A Summertime Clutch

My envelope clutch made from fabric purchased from Nekanen's Shop on Spoonflower.

Check out Nekanen's Shop on Spoonflower.  I ordered a fat quarter of her roses stripes fabric and made this simple envelope clutch.  The design speaks for itself.  I kept trying to add embellishments to the cover of the bag but ended up discarding everything because the design itself is lovely and needs nothing added.  A pretty summertime clutch.  

Singing the praises of my Janome Magnolia 7318

This is a collage made on PicMonkey.  In the collage are three shots of the Barney Bag, three shots of a  collection of  8x8 sample scraps that I pieced together, and one scan of a collage I did out of bleeding tissue paper.

Since the purchase of my Janome Magnolia 7318, the sewing life has become much easier.  I've gone through a series of Brothers.  It was always with trepidation that I approached my Brother sewing machine.  I've been sewing off and on since I was 10 and I had three years of Home Ec (back when it was really Home Ec) so I have sewing skills.  It's the machine end of the deal that put me off.  I have a low frustration level for all things mechanical.  Since my discovery of Spoonflower, though, I keep thinking of all the things I can make if only I can get my machine to work.

One day, while researching sewing machines, I read a review of a Singer machine on Amazon.  In the review the person wrote that rather than purchasing that particular Singer machine, she was going to get a Janome Magnolia.  What's a Janome???  I had never heard of a Janome.  White, Singer, Brother, yes. But Janome?  No.

I googled the name and found this site: sewingmachinecabinets.com.  There was the Janome Magnnolia 7318 and there was also a video demonstrating the use of the machine.  I decided to take the plunge and order it.  It was delivered in a couple of days.  The top drop in bobbin is wonderful.  Since sewing with the Janome Magnolia, I've completed several projects with nary a curse word.  I can't believe that for all these years there existed a sewing machine that I was happy to see and to use.  There are many stitch options and features on this machine and it is well worth the price.  I recommend it.  Oh, and my Brother?  It's sitting on the floor.

8 x 8 Test Swatches from Spoonflower

If you create with Spoonflower, you eventually collect a load of 8 x 8 test swatches of fabric designs.  An 8x8 test swatch of any design uploaded to Spoonflower must be ordered so that the designer can actually hold the swatch in his or her hands and decide if that design is what was desired, i.e., does it look okay on fabric, not just on a computer screen.

What to do with the 8x8 test swatches?  I found a pattern in "Simply Sublime Bags" by Jodi Kahn.  She calls her purse design the Barney Bag.  She used place mats to make her bag.  I sewed 4 8x8 test swatches together to get the desired size of the bag, then I ordered two bamboo purse handles from Etsy.  After the test swatches were sewn together, I ironed on  fusable interfacing to stiffen the Kona cotton -- I wanted it flexible, but sturdy.  For the lining of the bag, I used a square cotton napkin.

My Collage Collection can be seen at my shop Summersgaze on Spoonflower.

Here's a picture of my Barney Bag:

My version of the Barney Bag.

PicMonkey

Spoonflower has an photo editing link with PicMonkey.  What I like about PicMonkey is its cropping tool and all the resizing options for an image.  There are also different filters that can be applied to the images that are uploaded to PicMonkey.  There are a lot of options with PicMonkey.  It's a site worth exploring and it is simple to use.

For instance, I've been working on a design called "Kitchen Tile."  I first drew, scanned and uploaded my design to Spoonflower:

Original drawing -- you can still see some of the edges surrounding the design.

Same design uploaded to PicMonkey through Spoonflower, enhanced.

Once I got the effect I wanted, my design was downloaded back to Spoonflower.  Spoonflower has options for how a designer wants their design to look on the fabric: centered, basic repeat, half drop, half brick, and mirror repeat.  Choose which option works best for your work and then click "Save this view."

Sumo Paint

I've mentioned Sumo Paint previously in this blog.  I first read about it on the Spoonflower Fabric Designs Discussion group on Flickr.  It is an easy to use on-line photo editing program.  Original drawings can also be created and saved to your hard drive using Sumo Paint.

