Calico & Ivy Balmain Now Hiring

Calico & Ivy Balmain is looking for casual employees to join our retail team.  Working at Calico & Ivy Balmain is an opportunity for you to work in this creative space with great people.  We are looking for super friendly, enthusiastic people, who love serving and have a passion for all things creative - fabric, sewing, stitching, yarn, knitting, crocheting and the like.

The most important part of the job will be to help our wonderful customers with choices and suggestions, as well as restocking, processing orders, keeping the store looking wonderful and of course adding your creative touch.  Ideally we would love you to be able knit, crochet or sew - all 3 would be great!

We will be accepting cv's until Wednesday 7 November, 5pm.  If you would like to apply please send your cv to calicoandivy@bigpond.com and we'd love it if you included a photo of some of your work.

A Common Thread

After a conversation with a customer this week, she reminded me of the movie, A Common Thread. A french film about a teenage girl, who at 17 and pregnant goes to work as an embroiderer with a lady who sells her work to haute couture houses in Paris.  This lady is grieving the loss of her son. 

 I really liked this reflectful film when I watched it many years ago now and was reminded of the different craftmanship that was depicted in the film, such as Tambour embroidery.   I hope my customer reads this blog as she was really curious to know more about this technique and the tools used.  Hopefully this helps!

If you would like to watch this film, it is now titled "Sequins".

Image from here

Happy Weekend!

a granny chic opportunity

in a very unusual scenario for us here in Perth, we have a few opportunities still available to join the next crochet for beginners class with Danielle.

starting this Saturday, and finishing the following one, you can learn basics and migrate through to making a granny square as required for a blanket like Lynnie's.

if 9.45am - 1pm,  $80 for both classes, and the opportunity of making new yarny friends works for you, call the shop pronto and make your booking (93833794)

Maybe to entice you a little more here are a few squares I have been making from our baby cashmerino...

velveteen

my verandah was looking a little tired, so a new lease of life was injected with new cushion covers and a simple tablecloth.

spring blooms were everywhere so I chose to compliment them with even more blooms!  

Anna Maria's velveteen was my selection for cushion covers, as it has the functionality of being hard wearing, plus being super cosy, perfect for snuggling into with a cuppa watching the world go by.

 

next was the table, so a little of one of my favourite designer fabrics, nani iro, was just dandy.

again flowers a plenty, and now the verandah sings, as I hope do our neighbours and friends as they pass by!

 

The velveteen is 140cm wide and sells for $40.50, just a couple of metres and some simple stitching and voila!

see on the web here

head start

here in perth we have kitted up Lynnie's bright and cheery crochet granny blanket.  

10 coordinated balls of yarn, a crochet hook, instructions, a piccy and a head start...

Lynnie has crocheted each kit a starting square.

and please meet my newest critter of adoration...Olive.

just a baby at 11 weeks old she sure keeps a smile on my face!

I have added a facebook page for Mosman Park very recently, maybe you would like to take a look.

Sarah is working on the Balmain facebook page at present also.

Bloomsbury

We've known that they have been in the pipeline for a long while now.  We saw and ordered them in June and now we have them!  The long awaited Bloomsbury collection of quilting weight cottons by Liberty of London.

Back in July, when Deb and I were in London, we managed to get to Liberty of London to meet up with Sholto Drumlanrig, the very talented artist behind this beautiful collection.  We were taken through the hallowed hallways of the creative department (there were piles and piles of Tana Lawn everywhere!) and Sholto showed us where his inspirations came from for this collection and his many sketches that go into making a complete collection.  It was so overwhelmingly amazing that we took not a single photo.  But if you head over here, Katy has done an amazing job at doing just that - I'll leave it to her!

We will have some quilt kits done up very soon - I'll be back to blog about those.  In the meantime pop into the shops and have a look or follow this link onto the website