Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Swatch This Again

It's the first day after Labor Day, a time when kids are expected to stand up and read essays about what they did on their summer vacation. I'll stay seated, if you don't mind, but here's how I spent the 12 days since my last post:
  • I broke my toe (doing something stupid, so don't ask).
  • I took a 5-day spinning class at Sievers (it was wonderful -- I'll tell you more next time).
  • I made pretzels for the first time, for a Labor Day potluck (and they were a definite hit).
  • Bill and I "hosted" a two-stage rocket launch in the back 40. It was so much fun, we invited everybody back next summer for a catapult toss (note to self -- get catapult-building on the calendar).
  • And we picked tomatoes in the dark, because there was a chance of frost.
While we were busy celebrating the long holiday weekend and the change of seasons, Spoonflower was busy printing and shipping my digital fabric order. I ordered swatches in a hurry on the last day of my parents' 10-day visit and was too busy to think about them again until they arrived in today's mail.

Without really having a plan, I still came up with some stuff that will coordinate well enough to use together.


I ordered in some black-and-white fabrics to color as needed with fabric paint.


This is the first time I've had Spoonflower print on their organic cotton knit fabric, which is lovely. The design on this swatch was done entirely using the Picnik imaging utility. Sorry -- I was working so fast I didn't take notes on which "stickers" and effects I used.

 
The rest of the designs came from work I did in the 6-week Gimp for Textile Designers class I took in July and August.

It's been a great summer for learning as well as teaching, and my mind is a-swirl with possibilities. While I prep for upcoming classes at the Textile Center later this month and for The Gathering at Sievers in October, I have lots of ideas to incubate.

In fact, it's time to get serious about hatching some ideas. I'll share some of the process I use on my other blog, Compost and Creativity, which has been sorely neglected over the summer. Maybe a little neglect isn't such a terrible thing, when it feels so good to pick up where you left off.

4 comments:

  1. You did these designs, how cool is that. Something I would love to try but my mind just cant quite come up with a design. Thought toby and I could colaborate but cant get around to doing that either.

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  2. Thanks, Jeannie! Starting with a photograph helps me get over that first design hurdle, and the rest is mostly just playing with possibilities. Just try uploading a photo to picnik.com and playing with it. I think you'll see what I mean -- but you might not remember to fix supper!

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  3. Jeannie, I did a post about Picnik a while back, if that helps --

    http://donnakallner.blogspot.com/2010/02/easy-peasy-altered-images-picnik.html

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  4. ill check it out when I have a moment. Today i quilted a lap quilt going on etsy. and hand sewed the binding on started at 4pm fixed quicky supper in between, and finished at 10pm, right now my eyes are blurry as heck, too many hours just staring at my fingers, thread and quilt. should try to do this in one sitting, but anxious to get more quilts on my etsy shop

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