Calico

I love the sound of the word calico - kal-i-koh. I also love the creamy oatmeal naturalness of it. The clean flat landscape of fabric and slightly mottled colour that is just waiting to be made into something else.

It’s the worker bee of fabric. I often use calico to make samples of things I’m designing…to see how they work out before I start hacking into the ‘good’ fabrics. In my fabric stash I have bits and bobs of ‘good’ fabrics that I LOVE so much I can’t bring myself to cut into them. Especially if I know that it is a vintage remanent that I have found somewhere in my travels.

That’s the good thing about calico you see. You can be generous with it – you can cut and sew to your hearts content and if you bugger it up – you know what. IT DOESN’T MATTER!

When I was designing my Bushka face – I knew from the start that I was going to have it screen printed onto calico - and now, those dear little calico faces feature on the ‘good’ fabrics – that go into making my one off Mumma & Baby Bushka dolls and rattles. A match made in heaven.