as we’d been waiting for them for a while, but we were so happy to end our December with a launch (just in time for Christmas) of two new block print scarf designs.

Clockwise, from Left: Belinda (wholesale & stockroom), Sonia (online store), Sarah (production), Lynne (fabric rep), Janine (Bree St store manager), Misha (general assistant), Heather (me), Pearl (business), Melissa (design assistant).