mug rugs!!

For Christmas, I scored 2 Mug Rugs.. Never heard of a Mug Rug before? neither had I. They are a fantastic idea my friend saw on an Australian craft blog, it is like a coaster for your cup of tea and big enough to put a cookie on too! So that's what everyone is getting next year for Christmas because they are so cool!
What did I get up to today, you guessed it a mug rug.
I had a piece of fabric I had painted (using a contact paper stencil) a strawberry on. Then I machine quilted it to an already quilted fabric for the backing and used a store bought bias tape (making my seems like a lot of extra work)...

A new journey

After coffee with a friend today I walked away with 2 wicked Mug Rugs, my friend made them after seeing the idea on an Ozzie craft blog. The Mug Rugs are little quilts big enough for a coffee cup and a cookie, so cool. This has given me the nudge I need to try quilting.

So here it is, my first attempt to make a quilt. First of all this is going to be no small undertaking, so I need a home for it. Next, I am going to try to use fabrics I already have, except for the base colour and the back. This also means my quilt will not be a well thought out coordinated quilt, rather a mish-mash of ideas/fabrics as are all of my projects. It's the thoughts that count right?

Textile Printing Course

Christmas has been busy of course so no time has been spent getting crafty. I had intended on learning how to turn a men's shirt into a skirt today but was really under the weather.

My friend and I are doing a textile printing course in Calgary on the 28th of January so we are starting to put together all the supplies we'll need. I have just spent some time searching the net for inspiration, now I need to sit down and do some sketching. To be prepared for the course we need to have print out of black and white designs that we'd like to work with.

sew much fun

Having just discovered Netflix, my TV viewing got a bit to much. So last night inspired by my friend Athena over at Ourilan, I decided to do something with a little bit of patch work in it.
I was thinking of doing a cuff for to-go coffee cups but didn't have one to measure so I did bibs instead. They are simple but I quite like them.

My First

So this is my starting point for real screen printing. I had tried to get around using real screen printing procedures in the past as I have been intimidated by chemicals and damaging the screen if you leave paint on it for to long etc. I had tried an embroidery hoop with glue as a filler, but to be expected the results weren't that great.

So having learnt from those experiments here I am at the drawing fluid and filler method. The big key I found was the thickness of the screen printing paints.. I had been using thinner paints in my other attempts.

So for my Christmas gifts this year i bought cotton aprons (60% cotton was all i could find for a reasonable price) then I dyed them in hot water and several tea bags. there are some great clips on you tube about tea dying if your interested. Then I printed my image on the back of the apron and upside down so that when I folded the bottom up to create the pockets the image was upright. I am really happy with the final product.