hidden costs

modflowers: spotlight fabricsLife in Australia is very different from life at home.

Fabulously so…

So far, we have spent a week in a beachfront villa on Moreton Island, a sandbar with stunning beaches, wild dolphins, breathtaking desert views and the thrills of off-road driving to entertain us.

Now we are at my sister’s home up in the Witta hills, near the Glasshouse Mountains. We swelter gently, sleep a lot, paddle in the creek and sit on the deck in the afternoons, seeking any smidgeon of available breeze.

It is all, frankly, pretty blissful.

modflowers: spotlight fabricsLast time I came to visit, I discovered the joys of Spotlight. Yesterday, my sister, younger niece and I paid a return visit, whilst the boys took the boogie board to the beach at Caloundra.

For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of Spotlight, it is in some ways a little like Dunelm Mill in the UK, in that it sells homewares of the cheap and cheerful, piled-up-warehouse-style kind.

But Spotlight also has a huge, unbelievably cheap fabric department, which sells both dress and furnishing fabrics.

They had a sale on, so despite my preference for fabric of the vintage variety, I indulged…

modflowers: spotlight fabricsThe plains are attractive and useful.

But some of the prints are excessively lovely, and less than half what they would cost at home – even if I could find them in my sadly haberdashery-poor local shops…spotlight fabricsThere will be a new kitchen tablecloth when I get home.

And I might even have another go at dressmaking, if I can work out how to alter a pattern to fit me.

The thing is though, I have a sneaking suspicion that I shouldn’t be buying fabrics at Spotlight. Not really.

Because I have a conscience, and I’m not sure that Spotlight does.

Last time I went, I spotted some fabric that looked suspiciously similar (i.e. utterly identical) to a Designers Guild fabric I had admired from a previous season.

And this time around, I noticed this…

modflowers: spotlight doll print fabricThis is just part of a fabric design that includes a number of different dolls, printed at a range of sizes.

It enables you to make your own dolls, dolls that look unnervingly similar to designs by fellow-maker Justina of Bea’s Beastlies. Except that hers are handmade with love, in original vintage fabrics.

I think that whoever “designed” this fabric (it is made by an Australian company called Sterns) stole the doll design and put it on a fabric without Justina’s knowledge.

It happens a lot. Intellectual property rights for designers are a joke and your own designs rarely stay your own for long these days.

In fact, I almost expected to see my mini moggies make an appearance in Spotlight’s fabric department. Maybe one day, they will. And unless my sister happens to spot them, I won’t know a thing about it, or receive a penny in recompense either.

modflowers: spotlight fabricsBy buying cheap fabrics from the likes of Spotlight, I feel that I might be encouraging this practise.

Obviously, I wouldn’t – and haven’t, as far as I know – bought any fabric that I know to be a rip-off of someone else’s design.

But just because I don’t recognise the designs I bought, doesn’t mean that they weren’t originally thought up by some uncredited, unpaid designer.

It leaves a nasty taste. And adds a hidden cost to a bargain…

The price of integrity. ♥

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3 thoughts on “hidden costs

  1. Is this fabric made in China? Aren’t they copying everything and putting fabric makers in Africa out of business by copying their designs?
    It looks gorgeous but I hope Justina gets compensation for her designs.

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