Photographed by ĻΩooĻΩoo ‏εïз‎ ©

just an idea to make a sponge bob T shirt

– License

I recently took a wonderful class with Lyric Kinard, Surface Design Sampler Platter. I had a great time and learned so much. Below is the book cover I created. On the front cover I created a stamp of a leaf. This was done by carving a leaf form into an eraser and then using fabric paint to stamp it. I later added a few beads and flower beads. I had too much fun.

Below is the back of the book cover. Similar techniques were used, more stamping but here I got to bead. LOVED IT! I attached a cabochon and then beaded around it, enough to bend over the cabochon to hold it in place. I then beaded around the leaves for fun. During the class we also did some photo transfer, foil stamping and screen printing. I had a wonderful time and I got the Mark seal of approval, “that’s cool, you could give that as a gift”

The project below is from the the class I took from Susan Brubaker Knapp. The class was ’start with photo’. I learned so much and liked the class so much I HAD to finish the project. I found thread painting to be so much FUN. I can’t wait to try it again. I hope to do some type of flowers for my next project.

A detail of the stone. I was very pleased with the stone area. I think they probably would have looked better if I had used a gray that was more modeled. The grass was quite difficult. I definitely should have used a print here.

I found an absolutely fun, extremely quick, totally perfect canvas for quick, little, and (could be) easy, embroidery project! All thanks to a book I perused at my local B&N, Pretty Little Pincushions. The bottle cap pincushion, which inspired me most, came from Jen Segrest. (Her pincushions are on the cover of the Lark Book) I did a LOT of poking around her many links and sites and dove right in to give it a go! When I found this site, I knew we had many, many, many bottle caps. My dad is an avid, and I mean obsessively avid, “recycle-er” of bottles and cans. My mom drinks Joint Juice daily. A match made in pincushion embroidery heaven!

These little bottle cap pincushions are easily made out of felt, can be embellished in an infinite number of ways, are absolutely useful, and are so little you won’t get tired or bogged down with them as a project! They are just calling for your original embroidery designs, painted fabric ideas, silk ribbon embroidery, or any other inspirational designs and whims you would love to pour out on these little do-dads.

I find that I can do one as a ‘break’ from any other activity. Each is a vast canvas for stitchery practice, unlimited creative blossoming, or…well…let’s face it…Fun! Your life needs fun! Go ahead, have some fun!

Making up the little felt creatures are just as fun as embroidering on them. The felt is inexpensive, easy to sew (no fraying seams to mess with), color happy, versatile and very forgiving! I can choose from any threads available in my cool yarn, thread, wool, filament stash and find a zillion ways to attach them to the felt.

Here are just a few of my beginning pincushions.

Here is the whole gang of un-embroidered, destined to be masterpiece, pincushions. (I told you I had a lot of fun making them up!)

After making these basic ones, I had person request for a special pincushion. I will post that pincushion tomorrow, in a separate entry. *An–ti–ci–pa–tion…*

My husband and I are remodelling my parents’ bedroom and it will be tones of yellows, reds, plums and lace white. My mom loves faeries, dragons and flowers, so I thought this would be a great Mother’s Day gift, after framing, for her newly designed bedroom. (I will have to embroidery a Dragon separately for another holiday)

I created the color palette and stitch design for this yellow faery embroidery. She uses various cotton embroidery flosses, silk embroidery floss (for her face), Kreinik filament, and silk embroidery ribbon in her design. I really am pleased with her and thought she’d make a great embroidery related banner her for my new blog. She’ll be the header for a while…

The faery is from a Dover Book, Fairies and Elves Iron On Transfer Patterns. I didn’t use the actual transfer pattern in the book at the full size. I re-sized the transfer and used a light box to trace the new sized embroidery pattern onto the fabric with a HB pencil.

Her wings are stumpwork embroidery (Resource: A-Z of Stumpwork) formed from stainless steel wire and remnant gossamer fabric.

The material is a gorgeous piece of tie-dyed cotton from Wal Mart…yes, Wal Mart…I think it was $6/yd and I used only a 15×15 square of it. I moved her, the faery pattern, re-sized, all over the fabric design until I found a place that resembled a cloud-like form that could be supporting her and her flower. When I moved the design around, it found a spot where “if just fit in”.

I discovered hand embroidery projects by way of Inspirations Magazine and NeedleNThread.com, and after completing the first square of the quilt blocks, I thought it went well enough that I then wanted to create my own canvas, my own design, and chose my own colors. Nothing like jumping right into the fire!

The first thing I did was organize my embroidery thread onto bobbins. As I would the bobbins, endlessly, I put them into fishing tackle boxes. I find that the result is a fantastic palette, easy to access and easy to see.

