Fade away....

When I printed on this top the other day I was a bit concerned. It came out bright yellow, it wasn't at all subtle . It was screen printed with turmeric and I think I gravely overestimated how much I had to use. My aim was to create something feint that replicated the existing stain on the garment. I washed the T-shirt, still the colour was almost luminous. Then I recalled a friend telling me how turmeric isn't very light fast. I hung it out on the washing line on a sunny day and viola, feint faded design!

Etro Cooked Shirt Project

I was going through my old magazines last night and came across this in an old Surface Magazine (Issue 71, State of Emergence). Its a design concept by Etro whereby the consumer can dye the shirt by using either, blueberries, salt and coffee. The above image is of the blueberry stained shirt which is put into the oven with the blueberries, juice and some sugar. I feel inspired to experiment. I'll keep you posted with how I get on.

Beautiful Weeds

As a society, we are made to see weeds as the enemy, much like stains actually. They must be eradicated. You only have to walk into the garden centre to find hundreds of types of weed killer, all with horrible chemicals in them. Anything which you spray in the garden which says keep away from children and animals has to be bad. But whats so bad about a few weeds? This one I found in my garden (don't tell my mother, she would be horrified!) is like a nettle with tiny purple little flowers. Isn't it time that we stopped fighting these little things and started admiring them. You have to appreciate nature's resilience; no matter how much cement or chemicals we put in its path, these things always find a way.

Swiss chard

We have got quite a few Swiss chard plants growing in the garden and I had some of the baby leaves the other day in a salad. They were not only delicious but beautiful. This variety is bright lights, which have the bright orange and pink stems. This is the first yield from the garden this year, hopefully there will be much more to come.

Fendi S/S 2011

When browsing through the current issue of Elle magazine I can across a dress from the S/S collection for this year that had stain like patterns on it. Many of them appear burn like, and as you can see from the picture devore has been used to remove a layer of the cloth. I found them really interesting, not only because of my obsession with stains but also because i havent seen anything like it in fashion collections before.

Home Grown

Last year, my mum and I managed to successfully start a small vegetable patch in the garden. We had courgettes, tomatoes, beans and they all tasted fabulous, 1000 times better than that which you buy in the supermarkets.

Its fair to say that this effort had a lot to do with the BBC Two series broadcast last year called Edible Garden, where Alys Fowler (you can read about it and watch clips here) creates a vegetable garden in her small London garden. She also forages in the wild but this is something that I haven't quite mustered up the courage to undertake yet for fear or picking something poisonous. I love the idea of the Good Life, being self sufficient, living off the land and supporting local environments rather than global corporations.

We are expanding the vegetable bed this year, and it seems like other people are following suit. Whilst reading this months copy of Elle Decoration I saw 3 rooftops in London which had been adapted into roof gardens. Homegrown is having a revolution.

Keep your integrity

I sometimes find it very hard to stay true to myself, especially within an academic environment where you know that you are going to be marked on something. I think ultimately though, you have to go with what you believe in and not lose your integrity to please someone else. Someone who agrees with this is John C Jay in his 10 tips for young designers. Amen to this.