Nap Time Crafts

My little man's head had barely even the pillow and I was setting up my printing stuff. I had seen an image of a deer with a lot of detail that I really liked so I just simplified it, so I could turn it into a stencil. I am really happy with the final image.

To do such a small print I used a small embroidery hoop with a sheer curtain as the mesh, it was so easy to do that I had put together the screen, cut the stencil and printed and cleaned up all while my little man was sleeping. can't beat that.


Perfect timing, I can hear him stirring now.

mug rugs

Now that I have all of these fun prints from my course, I have to try to use them in my future projects. So I put the simple but sweet birds into Mug Rugs that I am doing for a swap through The Quilting Gallery. I really like these, and hope that their new owner in the United Kingdom enjoys them.

4 days away!!

So my friend Athena and I just got away, kid free for four days!! It was fantastic, we did a 2 and a half day course which was inspiring. Silk screen printing at ACAD in Calgary we built a screen then printed using a stencils and a screen with photo emulsion. I have worked with stencils before and then hand painted them, however using a screen allows you to reuse the stencil and the coating of paint is nice and even.
The instructor was great she really opened my eyes to the possibilities of stencils. I wasn't happy with the quality of photo emulsion image that I produced, my screen was the first screen so the timing with the ultraviolet light was a little off, as a result it was under exposed and started to wash off the screen. Stencils are more what I am interested in and are super easy to clean up after when you are working in a small space at home.

Of course we couldn't go to the Big Smoke and not do some shopping, I was happy to come home with a new dress, belt, shirt (which I printed on) and shoes, then something for my fellas, and finally Ikea for the house and a fun mirror for Rio with doors so he can play peeka boo with himself, so cute.

Here are some of the my favorite prints:
The Blue t-shirt is done with 1 stencil and blobs of 2 colours, pulling the squeegee down the screen makes this effect. The green t-shirt is actually 2 different stencils. This stencil was super quick, these weren't the best prints as one of the cars looks stripy, this was caused by putting newspaper over the print so I could print another one beside it before it had dried. The paint that had touched the newspaper dried differently from the paint that didn't, interesting effect. I didn't want to waste them so turned them into bean filled bookends.

nothing like a nice warm cuppa

This weeks project was a Tea Cozy, something I didn't really need but was lots of fun to make. I followed the instructions from a book I have Bend the Rules Sewing by Amy Karol. The instructions were great, I just free handed the shape and it probably needs to be a bit wider or as some other patterns show you could have a slit for the handle. I lined it but didn't use batting.

Again my friend over at Our Ilan & Quinn, gave me a great tip for the bias finishing. I had never done anything other than store bought bias before so I thought it was going to be really time consuming but surprisingly it wasn't at all.

step 1: cut fabric strip
2: iron in half (length wise)
3: sew the 2 raw edges to the project and then fold down and around to the other side and as you will see the bias is already folded so you can hand stitch or machine stitch it. so cool.

mug rug swap

Today was a snow day, lots of snow and super cold. So after a meeting my little man and I headed home to hangout with dad who's sick on the sofa. I tend to veg if the TV is on, then I hit the choc chip stash and before you know consumed way to much. Luckily a friend provided inspiration, so with in minutes the sewing machine was set up and I was off. We made a mug rugs each to swap tomorrow. Best part of the day really, you can churn out a mug rug so quickly.. so I made two. It was nice to find a use for these little birds I printed a few months ago.

I am loving all the time at the machine

Last night hubby was busy playing video games, so I headed to the sewing room (the corner of our bedroom) with no particular project in mind. I would like to make a fabric bucket like the one at The Stitchin Chicken I just don't have any suitable fabric at the moment. So instead I made a little pouch to house the few note books that live on my kitchen counter. I didn't follow a pattern so working out the steps was part of the fun.

A shirt to a skirt

Finally I did it. Learning how to turn a large men's shirt into a skirt has been on my to do list for a while. A few nights ago when Rio had gone to bed I left Aaron to play Wii and headed for Athena's.
First of all we decided on simple is best, I cut the sleeves off the shirt and cut across the body. Then I sewed down the sides (as the shirt was a little wide) then hemmed the top and I left the original hem of the shirt for the bottom. Next the new skill, ruching which uses elastic thread, to create the waist band, so cool and easier than i thought. I reattached the pocket with a border of contrasting fabric, and there you have it my first skirt.

I enjoyed this so much I went to the Thrift store the next day to make another one, this time I took off the buttons and put a pocket on the side.