I asked Katie to tell us how she got the idea for her new site, Gothlings, which sells baby clothes for goths and other alternative types, and how she went about creating it. This is what she had to say...

Gothlings all came about after meandering around Whitby during one of the annual Goth weekends, watching all of the people in phenomenally fantastic outfits and then looking downwards to see them pushing around an infant in some pastel-colored clothing with little cute cartoons on it. With a spark of inspiration and the amazingly imaginative brain of Judith Stephenson, without whom none of this would have been possible, Gothlings was born.

These are just 2 of the cot blankets
in the range available at Gothlings

I have always loved gothic life, Goth is fascinating and beautiful and as I'm sure you all know, doesn't have to be dark or evil or any of the other preconceived ideas people have of the culture. There is no reason why gothic beauty cannot also be cute and babyfied and that is what I aim to do with my products. At the moment I am concentrating on clothing and blankets but I hope to move onto making nursery room wall plaques, door signs, mirrors, picture frames, whatever new ideas come to me!!

I've always loved Halloween, probably more than the festival itself, the ability to just that once a year go into town and buy things for me and my house! Even supermarkets suddenly have skeleton candle holders, the card shops have gothic 'home sweet home' signs, high street jewelry shops have cobweb earrings and bat necklaces. Why can things like this not be available all year round? I know there are a lot of Gothic shops out there but all of the pewter wear and wall art available is not cheap. And one of my main aims is to supply unique clothing and other products at reasonable prices, I know the rate that babies grow out of clothes, so I aim to keep my prices low - so it may take me longer to expand and develop, but I don’t want to rip people off.

It has taken me over 2 years to get to this point as I have had to learn everything from scratch and there has been a lot to learn about. I loved art at school but went down the sensible route for university of “it's too risky an area to guarantee a job from art, best do something sensible like management,” and so that's where I left art, much to my regret as I lost a lot of my ability and so had to begin from the basics again.

Here are a couple more samples
of what's on offer at Gothlings

I knew the initial idea of what I wanted to do but I had never worked in the clothing industry, I didn't know how prints were made on fabrics etc, so I spent almost 6 months researching, contacting people, practicing techniques until i settled on sitting at my dining table, with my sewing machine and an array of dyes, fabric pens and stencils and made my first batch of products. Then on a trip to Camden I started looking at all the stalls with the vinyl printed tshirts and got in touch with a tshirt company called Public Grief Junkie who were so fantastic and helpful and told me exactly where to get the vinyl from etc - and so once I finally managed to pull together enough cash to buy a heat press and a vinyl cutter, I was away and I have loved every minute since.

I know so many artistic people who have stopped painting, sculpting, designing because they have no space left in their houses for all the things they have made. I'd love in future to expand the site into an open site for people to be able to sell their products from to allow them to launch their own brand names.

If anyone ever wants to contact me, please do. Any feedback, queries, comments are welcome.

Thanks for reading and i hope you like what you see

Katie, Gothlings.co.uk