What I’m Getting Done

October 16, 2010 by 1 Comment

Some days it’s not so much, except for a visit to Curves and errands. I finally got my life arranged where I could start doing some printing this week.  I need to print several yards of cloth…how much I’m not so sure.  I guess I’ll know when I get there.  Thursday I got dye paint mixed and then yesterday I got 4 yards printed.  I have 3 weeks before I vend at my next quilt show, so I need to make good use of the time I have between now and then.  After printing the cloth, then there is sewing it up into items for the home.

I call this a VERY improvisational screen printing technique…basically, I just paint circles and drips on the screen and immediately print it.

I made table napkins from the other colorway I previously printed.

There will be matching tablerunners also.

Someone on my blogroll has now turned me on to what a “potato chip” scarf is.  Today has seen me online hunting up a pattern and yarns.  And ordering.  Since I don’t really knit yet, I will crochet it with a big hook.  My nieces may get these cool scarves for Christmas….we’ll see how I get along.  I also got my new printed fabrics ironed.

From the Lion Brand yarn website, the double boa ruffled scarf…

My plan is to do three colorways for Select Collections.  I will print black and white as well as more of the amethyst, curry, and turkey red colors.  That’s all I’m gonna do. Ideas need to percolate too.  It takes about an hour to print two yards of fabric in this manner.  I can’t do it all in one piece as my set up won’t handle it at the moment, so I do one yard at a time.

I now have sets of inks for sale…I have the Mini Stations for painted faces and the Basic colors Mini Station.  Contact me if you’re interested.  These are very nice inks to work with if you like to do detail work. They look wonderful on the cloth I dye on which is a 76 x 74 thread count.  I won’t use Setacolors on this cloth…it just looks better on Pimatex cotton, but these inks paint well on this pfd cotton, which I like about them.  Each mini-station comes with a helpful dvd, and there are tutorials on the internet to help you learn to use them too.

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Filed Under: creativity, dye paint, fabric inks Tagged With: , , ,

Week In Review

August 12, 2010 by 5 Comments

It’s been a strange week. I slightly twisted my ankle last Saturday, but no pain and swelling showed up til Sunday afternoon.  And it swelled up really good by Monday.  I hobbled around the house determined not to let time be a’ wastin’…

I kept ice on it a lot, but also spent time at my sewing machine.  I had printed a huge piece of cloth a while back and decided to make these…those of you who read my blog will recognize the cloth…I love these…

Since I sold my first set of screen printed throw pillows last Saturday, I am now highly motivated to keep going, so I sewed up a few more covers, after cutting lots of fabric for the backs.

It’s too hot to be outside printing since we don’t seem to be able to move past 100 plus degree days. But I have lots of indoor work to be done as long as I can keep supplied with everything I need.  In my “weakened state” I made a request  on Facebook to see if anyone was going to Walmart. Could they check on zippers for me please?  One of my friends did go there but they didn’t have any of the polyester zippers I needed for my bags. So I placed an order with Brewer which I needed to do anyway, but wasn’t ready to do it this early.  I ordered a bunch of zippers, but they only had one box of the Cloister Brown and I needed many.  Sigh.  But the three zippers I got are enough to hold me at this moment.  I am making bags which are liners for a basket purse.  My friend Kay is a basketweaver and we are teaming up on this project.  I think the liners might help her sell the baskets better.  She did sell a purse and liner last Saturday. Woohoo! She has two big shows next month, so I gotta get busy.

And then there’s my own work…I am giving thought to creating hand dyed cotton napkins with matching table runners.  This is for the Select Collection event to be held in November.  The theme is home and wearables.  I dyed some shibori designs on fat quarters.  Table napkins, anyone?

Kay likes them and thinks they would be great as napkins.  What do you think?

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Filed Under: creativity, dyeing, hand dyed fabrics, shibori Tagged With: , , ,

Bag Making Fool

July 9, 2010 by 6 Comments

Yesterday I worked on fabric for my small ArtFul cloth bags.  They are the size of a small make-up bag but can be used for other things too.  My inventory is getting low. (That’s a good thing!  It means I’m selling.) So it’s time to get back to work on them again.

First I pull out pieces of cloth from my ever-swelling stack.  For some reason, I always go for the paint rags.  As I’m pulling out pieces I pray that I start getting ideas for other designs to layer on them, but nothing was coming Wednesday night.  Bleh.  When I woke up yesterday morning, however, ideas were coming, so it was time to get to work!

Remember the bird stamps I was making a couple of weeks ago?  Well, the birds are finding their way onto these bags.

I think I’m going to have to keep one for myself.

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