I needed a subject. I pondered over this for a few days…always on the look out for something catchy, something unique, something exotic…then as I was staring out the window, my mind wandering over the many valleys and hills in my mind, I realized that for each of those days, I had been staring out the window…looking at a wild, but very happy and healthy, bougainvillea. I thought that the subject matter, wouldn’t attract many other people to want to stitch it, but, the other plants potted in front of it would be great for ribbon embroidery, and I realized that I would be stitching something original and unique for me, and perhaps someone else may be inspired from it to look out their window and stitch what they stare at.

I cut a 15×15 square of muslin and dug out my watercolors. I knew that I could do a few washes on the background to enhance the finished item, so I fixed a palette and painted some ’splotchy’ background for my bougainvillea.

After painting the fabric, I had to ‘draw’ the pattern or picture that I wanted to stitch. Well, I really didn’t want to draw out all the details of this wild and crazy plant, so I basically made a few ’shapes’ to transfer onto the material with pencil.

Once the fabric was dry and the pattern shapes penciled on, I had a great time going to my tackle boxes of embroidery floss to choose an original color palette. I pulled out some pinks, purples, greens…and several browns.

I went through several stitch ‘encyclopedias’ and collections to choose a few stitches to use while working up my bougainvillea. I favored turkey stitch, stem stitch, french knot, detached chain, detached fly, and couching.

It is a lot of fun to stitch this way! I made up everything as I went along.

As I finished up the background areas of the bougainvillea, I decided to add stumpwork to the foreground. (Resource: A-Z of Stumpwork) I padded and added silk embroidery ribbon for the main triangle facing the front center, (which still needs a hanging stem protruding from the area), and I added silk ribbon and perle cotton for the potted pink gingers and fern. I did paint the pots on another piece of fabric, stuffed them and appliqued them to the main fabric.

This is what it looks like so far:

Once I had the fabric samples marked off and the paper templates cut out, I could start painting the fabric. My whole focus with this was to simply getting to the paint and embroider part of the projects…instead of spending countless hours stuck in my journal and thinking about painting and embroidering…I’d actually be painting and embroidering!

I didn’t get a picture of the actual watercolor set up. Basically, you set your material on a workspace, set up your paints. (I used watercolor, but acrylics, fabric paints, or dyes work just as well.) Once all that is ready to go, you can paint with any techniques you prefer. I simply did what I felt like at the time and didn’t give it too much ‘thought’. I wanted the blocks to simply paint themselves instead of me over analyzing the process. (Which I can do a LOT of…)

I like to use watercolor wet in wet. I wet the fabric with a wash brush to give the watercolor a way to ‘run’ and blur into unusual unpredictable patterns and flow. I did some lifting of wet watercolor and some dry brushing as well. I also tried some graded washes. While painting, I used the templates to just cover over sections of the 4×6 fabric areas. That left a pattern of sorts either on the edges of the painted areas. I lifted the templates and moved them around and just played with the painted areas that were left to create some designs. When you paint your blocks, just have fun with it and see what turns up. I know that I may not use all the blocks, and even if I don’t ANY of the ones that I painted, Hey, At least I was Painting and not thinking about painting. ; )

I had the painted ‘bricks’ hanging on a small drying line, yes, stretched across my computer room-under construction-

After marking off a 4×6 area on the material, I thought it would be great to have some various shapes to work with as paint templates. I cut some heavy art paper into 4×6 bricks so that the cutouts fit easily into the marked off space.

Then, I used scissors and cut ‘random’ shapes and designs out of the 4×6 paper bricks. I kept both the frame and the cutout to use as paint templates.

Some of you know that I belong to the Los Angeles Wearable Art Connection. Every year, there is a challenge fashion show; this year the challenge was to create a vest.

I entered in the “Manipulation” (fabric, not people!) category, and I’m pleased to tell you that I was voted into First Place! Ok– enough about me, I know you want to see the goods!

(Ha ha! Just teasing you! I’ll show you the real deal– this is just me, standing up at the podium while Diane Ricks reads my artist’s statement.)

This is the full outfit. Although the challenge only called for a vest, I was inspired with a full blown vision of the skirt, too! I created the fabric for the vest with my embellished noodles technique, using my own hand-dyed fabric for the background. The zinnias are made with gorgeous hand-dyed strips from Judy Whitehead. (Thank you sodypop! Your gifts are always appreciated– and loved and used!)

Here is a close up of the vest. I’ve embellished the fabric with silk flowers, fabric charms, Angelina fibers, and crystals:

Here is a close up of the skirt. It used to be a pair of white jeans. The inset is a piece of my hand-dyed cotton in a different coloration from the vest, with wavy strips of the vest’s fabric raw-edge appliqued to create some graphic tension. The zinnias are made using the same embellished noodle technique as the vest– I simply created them separately and appliqued them onto the skirt. I stencilled “Zinnia, Zinnia, Zinnia” using acrylic paints mottled to mimic the hand dyed background fabric:

Here is a photo of the flowered cuff I created using Judy’s hand-dyed cotton:

And, courtesy of Mary Norton from Fibervision, here is the newly crowned Zinnia Queen, modeling the entire outfit. Dig those bejewelled shoes!

