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February 14, 2009#

Making Fabric

Very busy of late. A period of upheaval and transition.  But I know this throwing things up in the air bit often provides fodder for sustained periods of creativity later on.  

In stolen moments I have been playing with scraps of hand-dyed fabrics.  Some of my own cottons mixed up with bits of silk leftovers from Connie Tiegel.  This blue fabric has a water feeling.

This green construction suggests a mossy forest or bog.

 (The fabric marked with x’s is another Connie Tiegel scrap.)

These fabrics are destined to be cut up and used in larger constructions, a series of landscape quilts I have had in mind for sometime.   I’m very curious to see how the velvets and gauzy silks hold up to my construction techniques for curved lines and shapes.  If they don’t fall apart too much, it could open the door to adding another textural dimension to my work.

January 26, 2009#

The Golden State

Last weekend looked like this.

One of those glorious indian summer days that always seem to be ordered up by the chamber of commerce for California in January.   I snuck off to the beach and caught this golden sunset over the Monterey Bay.  

Life in the real world is impeding my progress in the virtual one.  We are in the midst of moving, and boxes line the hallways, and are stacked high in the utility room.  Yesterday I packed up my “studio library”, which includes hundreds of art and textile related books.  I have several interesting ones on fabric design and textile printing.  One that caught my eye is “Design Your Own Repeat Patterns: a quick and easy approach” by V. Ann Waterman.  I must have bought it years ago for a class, as the price is marked $3.95.  Much easier to do on the computer these days, but good to know how to build a repeat pattern with paper and pencil as well.  Makes me itch to get creating.  But I resisted the tempting butterfly stickers, leaves and flowers of the pattern workbook, as I must resist most things textile related until we are settled into our new home.  For now I’m happy to have a bit more space in the studio and the dreams of more art time when moving is done.

January 12, 2009#

Lions, tigers, & color management…oh my!

This week’s winning Spoonflower fabric is by Rachel of MammaMade fame.

 

© MamaMade. used by permission

© Mamma Made Designs. Photo used by permission.

 

Rachel has been posting extremely detailed tutorials on designing fabric using vector art created in free software tools like Inkscape, a new SVG authoring program (shameless plug for SVG, a web technology I worked on years ago).  In fact, she details her complete design process for making the Lion Fabric pictured here.

Many of the principles she discusses like choosing a color palette, considerations about your design before you begin drawing, rotating images to make tiles, etc. are useful regardless of the software design tools you like to use.  

Personally, I’m not so big on trying to calibrate your monitor, or attempting to get a color managed workflow when printing on textiles.  Without ICC profiles, you are kind of stuck.  Even with ICC profiles on common printers, it’s complicated.  Rachel’s experiments sort of prove my point. Though she does end up with the makings of a great color swatch book.  

I’m more inclined to stick with using colors specified in the Spoonflower color palettes for Photoshop, and swatching my designs before printing yardage.  I’ve had very good results so far.

January 9, 2009#

Secretary of Arts

I know our new president has a whole bunch of stuff on his plate right now, but somehow I can’t help but think that the world would be just a little bit better place if President Elect Obama would take up Quincy Jones’s suggestion that he create a new cabinet position, “Secretary of Arts”.

I know I’d feel more hopeful.

If you would like to sign a petition supporting this idea, go here.  I only takes 30 seconds.

Let’s hear it for the arts.  Yes we can!

January 8, 2009#

Spoonflower quilt fabric test results

Have you checked out Spoonflower, a site where you can upload your own fabric designs and have them digitally printed onto fabric?

I made this small quilt using one of my beta tester swatches of Spoonflower’s first printed fabrics on Kona cotton.  Spoonflower has subsequently switched their print stock to Moda cotton (Bleach White from the Bella Series) which has a softer hand and a smoother surface, and have plans to support other fabrics as well.  I know I’m interested in printing on both home/dec. weight fabrics, maybe a cotton linen blend, and onto silk.  I’m sure many other crafters/artists are too. 

I’m very pleased with the quality of the Spoonflower fabric for quilting.  Using standard quilting techniques I torture tested the Kona printed swatches to the best of my ability.  I washed and ironed them.  I put them in the sunshine for actual cats to lie upon.  I sewed them with denim needles and free-motion quilted them heavily with cotton and rayon threads.  Short of burning the stuff, I worked it over pretty well. Basically this fabric performed just like Kona.

Here’s a picture of the back of a quilt…so you can see I REALLY quilted the stuff.  No problems.

Channeling my inner Harriet Hargrave,  I even took specific notes on my experiments:

  • Machine wash – wool cycle with synthrapol
  • Machine dry – low/gentle heat to damp dry
  • Ironed – hottest Cotton/Linen setting
  • Original samples: 20cm x 20.3cm
  • Washed samples: 19.1cm x 20.1 cm
  • Shrinkage: 4.5% width (weftwise), 1% length (warpwise)
  • Hand:  Before washing the hand was waxy, the fabric smooth with a spacious threadcount.  After washing the hand softened, it wrinkled a bit, the weave structure tightened and there was minimal fraying.

