Makeful Challenge - The Apron

A few weeks ago I received a lovely package in the mail from Makeful. Inside, a blank apron for me to craft upon and enter into another awesome Makeful Challenge.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do for this challenge: A mash up potato stamp and painting repeat pattern of me, Kyle and Nomi’s faces!

To start I did a mock up of the pattern idea in Adobe sketch on my phone. Great little program for playing around with ideas. I highly recommend the download. Takes some getting used to, but very satisfying results once you get the hang of it.

With my pattern designed the next step was to gather my materials.

Materials
1. Potatoes (three different sizes)
2. Paints (fabric if you are intending on washing these guys, I actually used acrylic because I was
3. Paint Brushes
4. Jar of water
5. Newspaper to cover you work surface for easy clean up.
6. Felt (optional). To use as a stamping surface under your apron. Helps with unevenly cut potatoes, so you can press down and get a more even print.
7. Apron

Next step was a quick test on a piece of muslin. I wanted to test my colors and see how painting on the fabric would work. Once I was satisfied with the test results, I just dove in and started making the print.

I used my adobe sketch drawing as a guide, and laid down all the potato stamps faces and painted flowers first.

 
Once the base of the pattern was set and dry, I then began painting on the face and flower details. Final step was painting on the hair.

After that I let the apron dry and voila, my repeat pattern was complete.

I am absolutely thrilled with the results of my repeat pattern, something that doesn’t always happen. I think taking the time to sketch first and then do a test really helped. In fact I kind of love my test piece and want to do something with it!

I’ve decided to name the pattern Happy Home, because when I showed it to my daughter that’s what she said after seeing it. It seems fitting.

Here is a little insta story I made as well of the process:

This was a super simple and fun craft, and now my husband and I have a sweet little apron to dawn while cooking our traditional Saturday morning pancake breakfast! Mmm…

A Quilt Cover

I’ve been obsessed with quilting lately, like can’t stop dreaming up geometric stories to tell through textiles obsessed! So when I received my blank canvas cell phone case for one of the Makeful challenges, I knew I had to try quilting up a cover!

To start I measured the case and got the dimensions and drew them out on graph paper.

My patterning process for quilting so far has been to sketch out my designs on the paper and then move to illustrator and trace out the pattern pieces and add on a quarter inch seam allowance. After, I print out the pattern pieces, and cut them out, and from there I’m ready to move to the fabrics and sewing.

I love using illustrator because it allows me to play with colors and easily fiddle around with the shapes and layout.

But for my quilted case, I wanted to just try free handing straight from the drawing, something I probably won’t try again. It was super fun to just sit down with my fabrics and start experimenting in front of the machine – almost like sketching with textiles – but I think I ultimately enjoy more having the direction of a printed pattern. The quilted stripes in my design are not a uniform width apart, which I was going for, but if I made this again I would keep a more consistently spaced distance. But one cool thing about free styling was that initially I didn’t have a nose on my design, something I felt I needed to add after I sewed it all up, so I just added it in.

I’m not 100% sure my quilted case was entirely successful either… even with some intense pressing, it was still a little too thick for the case, I mean it fit, but it was just not as flush as a piece of paper would have been. Regardless, I love the way the fabric and seams looks all pressed out under the case. Kind of a magical texture.

I feel like this project may have been a bit of a happy fail for me. I considered redoing the case again, and perfecting it for the challenge because I most certainly made mistakes. But for me it’s through mistakes that I learn. It’s through all these experiments, and mix ups and mess ups and through making a charming and funny quilted cell phone case that I discover exciting new adventures on my crafting journey! So please enjoy!
#makefulchallenge #bemakeful

Festive Forest Friends - A Tutorial

How To Make A Festive Forest Friend!
As the holiday’s approach, Christmas trees are popping up everywhere I turn!

So here is my crafty take on the iconic holiday tree! I call them Festive Forest Friends! They are simple and sweet and probably full of eggnog soaked dreams and hearts in the shape of candy canes.

I used the following list of materials to create my very own Festive Forest Friends,… but you could easily swap out the hand stamped muslin for another print of choice.