Just an example:

A scan of acrylics on black tissue paper.

Acrylics on black tissue paper after having been uploaded to Sumo and manipulated through filters.

When Dinosaurs Invented Flowers

One of the best things about being a parent is that one gets to revisit childhood through our children.  It's really a gift to get to be a parent and an even bigger gift to be a grandparent.  When my son was small, dinosaurs were a big part of his life.  In the 1980s and early 1990s, the dinosaurs experienced a resurgence in popularity.  A museum sponsored a contest for artwork depicting or inspired by dinosaurs.  There was a category for adults so I thought I'd try my hand.  Above is a crop of my larger piece, "When Dinosaurs Invented Flowers."  The piece is created from handmade paper made from cotton linter.

The fabric design I created from this part of my artwork can be seen on Spoonflower and is available for sale through my shop, Summersgaze on Spoonflower.

COYOTE COLOR

Coyote Greeting Card from the 1980s

 A million years ago, BCPC, (before cheap personal computers), I created handmade greeting cards and sold them in the local flower shop. (Thank you, Jeanne.) One design I always liked was my coyote cutout with the Wichita Mountains in the background.  Maybe I exaggerated the cactus -- we have them, but they aren't the saguaro cacti of Arizona -- but the coyote, the bright sun, and the blue mountains I can see outside my door. I tinted the paper I used for the cutouts with a strong dilution of watercolors.

I thought maybe a scan of the coyote card would translate well to fabric.  I'm still working on it.  I opened a collection on Spoonflower called "Coyote."  You will see designs made from crops of the coyote card, but there is no fabric design with the actual coyote on it yet.  I'm still working on it.

Here is an example of a design I created from a cropped area of my coyote card:

More designs created from the coyote greeting card can be seen at Spoonflower.

To view all fabric designs available, visit my Summersgaze shop on Spoonflower.

Now on Flickr.

Finally I've begun creating with the fabric I've designed on Spoonflower.

See my creations on Flickr.

Kaleidoscope

Do you remember, as a child, playing with a kaleidoscope?  I loved those tubes of wonder.  Just by moving the tube around, different designs could be made with colored rocks.  In my adult years, I have continued to purchase kaleidoscopes.  I even have one kaleidoscope where the end can be removed and I can insert my own objects to view through the kaleidoscope.

On Sumo Paint, there is a feature that can be used to manipulate digital  photographs into beautiful kaleidoscope designs.

I have a collection on Spoonflower called Kaleidoscope.

One of my designs for sale in my shop on Spoonflower, SUMMERSGAZE, is called "Eye of the Chicken." This design is based on this photograph:

This is a beautiful barred rock hen.  One day she came up close to the house and I snapped this picture.  I uploaded this picture to Sumo Paint, chose the Kaleidoscope feature until I saw a pattern I liked.  I centered the Kailedoscope feature over the hen's eye.  The resulting design, with the red and black center of the hen's eye and her black and white feathers, turned out well.  

Milton's Roses

So after I worked on my Bee's Knees collection on Spoonflower yesterday, I worked on a collection devoted  to digital pictures I took of the surprise Mother's Day bouquet of red roses that my husband gave me this past Sunday.   Also included are digital photographs, manipulated, of roses that grow in our garden.

I call this new collection "Milton's Roses."  The designs are dedicated to my paternal grandfather.  His passion was for roses and  mums. He entered . . . and won . . . contests sponsored by the flower clubs  in Oklahoma City.  I have many memories of my grandparents walking toward our house with a bucket load of blooms for us to enjoy.  Growing up, my brother and I could walk through my grandfather's garden and greenhouse, but we had to keep our hands to our side.  My grandfather's love of flowers was a serious avocation.

There are two photo editing/manipulation web sites that I enjoy using.  One is PicMonkey.  Once you have a Spoonflower account, the photos or scanned images that you upload there can be edited on PicMonkey by clicking on "Actions" above your uploaded image.  A drop down box will appear and one of the choices will be to edit with PicMonkey.

