Yesterday a crafting friend loaned me the very inspiring Prints Charming book. It's full of ideas for very simple screen printed motifs, often combined in projects with plain fabrics, like natural linen.
It's a very modern look we've come to expect from craft these days but because the screen printing has its own roughnesses and slubs, it doesn't fall over into being too clinical and cold. It looks hand made, and that, with simplicity, is its charm.
One of the motifs from the book - done by stencil, not by screen
I haven't got any screens for printing, so I got out my trusty stash of freezer paper so kindly sent to me by Jennifer years ago, whipped the safety catch off my scalpel (i.e. removed the piece of cardboard I keep over the pointy end) and got carving.
Tonight I have heat-set the paint and they look finished. I wonder what I will use them for?
My own idea - trying to blend orange and yellow in the poppy petals. The faint grey line is for stitching a quilted circle around the motif in several colours of thread. Next project!
I haven't posted for a few days, and I didn't make it to the Sketchcrawl. Instead, I've been sitting in bed with that 'oh-I'm-getting-a-virus' feeling and a very great tiredness. I'm starting a new job on Monday, and so it's been top of the list to get well and not to fall asleep on my desk on the first day at work. Sometimes you need to be disappointingly sensible, right?
Anyway, in the absence of drawings of the animals (I was so looking forward to drawing the animals!), here's something I prepared earlier.....
Remember this sketch of village houses?
It became a stencil and got three doses of paint.
Red, we love red:
Blue, and green.
And now it's a village again!
I'm working on a whole series of farm and village stencils, with a wall hanging or small quilt in mind. Here are one or two of the others:
I think the bluebird needs a branch, but nothing too big or heavy. And a bead for his eye, of course!
I've got drawings ready for a couple more animals and flowers, and then I'll start thinking about a little quilt to put them in.
This week, the desk's a jumble of projects all vying to be finished. I've got a growing collection of stencils on the retro farm theme, and the latest additions were a sheaf of wheat, a strawberry, and a very sweet little hedgehog who, I am told, needs a 'shiny black button nose'!
At the back, the drawing for my latest Posted Stitches quilt, on the myths and legends theme. A kimono hanging up has since been finished and is being used. And I'm still reading that gorgeous French book....
So, I mentioned that the apple stencil was due to get a friend, and here she is: Ms. round pear!
I left all the stenciling kit all over the table on Saturday night (ahhh), and hit the decks again Sunday with a cut n' colour for another drab Spotlight tea-towel.
Now with a lovely new look:
I liked the apple, but I like the pear even more now that I see them together. This one was a challenge as the paint I was using was a two-part mix: concentrated dye mixed into an opaque fabric paint medium. (The green) It bled a little around the edges, where the foam brush leaked some moisture, but I quite like the effect, and it's pretty subtle, so I am not going to be worried. It proves it's handmade!
These two have been dried and heat-set, and they're wrapped in bright paper with ribbon all ready to be sent to a friend for a surprise. (Let's just hope she's too busy to read my blog this week. I reckon I'm safe!)
I did about 6 or 7 more designs, which I'll reveal as I get to photographing them. Oh, and I discovered that if you are careful, you can re-use a stencil but probably only once.
Thanks to a rescue parcel of freezer paper courteously offered (thanks Liesl!), I'm raring on the stencil front. Today the new inks, the paper, the cutting mat and the foam brushes all came out - and there was some pretty intense action. Here's the first to emerge from the smoke and dust of activity:
No, I didn't cut on the lines. I changed my mind about the border after drawing it.
A dry-ish foam brush seems to work best. And I've got plastic and a paper towel underneath to soak up any extra paint.
After the first colour has dried enough that it won't smear, the second colour carefully goes in, and the third. We wait for an hour or two while it dries, then:-
Ooooh, aaaahhhh...
