Twice now I've joined Leslie's Fabric Swap, and I've showed you what I've made (here and here), but I've neglected to show what I've received in return.
These gorgeous fabrics from swap one:

Left to right from Clemetine's Shoes, SugarLemon, Flowerpress and Starashan.
And these beautiful ones from round two:

from Bimba, Lamina and Amy.
It's hard to think about cutting into these, but I definitely want to come up with some project that uses all of these beautiful fabrics together. I hope that Leslie will do this swap again...it's so fun to try something new and quite inspiring to see what everyone comes up with.
Here are some resources I found helpful when looking for inspiration for my fabrics.

I'll bet most people already know about Lotta Jansdotter's book Lotta Prints. A wonderful resource for a wide variety of printing techniques.
New to me was this great find at the library, Print & Stamp Lab by Traci Bunkers. This book details great ways to use everyday objects in printing. Some examples...



After reading through this book and following some examples, my boys and I had such fun playing with printing from objects around this house. This book shows wonderful ways of combining different elements to create some great patterns. There are also lots of examples of overprinting which I have only recently become fascinated with (thanks to the lovely work of Flowerpress). I will absolutely be trying some of these new printing techniques at the preschool this year-it is just so much fun, and I know the kids will love it too.
That last resource pictured above is Martha Stewart Living Magazine, July 2012. That issue came out just as I was working on my own fabrics. I love the look of the plastic berry basket, but I have not seen those kind of containers since I was a child. Some more inspiring images from MSL.


Just for fun, I've been playing with adding a little embroidery to some of my printing practice fabrics.

Not sure yet where I'm going with this...if it turns into anything, I'll let you know. xx