Crusade #41 Grid lock

17 Jun 2010 19 Comments

by fabricfan in Uncategorized Tags:

I was excited when I saw the latest crusade from Michelle Ward. Make a grid, and fill with some of your past crusade pieces or other papers that you have.

My bird prints from Pulling prints were perfect for this. My grids turned out a bit wonky but I just wanted to play. I grouted between the tiles with black tape that I bought years ago. The first grid was the large size, the second the medium sized and the third grid I used a paper punch and glued the grid to black paper and then added the bird  die cut that I had used in the pulling prints project. I had so much fun with this challenge.  There is very little of the original prints left over.

Thanks Michelle.

I started with some of my prints from Crusade #39.

Having fun

13 Jun 2010 1 Comment

by fabricfan in Uncategorized Tags: , ,

At the current time, I am in Love, Love, Love (as my teacher Suzi would say) with working with mixed media. I am taking the Goddess and the Poet with Suzi Blu, I want to work in my moleskine journal every couple of hours. I have nothing finished yet but have more than 4 layers of paint, pencil and gesso plus embellishments on most of them now. I have six faces in the works. I took the course so that I could do better doll faces, I was getting tired of the same old look.

So far I have used graphite, coloured pencils, clear gesso, fluid acrylics, rub on transfers. A few more layers are still needed.

Project yarnway, I found some wonderful lace weight silk and merino yarn and am in the beginning stages of a camisole. It was hand dyed on the island. Lovely stuff. I bought it in Courtney at Uptown, the knitting store.

Dare to be Inspired Day was this week, I am doing a canvas mixed media again but this one is based on Paris, and I intend to do ones on Athens, Barcelona and Rome as well. I need to go through photos, look up where we stayed in each city and get the dates.

In the meantime, my mind is thinking about packing up the boat for vacation, buying fabric for chairs and drapes, finishing a new t shirt, getting the last of the plants in, when it is not raining. Just the usual things of life.

Meanwhile, I smell the roses, curtesey of my friends garden.

Butterick 5277

04 Jun 2010 2 Comments

by fabricfan in Uncategorized Tags: ,

I wanted a new dress to wear on this past weekend. I loved the shape and style of the collar and this dress. Although called a fast and easy, for me this was not the case.  Granted I was lazy the first time through and although I tissue fit and adjusted the  lining turned out terrible fit wise. I really should not have tried this when I was on antibiotics. I’ll just say the brain was addled or possibly I was just too optimistic about my ability to fit the pattern.

Luckily there was still a Butterick sale on at Fabricland, so I bought another pattern. I traced everything out and pinned it together, then did the full bust adjustment, then took out half an inch in depth above the bust line.  The fit was better. Cut out the lining and it wasn’t too bad. Cut out the dress fabric and sewed everything together and  tried it on again. Too full in the body especially in the skirt area,  So I extended the front and back darts to the hem, that took out about 7-8 inches,  after one more fitting I took out another half in down each side seam.  I loved the collar.

I used some fabric that came from Fabricmart  a couple of years ago, a mystery  fabric. It is a heavy jacquard flowered cotton fabric.  Lined with bemberg lining.

I finished the dress on Saturday morning about 11:30  but by 4 in the afternoon, decided that I would be too cold if I wore it on a boat cruise that evening.  We had a good time at the dinner on board, as we toured the harbour but it was drizzly and we were unable to see very much due to the mist.

Crusade # 40 Step on the scale.

02 Jun 2010 14 Comments

by fabricfan in Uncategorized Tags: ,

Crusade number 40 , at Green Pepper Press, or XL in Roman numerals, is all about changing our default scale, bigger or smaller  but  we were to use the same techniques.

I have worked with paper bags before making book covers but I usually cover matte  board to make hard covers.  Instead of using a large grocery bag, I used a lunch bag. Much smaller and thinner.

I crumpled it up first, and then did the tops of the crumples with black, I was determined to use more black but I used a pretty light application. Then I painted with a acrylic paints both regular and metallic.

I took the whole bag and ironed some stitch witchery to the bag and then ironed that to green broadcloth. Then cut out my shapes and went around the edge with a zigzag on the sewing machine. I added a couple of  postage stamps, one used and the other a transfer from a postal sheet, used the art stamp again. Threading the elastic cord through the papers and fabric was the hardest part.  I quite like the soft bendable covers that were created.

Thanks Michelle, for posting this fun idea.