Before the stencil is entirely detached, I cut the stem with sharp scissors, held the stencil back down again, held my breath and painted in the apple stem. (I'm amazed I thought to do this before peeling the stencil entirely off).
I'm very pleased with the results: a teatowel with a folksy apple on it - now drying on the ironing board, to be pressed to heat set in the morning. Next: pears!
Has anyone else signed up for Spoonflower? It's a new online service, still in Beta testing, which allows you to order batches of printed fabric with your own design on it.
Your own design... that just makes me go a little breathless.
I heard about Spoonflower over at the Craftsanity podcast, when Jennifer interviewed Cara Angelotta of Sew Bettie. And Angry Chicken made that to-die-for cheat-cloth quilt last month. Ahh. So you've probably already heard about Spoonflower excitement.
Either way up, the Flickr pool for users' designs is worth a peek. I have been trawling it this morning and sighing over the lovely wonders to be found there, such as these gorgeous squirrels by sewingstars.
***
Thanks for all the lovely comments about the summer quilt. The basting did go till 11:30, but I spent much of that time listening to good music and dreaming up the quilting design I am going to use on this quilt.
Also - just in - my stencilled quilt challenge was completed on the weekend! Head on over to Posted Stitches to see what's happening, and tomorrow I will post the step-by-step photos of the stencil process. I had a few problems, but nothing that a few beads won't hide! (If only real life were that simple).
"Yay, this is really exciting! I love stencils", I thought.
And then I got busy. Really, really busy. Tired, sore feet and down-at-the-corners-of-my-mouth busy, with job hunting. Applications and networking and emails and phone calls and endless scouring of job ads, and more soul searching, and lots of shadow-boxing at the gym (okay, maybe not lots, but enough to make me grin a bit again). It's no secret that the job hunting game is depressing, and I'm starting to find it hard. I hate admitting it, but it's just the way things go.
A bit of stenciling did happen in between everything else, and generally in short bursts late at night, and I'm almost ready to reveal what I've made. See, I had to keep the lid on it till October because it's for Posted Stitches.
So, what does a girl do when she's blue? Well, today I bought some shoes. That counts. And chocolate - I splurged on one single raspberry milk chocolate cream from Haigh's, Melbourne city. Yuuuum. And the gym (dancing and very silly boxing). And last night, some tea and stitching on the sofa. Tonight I have a big urge to watch Howl's Moving Castle for approximately the 63rd time. If anyone's looking for me with fabulous job offers this evening - I'm on the sofa.
Okay, so back to the stencils. I struggled with the freezer paper, folks. I was wondering what on earth I was doing wrong, and then... it struck me... I haven't got freezer paper - I've got a slightly different product! So now I'm a shadow-boxing, blue, dim-witted dingbat. Doh. Just crossed wires, really, as they sell a wider range of Reynold's papers in Canada, and somehow we discussed the wrong one. I didn't keep the box, so I hadn't realised until today, when - Bam! - I worked it out. Time to find some real freezer paper before trying again.
In the meantime, two yummy books have crossed my path and have been gobbled up:
- The Lollipop Shoes, by Joanne Harris. This is the sequel to Chocolat, and it's damn fine for cold evenings and for pulling you out of your troubles into the swirly, spangly, slightly suspenseful world of the witches of Montmartre. Get a shawl and some fuzzy slippers before you start this, because you'll be up late!
This one's still in the process of being 'gobbled': - Things to Make and Mend, by Ruth Thomas. I picked this up on Sunday at BookTalk Cafe on Swan Street (about which more anon), no doubt attracted by the stitching theme. The main character is an embroidery artist who works in a quick mending shop. So far, so good. And I love the fact that someone actually embroidered the cover - Faber and Faber logo and all - which is photographed for the book!
So here's a sign-off from me, the footsore stencil flop with a sitting up late reading penchant. I'm sure I'll be back on cheerful form soon to tell you all about my adventures and the tiniest bit of progress that I managed to make on the Summery Quilt this week.
