Thanks, Rebecca, for the link to a great tutorial on how to make repeat patterns. Written by guest blogger Julia Rothman for design sponge, this could be the perfect one-stop lesson on how to tile a design so that you don't end up with bizarre, empty seam lines on your custom printed fabric.
Now, if only I could draw like Julia Rothman...
When I was in college I worked in a vintage clothing shop. I loved to work my shifts surrounded by gorgeous old dresses, hand-embroidered textiles, and collectible bric-a-brac. I would sometimes imagine who might have worn a particularly lovely frock, whose hands might have made all those tiny stitches bordering a linen tablecloth, and how all these things survived more or less intact and ended up there.
I have three daughters and have sewed many things for all three of them--baby blankets, bibs, stuffed toys, bed quilts, dresses. Now I'm on the other end of things. I enjoy imagining my girls treasuring these things mama made for them when they're grown up and I'm gone. I like to think that, while not expertly put together, they're at least sturdy enough to hold up for their lifetimes, sturdy enough that they might pull them out one day to show them to their own kids. (Well, except for the bibs which see some pretty heavy, yucky use.)
If this is part of why you sew, you'll want to read this pdf article on how various fusible and adhesive sewing products hold up over time. It's a technical article and I'm sorry about the formating, but it's well worth getting through if you use fusible web, fusible batting, quilt basting spray and the like in your sewing projects. If you're like me and you'd like your quilts and embroideries to hold up through a generation or two for your grandkids to ogle, then it looks like our options are limited. I guess sometimes the old ways of hand-basting and flannel reinforcement are best. And here's to hoping that our beautiful works don't end up in a random shop someday, presided over by a clueless college girl!
Our local quilt shop regularly offers great sewing classes, some of which have nothing to do with quilting. Probably my favorite class was one taught by Karen West on how to make toothbrush rugs. Considering how little there is on-line about these rugs, let me explain here. A toothbrush rug is made with long strips of fabric kinda looped together with a tool made from an old toothbrush with its bristly head sawed off, a hole bored into one end, and the other end filed to a point. It looks like this. The looping technique reminds me a lot of crochet, though I haven't crocheted anything since I was 5 and my mom taught me how to make a long chain. You can order rug patterns with instructions and toothbrush tools here. (Or perhaps a tutorial is in order here?)
I made the rug above from batiks and shot cottons. Robert Kaufman's luminous chambray solids would work great, too, I bet. Ideally, you'll use fabrics that are dyed on both sides because you do see both sides of the strips. (Did I mention that it's reversible? Woo-hoo!) That said, these rugs use a LOT of fabric--around 8 yards or so for an oval measuring 2-1/2 by 3-1/2--so using fabric you have on hand that you otherwise can't find a use for is a good idea, too. Stick with non-slippery fabrics of the same weight and yours should turn out great--heavy, hard-wearing, washable, and made up of the colors that you've handpicked for your room!
Anyone else out there have school-aged children? I've got a 4th grader and it all of a sudden hit me this morning that with the end of the school year fast approaching on June 6, I've got a couple of teacher gifts to figure out. Wouldn't it be nice to make some thank you presents for a change instead of going the box of gourmet chocolates route? Of course it would.
Earlier this school year, I made a set of cloth grocery bags for the school's silent auction fund-raiser, loosely based on one of the cloth totes in The Impatient Patchworker
But I may just make one of the fabulous projects featured on the Sew Mama Sew Tutorial Contest. So far, my other favorite teacher gift idea is the Square(ish) Bottomed Hobo Lunchbag from Emily at sewing notions. It's too late to enter the contest now, but I definitely recommend that you spend an hour (or more!) perusing the several rounds' worth of submissions. I guarantee you'll come away inspired with a fresh list of projects to try. I know I did! (Like I need more inspiring projects on my list....)
Woo-hoo! As I mentioned the last time I posted, I've been very inspired...hmmm, make that obsessed now, by Lotta Jandsdotter's Lotta Prints. Finally, finally, over the weekend I managed to get some potatoes carved so that my 3-year old daughter and I could do some printing together. Success! Permanent fabric paint is a little scary around a toddler, but on the other hand it's just clothes she'd be ruining, right? And I'm trying to be better about letting my kids have access to "the good stuff," as Soulemama talks about in The Creative Family. Yeah, another book I'm obsessed with.
The large navy blue starry shapes are actually made from quilter's template plastic I had lying around, but the rest are spud-based. I kinda like the two ovals stamped on top of one another best, I think. It should take me only a mere five more days to hem them all into tea towels!
I got my copy of Lotta Jandsdotter's Lotta Prints
We're getting this question a lot, as you can imagine. Here's the latest:
In the second week of May we will start to email invitations to create Spoonflower accounts to a small number of beta-testers. Because such a large number of people are interested in participating in the beta (thanks everyone!) we'll expand the number of invitations we send slowly over a period of two months or so. At the end of two or three months we hope to be able to take the wrapper off the web site and open registrations to everyone, but we'll have to see how things go. Thanks for being patient, and thank you again for all the encouragement. We're looking forward to hearing your suggestions and ideas.
I really don't know if my liking for fabric designs that don't look "digital"--while still being digitally printed--is more because I do not myself know how to maneuver in Photoshop and the like, or if I am just genuinely drawn to designs that look...well, drawn. One way or another, I sure like these little pillows from Jamtartbaby. I keep wondering how I can inspire my daughters to work up their own fabric designs to print on Spoonflower once we're live, and simple designs like these might be something they could appreciate and relate to.
I was feeling a bit groggy this morning after a night alone caring for our three daughters. (Stephen's gone fishing with friends this weekend.) But I got a nice little jolt of excitement along with my Earl Grey when I stumbled on PataPri. A resident of Chicago by way of Japan, Yuko Uemura has just recently begun selling her own fabric designs in honor of her shop's one-year anniversary. Her fruit, animal, and other nature-inspired designs are silk-screened onto 100% linen and are fresh and simple in colors like aqua, orange, olive, and gold. You can buy these little treasures for projects of your own--Yuko generously allows others to sell items made from her fabrics--or you can purchase her tea towels, accent pillow covers, and tablecloths. Get the yardage while it lasts! According to her blog, these fabrics will only be available for a limited time.
Jan DiCintio at Daisy Janie is a creative multitasker. She designs fabric, makes handbags, paints, designs home furnishings, and on top of all that, runs Scoutie Girl, a blog that features other indie artists and crafters. Her original fabric designs, available through both her website and her Etsy shop, strike me as kinda Marimekko-esque, but are definitely all her own. I was curious about how her fine art skills might mesh with her fabric design process. She told me:
I basically start with a doodle or sketch that I either scan into or recreate in my graphic design software. From there, I manipulate the heck out of it – pulling pieces out, putting pieces in – until I have about 10-20 separate elements I’ve created based upon that initial sketch. It’s like putting a puzzle together once I have the basic pieces of my design, with a lot of layering, scaling, embellishing, experimenting and tweaking to create a cohesive, balanced finished repeat.
The first photo is her Kate fabric with its doodle inspiration for comparison, plus two more that are my personal favorites. Nice, no? I hope to see these rolling off the Spoonflower printers in the near future!
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