Most impressive is the color.  The colors on my swatches are very saturated.  Nice saturated colors on 100% cotton fabric that is reasonably lightfast and washfast, has a soft, non-waxy hand and can been ironed, sewn and quilted with good results.  I have been studying digitally printed textiles for over a decade and I have seen many failed experiments in the color department.  The ink-jet printing process inherently makes it difficult to get good color without sacrificing some other desired characteristic for quilt fabrics.

I’d say the Spoonflower fabrics are a winner.  Much nicer color results than I have been able to obtain shoving fabric sheets through my desktop inkjet printer to date, and the resulting fabric is wash and light fast.  Since I’m more of a Pimatex than a Kona person in general, I’m excited about the switch to Moda cotton, which I suspect will perform even better for my quilting needs.

January 7, 2009#

How to Posterize your cat

 

   This is my cat.

 

 

 

This is my cat on Spoonflower.

 

Even though I worked at Adobe for over 20 years, I am not a Photoshop expert. I can tell you a whole bunch about the technology inside the software, but I am like most folks who own Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and use it occasionally rather than daily.  I know how to do a few things well, but am generally lost when it comes to doing any task besides those few things.  I use Photoshop to prepare photos for the web or to print.  I do not use it as a graphics art tool very frequently.

So when it came to creating some sample files for printing onto fabric, I knew it would be best to consult an expert.  I pulled out my dog eared copy of Design Essentials by Luanne Seymour and thumbed through, looking for an easy and fun technique.  Luanne Seymour is a great designer, teacher, author, and quilter.  When we worked together at Adobe she gave me a copy of the first edition of Design Essentials with the inscription “Show me what you create”.  Needless to say, Design Essentials is one of my go to resources for Photoshop and Illustrator techniques.  I located her straightforward step-by-step instructions for “Warhol-style images” and presto, I transformed my cat into a pop-art portrait.   

The posterize technique is a good one for textile printing because it results in distinct shapes of flat solid colors. You can easily execute this sort of thing with traditional textile silkscreening methods, so I wanted to have a sense of what a digitally printed textile would look like.  I think it came out great. This method is much faster than making screens, getting out the paints and squeegees, etc. and not nearly so messy.  Not that I object to messy when it comes to art.

I recommend Luanne’s book, but there are other great tutorial resources for posterizing in Photoshop on the web too. Here’s one. Try it out. 

Wouldn’t it be great to have a quilt made with brightly colored pop-art images of your pets or your kids? Maybe gerber daisies? There are so many ideas for projects using this technique and printing the results to fabric.

January 1, 2009#

2008 in Books

I read books.  Nothing better to me than curling up with a wonderful novel and reading until I can no longer keep my eyes open. Oh I read other things as well.  The New York Times daily.  A glance at the front page of the Wall Street Journal.  My favorite blogs.  A few news sites.  Shelter magazines.  Art periodicals.  Most anything about women or quilts.  But really, I don’t enjoy reading anything as much as I do books.

 

So this year, with a more flexible schedule, and a bit more time for myself, I indulged in a reading marathon.  This stack is what’s known as the “Trophy pile”.  One of several piles of books that litter the master bedroom shamefully.  This pile began bedside in early January and grew there was no more room under the small oil painting.  It makes a pretty vignette.  

Many fine books were read, as well as some enjoyable piffles.

I will packing up the piles to make their way down to the newly constructed library at the new house. Meanwhile I made a list of most of the books I read this year, and posted them in the left sidebar.  I’ve discovered some great books spotted on my favorite blogs.  Maybe you will find one here you can enjoy.

December 29, 2008#

A humbug to remember

We don’t exactly do “Christmas” around here.  Over the years our annual celebration has been distilled to the absolute essentials of the season.

  • EggNog with a knob of bourbon. (check)
  • Persimmon cookies.  (check)
  • Fabulous bottle of wine (Burrell School Pinot). (check)
  • Yummy Mexican Posole served up by good friends. (check)
  • Good Friends. (!!!! check)

This year also featured the irresistible and seemingly ubiquitous Noro striped scarf I knit as a gift.  

We had a grand time doing just as we pleased.

We’ve renamed the occasion to reflect our non-traditional approach, and now raise our glasses with smiles on our faces, and our most sincere wishes for health and happiness. 

 Happy Humbug everyone.

December 24, 2008#

Mac-Christmas

All hail the FedEx driver who braved a dark and stormy night, and pulled into our driveway at 9pm last night. What goodies did he deliver?  More track lighting for the living-room?  A replenishment of light bulbs perhaps? Towel racks for the guest bathroom? I have grown so accustomed to the daily arrival of building materials, that I forgot the warm feeling of gift packages landing on the doorstep.

Some people think my only delight is fabric and textile related endeavours.  But it’s not true.

I like shiny things too.

Mac-Santa was very good to me this year.  Happy holidays everyone.

December 18, 2008#

Snow day

Snow on the ground is a rare thing in northern California.  So when it comes, it is a treat, greeted with enthusiasm.  I love how a dusting of snow makes all the shapes of things stand up and demand attention.

The most pedestrian plant emerges with a snowy white crown.

A birdhouse becomes a fairy castle or a monk’s high mountain sanctuary.

And a pile of stones aspires to be a work of modern art.

PS.  I fixed the photo links.  Sadly it meant reverting to an older version of WordPress.  I’ll wait for 2.7 to right itself with a dot release.

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