Jingle Bells!

MERRY HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
:)

Work station

This is where I work - on the floor by my desk, cutting and ironing interfacing onto fabric where the Toddler is sitting. It's back breaking and my legs ache when I finally stand up but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

BTW don't worry. The iron's not on :)

Fabric shopping!

Japanese cotton

I took my mom fabric shopping again. The last time we went, I bought some cotton linen, these two batik and burst my budget. This time, I bought Japanese cotton, English cotton and burst my budget :)

English cotton

This is my star find. I love the border and mint green background. I think it will look great as a tablecloth, a skirt, baju kurung and even bags if only it were thicker.

Bag #4

I made this bag right after I finished this one but I don't quite like the brown material I'm using right now. It's actually upholstery fabric. I do like the texture but the colour doesn't quite go with everything else and the fabric doesn't hold shape well.

I cut out the flowers and bamboo from batik scraps and sewed them on collage style. The lady is wearing scraps of lace and some other pieces of fabric I found in my stash.

TiMi stamp

The Tween went to China with my mother recently and brought home a TiMi stamp she had custom made for me. How awesome is that!

Thanks, sweetie! :)

WIP - See No Evil

Here's a sketch I drew for some totes I wanted to make. The initial idea was to get some done to sell along with the pouches at last Saturday's bazaar. It turned out to be a long, laborious and frustrating learning process instead.

There was a lot of tracing, re-sketching and resizing which was the fun part. Then came time to burn the screen. And burn it again... and again... and again. If you read my last post, you know the totes never materialized in time for the bazaar. Somehow the image from the transparency just wouldn't stick. So, on Sunday we went back the old school way and printed on A3 paper which we then brushed with oil. And it worked. Sort of. 

Last night, The Man triumphed on the third attempt :) 

Tomorrow we'll be printing. Can't waiiit! :)

Production!

Last Saturday I shared a booth at the local bazaar with my multi-talented friend Lynn. My first ever! I planned to sell some pouches but first I had to make some! 

I started by cutting up and ironing interfacing onto the fabric. That's my stack of cotton and cotton linen all prepped and ready to be sewn. Very ambitious indeed!

Next, I needed to get the felt birds ready. So, I used a template made of thick art paper and tailor's chalk to trace out the birds. And then cut them out. Not the easiest thing to do. At all. You need super sharp scissors, steady hands and good eyesight. None of which I have. Yikes!

My stash of colourful felt for more colourful birds.

About a week before the bazaar, we had to make an emergency trip back to The Man's hometown in Taiping. With all the embroidery needed to be done, I was already behind on my bird pouches and I really wanted to do some silkscreened ones but I was running out of time. The new screens we were burning were not making the grade and it quickly dawned on us that we probably just had a lucky run with our first perfect few. 

That's The Man doing a test print. It all looks pretty good from afar but there's actually quite a bit of smudging and detail missing from the designs. The new design with the three girls between the trees has been particularly difficult. We have tried about half a dozen times to get it right but we still haven't! Some parts are always missing :(

Pouch #28 & #29 with Oi! guy on the back

The Man went straight to work the night we came back from Taiping and pulled through with a couple of perfect screens. By the morning of the bazaar, I managed to make 8 pouches - 4 birds and 4 Oi!s. Not much but it's a start :)

I love how the silkscreened pouches turned out. And, yes, I am still painting on the red bits!