First Finished Crow Pillow

After going to that meeting all about Hexagons, I have been trying out my new skill!  I made a pillow using some hexagons and one of the crow prints from the other day.

This was a fun project!  I really enjoyed a little hand-stitching to get the hexagons made, definitely a shape I want to work with more often.  For this pillow, it took a little while to figure out a good layout with the rectangular crow patch.  This was my first idea... and you can see how I pieced the hexagons together.

I finally came up with this layout.  The strip of hexies is for the back ~ it's an envelope enclosure, and I like how this little addition really makes the pillow look complete.

Once I got the hexie pieces stitched to the background navy fabric, I sandwiched it up to do some quilting.  Since the navy fabric is nice... but very plain, I decided to try quilting close together which made some really cool patterns on the pillow!

When I got it all put together this is how this 16" square pillow turned out:

It's really fun to be able to use new ideas and knowledge!  Now onto the next project ~ YAY!

Crow Pillows: Screen Printing

If you didn't already know... my husband and I have a small screen printing company called Phantom Chicken.  Because our studio is in our basement, I'm a lucky girl when it comes to customized printing in my sewing projects!  My latest project is a Crow Pillow. 

Here is the screen with the crow film on it, ready to shoot.  Screen printing is a process that uses light to create a stencil.  Here's how it works: 

• First we create a design.  It has to be black and white to create a clean stencil.  This design was from a photo that a friend had taken. 

• We send this design file to a camera shop and have film positive's made.  

• A coated screen is made by taking a clean screen and evenly spreading a photo-sensitive emulsion over it in a dark room.

• Once we have the film and a coated screen, we put the film on the screen and shine a high-pressure sodium light on it for about 10 minutes.  This "sets" the emulsion hard on the screen while leaving whatever is opaqued under the film very soft.

• Then the screen is rinsed with water and voíla: a hole or stencil is made in the screen.

• At this point, the screen is ready to set up on press.

• When the screen is on press, we pick an ink color and put it on the screen and then pull the ink through using a squeegee.  The squeegee pushes the ink through the hole in the screen and onto your fabric (or t-shirt).

One pillow set I want to sew is using some patterned fabrics that were part of a set, so I mixed some special greyish-blue ink to match the darkest blue stripe in the fabric.

I'm pretty happy with the color match...

Since I had a screen all set up, I decided to print more than just one set of birds, so I changed the ink color to Navy and printed this guy on a light blue starry fabric to be used in the pillow I'm making for the friend who took the photo.

Then I changed the ink one more time to Black and printed a few on some other scraps of fabric I have laying around... not sure how these will be used yet, but I really like the image so I'm sure I'll be using them soon.  I'm even thinking of making a quilted bag instead of always making pillows.

So now I have some images on fabric to work with... YAY!

Newfound Fascination: Hexagons

I attended my first Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting this week, and I'm really happy I went!  The topic was paper piecing hexagons.  Of course, I was late.  Even though I left early, I was unprepared for 20 minutes of looking for a parking space... so by the time I got there the meeting was in full swing.  There were over 40 people (all women I think), and many of them had brought AMAZING quilts using hexagons for a Show-and-Tell.

I was fully impressed and totally inspired.  I love that there are so many people who still actually hand stitch quilts!  Now, it's one thing to be able to see so many beautiful works of art all in one evening... it's a whole other thing when you get to learn how they were created.  After seeing quite a few quilts and other hexagon projects, Christina - from The Sometimes Crafter, gave a little presentation on her adventures in paper piecing hexagons and I found it very informative.

From there we split up into groups and were given some paper hexagons and thread and we gave this paper piecing a try.  Well... I should say I gave it a try ~ most people there already had experience with this technique and even had projects in process they whipped out and we all did a little stitching together.  All of a sudden it was 9:00 and time to go.

I came home and worked on a few more pieces (pictured above).  I think I'm becoming obsessed!  They are quick and fun and I can use all my scraps this way... so I had hexies on the brain before going to bed.... and I had a dream about them ~ of course.

I've been planning on a new quilt wall hanging project... and I wanted to use a squid image and make it skinny and long.  I'm really into the idea of poster style art in the form of fabric, using bright colors and basic shapes.  So I was going to create an appliqué like I did with the rooster... but in my dream I made one of hexagons!  After I woke, I got on the computer and laid out a design in 3/4" hexagons and ordered 1500 paper pieces from Paperpieces.com.

I have no idea what colors I'm actually going to use... patterned fabrics look SO different than a solid color design like this.  This is going to be a long term project, one I can collect cool fabrics for and take my time with.   I'm so glad I went to that meeting ~ it's fun to have a new fascination!

Honor... and other collages

honor, originally uploaded by RamonaX.

I've recently set up a flickr account and have just uploaded some paper collages that I made a couple years ago. All the imagery was from National Geographic Magazines. I had a lot of fun creating them. You can check out the other 7 collages in this set by visiting my flickr page here.
Let me know what you think!

Fireworks and Anxiety

While I try not to write anything negative on this blog, I felt compelled to write a little something here about fireworks. 
The 4th of July just passed, and we are left with a dog who will be traumatized for the next two weeks as the noise of these fireworks freak her out terribly.   I never realized it before we had this dog, that animals AND people can be negatively affected by this noise.  Especially those with PTSD: post traumatic stress disorder. 

Since we've had our dog (7 years) I've become more and more sensitive to the noise of fireworks myself.  When I hear some random firecracker go off, I jump... AND... I've never been to war myself.  I can only imagine what it would be like for a veteran, or someone who has been a victim of a gun crime! 

The actual holiday is not that bad since we all expect the noise, and we can medicate people and dogs for a night while very drunk people party and light fireworks all night... but it's the 2 weeks before through 2 weeks after when random schmucks decide to light firecrackers in the middle of the day or night.  NO ONE is expecting those and those are the ones that seriously freak people and animals out.

So... that's my rant for today:  Please be kind to those with pets, stress, anxiety, and PTSD and please stop lighting fireworks randomly.  Wait for the 4th and call it good. 

Crow Pillows

Now that my rooster quilt is finished, I have embarked on a NEW project ~ YAY!  A friend of mine took a couple great photos of some crows, and I took a couple more, and they worked really well as silhouettes.

What you see in the photo are the fabrics I plan on using, and the crows are actually pieces of film.  These pieces of film are opaque where it is black, so we use them to "shoot" screens for screenprinting.  In the screen-shooting process, a screen is coated with photo-sensitive emulsion, then we put these films on coated screens and shine a light on it.  Where the light hits the screen it "bakes" the emulsion, and where the light can't get through (where the black film is) the screen emulsion stays soft and then we wash it out with water and voila:  a hole in a screen.  Then I can print using any color I wish... I'm thinking of printing in a dark blue ink to match the darkest blue in the fabric.  Here is a picture of a screen on press:

I'm excited to start a new sewing project... especially since our summer is still looking like winter... today I pulled out sweatpants and a hoodie ~ it's chilly here right now.  I did hear that next week it will jump from the 50's to the 90's... not fun. 

So like I said, I'm happy to have a project!  Plus I've been watching butt-loads of soccer with my hubby ~ so my schedule is all wonky these days.  Just watched the Netherlands beat Brazil!  How cool is that?  It's like watching the Lakers lose... I love it!  Later today is Uruguay vs. Ghana... I think I'll be rooting for Uruguay ~ I liked watching them through the World Cup so far.