Another great editing site is Sumo Paint.  The learning curve on this site is nice and gradual.  A photo can be enhanced and then turned into mosaic tiles or a kaleidoscope.  It's fun to use.  When the picture is uploaded to Spoonflower, wonderful designs appear. Below is a design I did  using Sumo Paint.  I scanned rose petals and uploaded the scan to Sumo Paint.  I uploaded another layer of the same scan and outline some of the petals with black ink.  The top layer was manipulated with "kaleidoscope" on Sumo.

The Bees' Knees

So I've begun working on a new fabric collection on Spoonflower.  The collection is based on a series of photographs and artwork I've created over the years having to do with the venerable honey bee.  For several years, my husband had several hives of honey bees.  I've broken my foot while being chased by honey bees.  I've been known to throw pots and pans at angry honey bees (which did no one any good at all except make me look ridiculous!)

Below is a picture of my husband harvesting the honey.

I call my collection "The Bees' Knees."  I used to hear my grandparents say that phrase.  I never knew what it meant though.  I just did a Google search and it means "of the highest quality."   And I just thought it sounded funny.

Here is one design I'm still working with.  I manipulated a photograph of a sunflower with two honey bees on it.   I think it looks like a glass ready for some iced tea.  (It's still a work in progress.)

Regrets . . . I've had a few.

One thing I've learned since trying my hand at designing my own fabric is that what looks good on the computer might not look good on fabric.  My main problem has been that, sometimes, the image I upload has been too large, thus affecting the design.  The optimal pixels for a design  on Spoonflower is 150 pixels.

Yesterday, as I went through my Kaleidoscope collection, trying to decide which designs I wanted to put on the Spoonflower Marketplace, I noticed that some of the designs were rather large.  I logged onto Spoonflower and checked the sizes of the images that I didn't think look very good.  I created a new collection called "Regrets . . . I've Had a Few" and spent the afternoon cropping my images down and reworking them so that they would look better as fabric designs.  When I've completed that task, I'll order a sampling of my "Regrets . . . I've Had a Few" collection to see if the design swatches measure up to what I am seeing on the computer screen.

These are the designs that did pass my inspection and that are now shown on the Spoonflower Marketplace:

Kaleidoscope Collection at Summersgaze on Spoonflower

The first photograph is of wildflowers in our front yard.  The second picture is a design I created from that image using on line photo editing tools.

Spoonflower

May 14, 2012

For the last couple of months, between real life, I've been working on a new project -- designing fabric.  There is a wonderful web site called Spoonflower.  On this site, amateurs and not so amateurish (boy, are they good!) designers can upload designs for fabric.  There are several different fabric types at several different prices.  Spoonflower is set in North Carolina.  Creating an account on Spoonflower is simple.  The Spoonflower site also has a blog that tells users how to create their works for uploading to the site.  On YouTube are tutorials from Spoonflower.

Before a design can be put out in the Spoonflower market for sale, the designer must purchase a test swatch to see if what is on the computer screen translates well to fabric.  A test swatch is $5 or the user can create a collection of different designs and order a collection of swatches, which is more cost friendly.

Waiting for me in the mailbox this afternoon was package from Spoonflower with two collections I had ordered a week ago.

One of the collections I created is called "Hakes."  Hakes is the maiden name of one of my third great grandmothers.  One of my most treasured keepsakes is Esther Hakes Record Reed's Bible.

The front cover of the Bible

This image was uploaded into a photo editing site which I then manipulated it into a subtle pattern of browns and rusts.  The resulting design can be seen here:

design inspired by my third great grandmother's Bible cover

Inside her Bible, Esther had listed all the names and birth dates of her children.  I scanned one of those pages and the resulting design can be viewed here:

design inspired by my third great grandmother's hand writing

I call the design "Circling the Wagons" which is appropriate since Esther and her family traveled west from New York State to Illinois in the mid-1800s.

More of my designs can be seen at Summersgaze on Spoonflower