Newtown A Brief Introduction

Today I decided I couldn't wait any longer to get my latest delivery of spoonflower fabric. It arrived Thursday, was re-attempted Friday and I wanted it NOW! So I figured out how to get to the Fed-Ex pick up depot which unlike most was not in the outskirts of town. The total journey is about an hour from the apartment. It's in a funny area on the border of four suburbs, I think technically it would be in St Peters, however because that's not exactly the most desirable suburb to live in (very industrial) the address says Alexandria. It's a common thing here. During my exchange, my address was in Birchgrove (the super fancy area) though I always felt it was really in Balmain (which is pretty fancy already.. just not enough I guess).  To get to the depot we had to walk through Newtown which is the "artsy" suburb. It's very trendy, lots of shops and cafes. Very fun, like a mix of Kensington Market in T.O. and the Glebe in Ottawa. But bigger and Aussier.

This is the city, I love how there are so many building with little bits of detail. They don't always have to be flashy, but add so much to the atmosphere.

Perhaps it's the abundance of sandstone here that is responsible for all the decoration. 

More sandstone on the QVB (Queen Victoria Building). I really liked the print on the scaffolding. 

OK Now we're in Newtown. There were so many things I didn't photograph because we were in a bit of a hurry since Tom had to go to the dentist at lunch. I am so glad I made myself stop for this car though since it was gone when we came back.  I loved that the colours of the the graffiti matched the car.

Here's a little sample of what the buildings look like in the older suburbs like Balmain and Newtown. The main difference between those two in particular is that Newtown is full of young people and hip businesses. The buildings are not quite as up kept sometimes and the colours are a little brighter. Where as Balmain is full of young families and expensive shops that want to appeal to a more upscale crowd so there are more muted colours.  I decided that before I go I need to give this area a good explore, perhaps a full day of wandering.
There is a lot of Art Nouveau influence. I'm not sure just how much if it is actually from that era, but there is a big use of tiles on the exteriors of shop and details that are very much in that time period's style. I'm madly in love with the use of tiles by the way. Even out Irish pub around the corner is covered in Nouveau styled tiles. mmmm...

The green area on this shop is a good example of the use of tiles. It's great because they also glimmer in the sun. 

 

 The next phase of our journey to Fed- Ex was crossing a very large park. It's right at the beginning of the industrial area and clearly the site of an old factory of some sorts. This is the entrance we came through.

Some more remains. 

The park was incredible, a total gem hidden away behind steep hills and trees. While we walked through I couldn't tell that we were flanked by three very large busy roads and a highway. Part of this I'm sure is due to how big Sydney Park is. Lots of hills, dogs running around, a big playground, water features. One aspect that hit both Tom and I was that it sort of felt like it could have once been intended as a golf course.  Also note how much yellow grass there is. We've had a fair bit of rain recently so this grass is actually the greenest I've seen in months. After spring, once the heat starts eveything not shaded by trees goes yellow or brown. Very different from Canada for sure!

There was what looked like a reservoir but I think is just a pond now.  Just as I was about to move on Tom pointed out all the lost tennis balls. hahaha. Poor doggies.

 

if you look closely you can see about 10 or 12 tennis balls amoungst the chick-weed. 

As we were waiting for our train back to the city I noticed some sky writing. We were there just long enough to see the word LEATHER get finished. Tom's guess it was the tool brand Leatherman and I'm pretty sure the letter that was half written as we left was going to be an M. I found it funny how tiny the plane looked, I could barely make it out in the sky. 

Tom and I parted ways in the city. I came home to play with my fabric while he went to sit for the dentist. hehehe. Here's the test of my button fabric. You can see that I tested a few for the size of their image, little wrinkly circles.

I was pretty sad that my favourite Aussie animal got so harshly cut off. It does fit the button size perfectly though. Poor little guy. 

Here are the ones I chose to make displayed on some new fabric swatches. 

A couple dinos.  They all fit really well.

 

Some barnacle buttons. I'm going to play with having a half cm around the barnacle rather than have it take up the whole button. It's a matter of making sure they're recognizable. 

I love how this little kookaburra turned out. It fits just right. 

The echidna however is just a touch too long. The other ones have the same issue so I've got a few touch ups to do, as well as altering some colours. I'm finding that the more contrast the better for such tiny images.

Here's some fabric I'm experimenting with that is made from some rubbings I did of my batik stamps. The hardest part is that because I don't want to loose any detail I can't change my colours using the spooflower site, which would allow me to make sure they are more true to the colour on the computer. I do like how the purples and grey turned out. 

The rubbing effect worked really well. I'm very happy about that. 

But the orange is literally neon. I'm not a fan. So I've got some alterations and ideas on how I can fix it up. I do think I might be making some pillows out of these when I'm done and back in Canada. They're about twice as big as the actual stamps, for clothing I'd definitely make the motifs smaller.