Life in Australia is very different from life at home.<\/p>\n

Fabulously so…<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0breeze.<\/p>\n

It is all, frankly, pretty blissful.<\/p>\n

Last time I came to visit, I discovered the joys of\u00a0Spotlight<\/a>.\u00a0Yesterday, my sister, younger niece and I paid a return visit, whilst the boys took the boogie board\u00a0to the beach at Caloundra.<\/p>\n

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

But Spotlight also has a\u00a0huge<\/em>, unbelievably cheap fabric department, which\u00a0sells both dress and furnishing fabrics.<\/p>\n

They had a sale on, so despite my preference for fabric of the vintage variety, I indulged…<\/p>\n

The plains are attractive and useful.<\/p>\n

But some of the prints are excessively lovely, and less than\u00a0half what they would cost at home – even if I could find them in my sadly haberdashery-poor local shops…There will be a new kitchen tablecloth when I get home.<\/p>\n

And I might<\/em> even have another go at dressmaking, if I can work out how to alter\u00a0a pattern to fit me.<\/p>\n

The thing is though, I have a sneaking suspicion that I shouldn’t be buying fabrics at Spotlight. Not really<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Because I have a conscience, and I’m not sure that Spotlight does.<\/p>\n

Last time I went, I spotted some fabric that looked suspiciously similar (i.e. utterly\u00a0identical) to a Designers Guild<\/a> fabric I had admired from a previous season.<\/p>\n

And this time around, I noticed this…<\/p>\n

This is just part of a\u00a0fabric design\u00a0that\u00a0includes a number of different dolls, printed at a range of\u00a0sizes.<\/p>\n

It enables you to make your own dolls, dolls that look unnervingly similar to designs\u00a0by fellow-maker Justina of Bea’s Beastlies<\/a>. Except that hers<\/em> are handmade with love, in original vintage fabrics.<\/p>\n

I think that whoever “designed”\u00a0this fabric (it is made by an Australian company called Sterns)\u00a0stole\u00a0the\u00a0doll design and put\u00a0it on a fabric without Justina’s\u00a0knowledge.<\/p>\n

It happens a lot. Intellectual property rights for designers are a joke and your own designs rarely stay your own for long these days.<\/p>\n

In fact, I almost expected to see my mini moggies<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

By\u00a0buying cheap fabrics from the likes of Spotlight, I feel that I might be encouraging this practise.<\/p>\n

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

But just because I don’t recognise the designs I bought, doesn’t mean that they weren’t<\/em> originally thought up\u00a0by some uncredited, unpaid designer.<\/p>\n

It leaves a nasty taste. And adds\u00a0a hidden cost\u00a0to a\u00a0bargain…<\/p>\n

The price of integrity.\u00a0\u2665<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life 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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,1,17],"tags":[72,533,1737,1518],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n