You all are going to want to update your tetanus shots: here’s some more rust, coming your way!

I’ve posted previously about the fabric I’ve been rusting, dyeing, stencilling, and what all. Now, how about wearing your rust?

These are some silk scarves that I rusted, then overdyed, then stamped or stencilled or silkscreened. I’ve also done a silk knit tee and a long-sleeved button front silk blouse– but don’t seem to have photos!   Oh brother.  I sent them off to the Elverhoj museum without documenting them.  Well, I’ll just have to rust some more clothes to share with you all!

I have been so intrigued by creating rusty fabric! All summer long, a part of my backyard has been taken over by various rusty implements:

Here is a tutorial of how I use these rusty implements to create my rusted fabric. Today, we will work with an old oil drum, now being used to create a shibori-type pattern on some white cotton fabric.

Here are some finished fabrics– I like to overdye and stamp and stencil on the rusted fabric, to create unusual and unique art cloth!

I tend to figure techniques out without the aid of books or videos, because I find that the mistakes I make along the way lead me to create unique-to-me versions of whatever endeavor I’m attempting to produce. To rust fabric, Susan-style:

1. beg the neighbors for rusty items
2. stack said items in a heap in the backyard
3. cook lovely dinner for DH who complains that the neighbors will think we live in a trashy dump
4. explain over lovely dinner that neighbors are too busy laughing at wife and celebrating the removal of trash from their own yards to think badly of us
5. dampen fabric (silk, cotton, rayon, poly– everything I’ve tried rusts) with a 50/50 mix of white vinegar/water
6. arrange, tie, and/or smoosh fabric artistically around, over, on top of rusty object
7. sprinkle fabric with salt
8. cover fabric/rusty object with plastic tarp to keep fabric damp
9. check every so often for appropriate level of rust transfer** note that this transfer seems to happen faster with silk than with cotton, and faster in warm weather than cool

I over dye with Procion dyes, then stamp or stencil with Lumiere paints. Voila!

If you want more detailed directions, videos, or tools, please visit Rust-Tex, a wonderful new online site for all things rusty!

Happy rusting!

I am lucky enough to belong to a wonderful group of talented art quilters, called Fibervision.

A few months ago, we decided to work on a re-vision challenge. Everyone who wanted to participate brought a UFO (quilted, unquilted, blocks, it didn’t matter. We are women who do not do rules. We have found that if there are rules, we break them, just to be ornery.) A “UFO”, for those unfamiliar with quilting terms, does not reference Roswell, but refers to the myriad of unfinished projects (or objects) hanging out in our studios.

Anyway, we gleefully put a project from our studios into a brown paper bag, and tossed them onto a table at a FV meeting. Everyone picked a bag, and we dragged someone else’s unfinished work back to our studio to do whatever we wanted with it. It was actually quite freeing to have no emotional attachment to the work, and people chopped and painted with abandon. Hopefully, by the time you are reading this, the photos will be up on our website so that you can see what happened!

Here is a photo of the quilt top I got in the swap– an abandoned project from a Ricky Timms workshop. I loved the colors and fabrics, and was inspired pretty immediately!Many thanks to the extremely talented Ruth Walters for donating her UFO!

I have been making skirts from pants since high school, and I usually have a pile of pants sitting in my studio waiting to be transformed.

I realized that I had these olive green pants (that NEVER flattered me) waiting to be chopped up, so….

I split the inseams all the way up, re-pinned them so that they would fit like a skirt with a slight flare, added some interesting batik fabric I had in my studio, and proceeded to add Doris to my new skirt:

Doris’s birthday hat is made from the “tulip” part of the original work’s applique flower. I stencilled polka dots onto the fabric using Shiva paintsticks in copper. There are beads at the tips of the hat. Doris’ face is made from ivory felt, hand embroidered with floss from an original drawing.

Doris’ body is a piece of my own hand-dye, also stencilled in a swirly pattern with the paintstick. She wears  velvet flower petals (I suppose flowers are my “signature”, since I put them in everything, somewhere or other!).

Her legs and feet are the upside down stem/leaves from the original flower.

Here is the full view of my skirt. I love it!!

The border from the original piece became the border of my skirt.

Leftovers from the original?  I ended up with a 1″ square and a 1/2″ x 1″ rectangle of original fabric– how thrifty!

Here is Doris’ blurb. It came to me all of a sudden, and I quickly wrote it down on a scrap of paper. Fortunately, I didn’t throw out the scrap before I had stencilled it onto my skirt!

“Doris is a Diva. She celebrates her birthday every day, with cake and confetti. Her motto is: Eat dessert first.”