IKEA for Christmas – fa la la la!!

Not sure where my brilliant idea of driving all the way to IKEA in Homebush just before Xmas came from, add one hangover and salt it with a torrential downpour and a smothering of mad Xmas!

After 5 hours (still not sure how that happened - wandering around and checking all the new items) and ended up with 3 trolleys worth of stuff I am not 100% sure I need plus some very cute Xmas pressies for kids (their kids section was brilliant) and generally a whole lot of funky homewares and home furnishings that I simply must have to have! But what really excited me was the Ikea Textiles section!

I don’t remember there being so much of it and for prices as low as $9.99 a metre (actually as low as $3.49) you can’t really beat that. Lots of bold designs, made from 100% cotton, Scandinavian designers many of them I have never heard of – very marimekko, bold colours, simplified motifs, animals, trees and nature prints, with a retro feel to them … Having my camera handy I whipped out a few pics:


I love them. I can see lots of inspirational home decorating with these fabrics. They even had a cutting station and lots of people around to help you. A huge range too. Check out the ikeafans website with lots of great ideas of things to make with Ikea fabric.
Will need to have a better look, but after the silly season once I have recovered from the last experience!!

Ode to Irresistible Fabrics

Don’t you just love textiles? Browsing in stores picking up odds and ends of pieces of hand printed fabric, a bolt here a scrap there. I love to touch them, look at them, stack them. Well, thanks to the internet and my visit to Life in Style, I have discovered so many talented designers making wonderful fabrics, so this post is dedicated to them.
Bird Textiles – thinks about the environment from her Byron Bay studio and creates stylish fabrics, homewares, stationery, umbrellas and more. Shibori in Chippendale – creates a range of handmade, Japanese inspired silk fabrics as well as screen printed and digitally created fabrics and homewares.

 

Stylish fabrics from Surface Art – produced into garments and homewares and all Australian made and printed. They sell fabric by the metre for up to $88 and even little packs of offcuts. What home is complete without some Scandinavian retro print from my Bondi neighbour Funkis. Their fabrics are quite expensive, anything from $90 - $250 per metre, but they are quite sturdy so can be used for many decorating purposes.

Of course my favourite most inspirational read ever was the story of Bholu designer Jodie Freid who not only designed her own fabrics and homewares which are hand emboidered by women in India, but she has also set up her own not for profit building pre-schools for disadvantaged children in India, called the Anganwadi Project. Read this article on Dynamic Business to see what a great entrepreneur she is and to be inspired.

A feature of fabric would be incomplete without a reference to Marimekko from Finland. I do love those northern Europeans, with their clean, crisp distinctive style that is both modern and retro at the same time.

I’ve found it hard to find their fabrics in Australia. If you are lucky enough to be in Finland, Sweden, Germany or the UK, you can visit a Marimekko shop. There are a whole bunch of suppliers of the products in Australia but I have not personally stumbled across a place to buy fabric by the metre. If you know where to buy fabrics in Australia, let me know. But check out their cool 2009 Christmas catalogue.
I could prattle on forever, but if you want to see a whole bunch of great fabrics in one place, checkout Funky Fabrix. They have a whole bunch of fabrics from designers all over. Check out some of my faves: Monaluna, Joel Dewberry, Saffron Craig, Michael Miller…
And they have a 10% discount right now on all orders over $100.
I could go on… but I will save it for some other time.
Drop me a note about your favourite textiles designer or fabric haunt.

Swedish Design

Great post on Decor8 about Swedish Design which then led me to Emma's blog from Stockholm - also full of great inspirational homes and images. I am going retro furniture hunting today. I haven't pottered around the Bondi furniture store lately. They often have some good stuff if you really poke around. Check out this hus & hem photo stream. My favourite is the blue one 2nd down - not so much the colour, though I like that it is bold, but more the way the room is styled.