Materials:

1. Fabric - I chose plain muslin for this craft
2. Sewing machine
3. Thread to match your fabric
4. Scissors
5. Eraser or stamp of choice
6. Acrylic paint and paint brush
7. Embroidery floss, pink for mouth, brown for eyes
8. Embroidery ring
9. Embroidery needle
10. The Festive Forest Friend pattern print out

How to:

Step one print out the pattern here!

Then Trace pattern onto a piece of muslin. I’m using blank muslin because it’s sturdy, and yet somehow still airy. You can really use any robust fabric for this, as long as it seems like it will hold it’s cone shape without any stuffing… a chiffon silk is probably NOT what you want here!

Note: Do not cut out yet!

Next step is to create your ‘print’ on the blank muslin. For my two trees I used two very simple stamps. One, a triangle that I cut from an eraser! And the circle was the end of my paint brush! I love finding existing things to use as stamps! Lots of great shapes out there to create beautiful surface design with!

Since my Festive Friends are for only for decorative use I decided to use acrylic paint to stamp them. If you intend to wash them, you probably want to use something more permanent like a fabric paint, fabric ink, or fabric marker.

Next, mix your color of choice out of the paints in a shallow plate. Then begin stamping your pattern in the traced out Festive Friend body shape and base. Remember to do your stamping on a piece of cardboard because the paint will seep through the fabric and mark whatever is underneath. Feel free to got outside of the pattern lines! I also stamped my star. But you could use an alternate fabric here, like a yellow felt. Sky is the limit.

Let the paint dry!

Next step, embroidering the face! This could be done before painting… but I’m a klutz and I would worry I would somehow mess up my embroidery in the stamping process! So it’s really up to you!

To start you will need to mark your face outline onto the muslin, lightly with a pencil.
Next you will embroider on the eyes with the brown embroidery floss and the mouth using the pink embroidery floss. I personally like to have my fabric mounted in an embroidery ring while doing this, which is why you do not cut out the piece first. You want to have enough fabric to fit it into the size of ring you have!

For the embroidery itself, I do a simple satin stitch to create a filled in circle for the eyes and either again a satin stitch to create a half circle or a simple outline stitch to create a half circle line for the mouth. Here is where you can really play around with expression! You can make your tree happy or sad, or have eyebrows or tiny tears. It’s up to you! The face on the pattern is just a general guideline.

Once the face is embroidered on, you can now start to cut! Cut out the body, base and star piece.

Now it’s time to machine sew! Start with the the body piece. Just a straight stitch down the back to the first opening notch marks, back stitch, lift up sewing machine foot, pull fabric through to next notch mark, start sewing again, starting with a quick back stitch to the end of the line. You will use that space between the notches for flipping you Festive Friend inside out! Then sew on the circular base to the bottom of your cone shaped tree.

Once you are done with that, you can carefully flip your Festive Friend right side out!

You will need to hand stitch up that hole you left open. I use a simple whip or chain stitch for this part in a thread color to match fabric.

You could also stuff this little Festive Friend up if you like. I just prefer the light and airy feel of the none stuffed tree friend, and since mine are just for decoration, I’m not too worried about them getting squashed.

Now it’s time to attach the star. I just did a  couple quick stitches in a thread color that was close to the muslin to attache the star to the tip of the Festive Friend.

And voila! Finis! Your very own Festive Friend, and if you make more than one, well then you’ve got yourself one real Festive Forest!

Have fun and make it awesome.

Potato Stamp City!

 

The potato stamp is wonderful thing! Am I right?

I love the organic and graphic shapes that you can create by simply carving into a solid spud.

And they are great on fabric too! And there is something so wonderful about the lack of control with this material. It's impossible to guarantee the same result each time. I'm doing a whole series of fruit right now, and loving experimenting with using two shapes to create one image. Next up... Apples!

All The Fuzzy Feels!

How to begin again after so much change... just dive in right! How about I lay down some goals for what remains of this hot and wonderful summer and the coming fall and winter! 

Goals 

1. In general make more!

2. Craft the heck out of everything!

3. Surface Design... it's time to dive in... oh it's overtime!

4. Poems. Write them!

5. Collect Inspiration!

6. Blog. I miss this process. I just do.

This seems like a good start. 
Hello old friends! Are you all still out there?