Just started an Online Beginners Embroidery Class

My online beginners embroidery class with Susan Sorrel started last week.  I finished painting the fabric yesterday and had such fun using bubble wrap that I ended up covering my test fabric with it as well!  I can see why so many fabric artists and journal makers use it - so addictive!

So here is the section of fabric I have chosen to do my embroidery on:

I went shopping this morning to get the the embroidery threads I wanted and the right size hoop.  I'm very lucky because I have a little quilt shop called Needle and Thread just 10 minutes away from where I live.

I am sure that my threads would all get tangled up so I decided to get organised from day one.  I put my threads on little cards with the details written on them and put them all in a little box.  Wonder if I'll keep it this way but I do like it.

Yikes! It's Wednesday Already

I had great intentions the last 2 days to get lots of arty stuff done and in the end life has got in the way as it so often does.  So last night I gave myself permission to use the couple of hours I had with just having a play.  I have to get out of the mindset that I need a whole day to create.

SO, I took a picture that was given to me by a friend and decided to see what I could do with it using the Shape Tool in Photoshop Elements.  This is the original picture:

To make it into an abstract background, I changed the Hue/Saturation and then applied the Cutout Filter:

I decided that I wanted to create shapes which could be appliqued onto some fabric so this is what I came up with.  There are loads of free shapes to download on the internet - unfortunately you cannot create your own shapes in Photoshop Elements; only in the full version of Photoshop.

The cup shapes I used were a free download from the internet and I didn't record who the creator was so I am sorry that I am unable to give them the credit they deserve:

A Morning of Printing

Printing on fabric using an inkjet printer is not for the faint hearted but I LOVE making my own material and it is worth all the effort as far as I am concerned.

I bought a continuous inking system with quality ink which makes the ink a lot cheaper but it requires some setting up and if something goes wrong you need to be prepared to surf the net to get answers.  I now have a good idea of most of the foibles!

I like to leave a whole day for printing because once a printer is working well and the ink is flowing, it is worth doing as much as possible.  One things for sure, do all the printing you want for one article because tomorrow the printer might be printing a different shade!

I start off by making sure all my ink tanks are full.  In your case, make sure that the cartridges are full.  There is nothing worse than the printer failing half way through a print or print run.

I redid my paper samples and a small fabric sample to check that the ink was coming through properly.  It was printing well so I decided not to do a nozzle check.  Big mistake.  Ran my first print and the ink flow changed after a couple of lines.

Actually a nozzle check is not always a perfect indication of ink flow.  I have printed a perfect colour test print and it suddenly goes belly up. So I did a couple of print head cleans and after that all went well.

A major tip when you are about to put your fabric through the printer, get a piece of sticky tape and dab the sticky part of the tape over the fabric to pick up any bits of lint or cotton.  Believe me, there is nothing more irritating than taking out a perfect print and a small piece of thread comes away leaving a white stripe!

I have to say, too, that putting a strip of masking tape along the front edge definitely cuts down the number of times the material doesn't go through.

Here are some of the samples:

Fabric Preparation for Printing

I find preparing fabric for printing a very boring process so I try and get lots of pieces of material done in one go.  I am lucky to have an A3 pigment printer (rather than a dye printer) which is better for printing on fabric.  This means that I can print on much larger pieces of fabric.  However, the bag I am making is not going to be very big so I am sticking to A4 size pieces of fabric.

So these are the steps I go through:

1. Cut the white fabric down to sheets just larger than A4.
2. Cut pieces of freezer paper* down to just larger than A4.
3. I iron each bit of fabric first.
4. Then I iron the freezer paper to the back of the white fabric.  I iron on both sides with the fabric side last to make sure that there are no 'bubbles'.

It is very important that the side that goes through the printer has been very well ironed so that it is firmly attached to the fabric.  When I finally use the fabric for printing, I use the rotary cutter to cut along the edge that goes through the printer to make sure that it is 'sharp'.  I also recheck that the freezer paper is firmly attached.

Always prepare at least double the amount of the material you need.  Once I get started with printing, I like to do a lot and you can never legislate for what might happen half way through a print!

* edit:  for those of you who don't know what freezer paper is, it is paper originating from the US which has a shiny side which temporarily adheres to fabric when you iron it onto the fabric.  It is available here in the UK at quilt shops, some hobby craft stores and some sewing/fabric shops.

Fabric Printing

Time to do some more fabric printing.  I have an outfit which I love and which needs a small bag to complement it so I have set about designing some fabric for it.

The outfit consist of grey jeans, a grey t-shirt, a light salmon jersey and a beautiful grey and salmon scarf:

The most difficult part of this is trying to match the colours.  There are 2 ways I do this:  either by scanning my outfit and trying to match the colours from this or by using a colour swatch.

I bought my colour swatch quite recently and already feel that I am getting a much better match.  It only came out in March, I see, but already I find it indispensible (both UK and US Amazons have it).  The back of the cards show the CMYK, RGB and Hex colour numbers.  These are the settings you can change in Photoshop Elements to get the exact colour on the card. However, don't think you printer will necessarily print this colour!  This requires colour calibration which can be a drawn out or even an expensive endeavour.  I will one day spend more time getting this right but happy for now just to print out swatches and get the best match.

When I compared my jersey with the swatch I couldn't believe that the colours that matched were on the Orange and Yellow-Orange colour cards and in fact the colour I chose was on the Yellow-Orange card.  I tend to go for a colour which is lighter than the original because the swatch colours on the card are small and become more intense when the area is bigger, secondly, they often print out darker on fabric and lastly, I find a slightly lighter colour often matches better.

I first print out a colour swatch on paper and once I have it right I print it out on fabric because the colours can still change.  I then write down the colour combinations and the printer settings on the print-outs.  Oh yes, and I also write down on the fabric, the fabric I used - in this case I used Cotton Sateen Arian White which is my favourite at the moment (I bought it online from Whaleys in the UK). If you don't print out the fabric on the same day, it is worth reprinting samples just before you do the print run - so much depends on the printer!  I have decided on using 2 different fabrics - one with dots and one with stripes.  Here is an example of my stripe print-out:

Continuing on the Theme of Scanning....

In Photoshop Elements you can create patterns and I am always looking for new patterns to add.  I was doodling on a piece of paper today while I was waiting for lunch to cook and decided I quite liked the squiggly doodle in the middle so decided to make a pattern of it.

Here is the completed pattern.

Here is how I did it:

• Open the scanned image and select the crop tool and crop the image to the size of the doodle:

• Then select Enhance > Auto Sharpen just to make the black squiggles a bit darker.
• Next, remove the background by selecting the Background Eraser Tool, making the brush as big as you can and then clicking on the white area.  You must set the limits to Discontiguous.
• Now select Edit > Define Pattern and give the pattern a name.
• To use the pattern, open a new document and create a new layer 
• Then go to Edit > Fill Layer.  Set the use to pattern and select the pattern you have saved.

• Remember to save your pattern by going to Edit > Preset Manager. Select pattern as preset type, select the pattern/s you want to save and then save them.

Here's a picture my husband took in New York which I did some while back using doodles I scanned in.  Not sure it has any use but it was good practise: