Today I had a day off work and went to play at college. We were transfer printing after creating rubbings with transfer crayons and then washing over transfer dyes. This would, of course, explain the rare glimpse of an iron in the background. Screenprinted gouache paint onto brown parcel paper.
Victory! One purchase of some woolly nylon & one and half hours later and I have a finished hoodie. It is a comfy fit, the hood could do with being a little roomier but, it is a success! M is pleased with his hoodie - he looks peeved because his pedal fell off (and I was too busy sewing the hoodie to notice he wasn't back yet and might need to go and rescue him).
I have added to the Flickr CRAFT: along 2009 group and I have been impressed with some of the other hoodies there. One lucky fella has a zippy pockets for a phone and things (don't tell M). Whilst one young chap has his pocket made from some cute WALL-E fabric. If I had been half as clever as this chap's Mum I could have done something cunning with contrast sleeves and hood.
I drew up my pattern. I decided to make a paper pattern instead of cutting directly as indicated in the tutorials - who knows if this is successful I could make more! Or remake if M doesn't like the fabric or the fit needs adjusting slightly.
I even applied the pocket (using a twin needle on my regular sewing machine). The effect is okay but the rest of the sewing I wanted to acheive using my overlocker and the coverstitch function.
So, I then set up my overlocker with some black thread and to check the stitching used scrap fabric to check that I had everything set up right. I tried this lots of times and still came up with the same horrible effect:
Silk paint on cartridge paper. The cartridge paper was placed under some silk I was painting for some samples. I had lightly placed the silk on the paper and used light brush strokes with a saturated brush.
This was a piece of "test" paper for my Christmas card manufacture. In the end I ran out of time and the fabric I embellished (before cutting it up) wasn't quite as sparkly as I would have liked it. The paper was really a test of the thermofax screen which I was using and the accompanying gold metallic screen printing ink I had bought, I then washed over the ever faithful brusho watercolour.
Itajime shibori paper using folded Japanese calligraphy paper into brusho watercolour. This paper was created when I was doing some practice prior to a college dyeing day. I had been inspired by a series of posts by Karen K Britto, a textile artist and maker who is the author of a book on Shibori. She hasn't updated her blog Entwinements in a while, but her previous entries still hold a wealth of information and discussion. This post and this post got me started with the paper folding. Hmmmm its tempting to give it another go......
Cut out of the museum newspaper I picked up when I visited the MAK in Vienna during the summer (that seems so long ago now - especially as I only really experienced a summer in Vienna). A Julien Opie exhibition was on at the time and this was on the front cover.
Cup of the day today features a oil pastel scribble with a black ink wash. Today I swapped lids with another cup and poured a smoothie in there instead of making a coffee. There were grainy bits (due to the raspberries) but this time no spitting was necessary. My smoothie was kept nice and cool due to the onboard chilling feature of my transport: the bottle cage of my bicycle. Yes, on one of the coldest days of the year I hauled my carcass onto my bicycle in the pre-8 o'clock gloom and pedalled into work. The cold wasn't too bad after the putting on of: 2 snoods/scruffs, 3 long sleeved tops with various thermal, windproof, thumb loops (thx G) features, cycle shorts, fleecy cycle tights, woolly socks (thx Mum), winter gloves and liberal smearing of vaseline over my cheeks (thx G, again). Everything stayed reasonably warm except my toes which were painfully defrosted in the lovely warm work shower.
