Blog

Today is the final day in this wave of Art Spark’s “tut tsunami.” My tutorial contribution is Shibori using fabric paint rather than dye. Margaret Hunt, a talented fiber artist from SC, had a blog post of the beautiful results of some of the painted Shibori she did. You can see her work here. Seeing her post reminded me of how much I’ve enjoyed this technique. When it was my time to come up with a tutorial, I decided if the weather was good, I’d do it on this topic.  If it wasn’t, I’d do a Photoshop video. The sun was shining, and Shibori won.

Shibori comes from a Japanese word meaning to squeeze, press, or wring. Today it’s basically known as a resist-dyeing technique that uses anything from clamping and pleating to tieing and stitching with the goal of creating patterned fabric. In the following tutorial, rather than using dye, I am using fabric paint. While I’ve had various Shibori dyeing classes over the years, I first learned to use fabric paint with Shibori when I took a class from Debra Lunn back in the early 1990s. I was always grateful for that class because it opened my eyes to how versatile fabric paint can be.

To do this project, you’ll need fabric. I use PFD (prepared for dyeing) fabric from TestFabrics, Inc. I generally use either 400M, which is bleached mercerized cotton, or 419, which is bleached mercerized combed cotton broadcloth. However, you can also successfully use fabric that you previously dyed or light colored solids.

You’ll also need fabric paints. I like an assortment — Setacolor, Jacquard, Stewart Gill, Golden, and so on.  With fabric paint, you’ll need brushes. I like using different widths of house painting brushes, but foam brushes will work. Also add the obvious things such as containers for paint (and to mix paint in), water, and something to cover your work surface  (yes, I know the plastic I’m using in the back yard as seen its day). You’ll also need some rubber bands (or string).

Lastly, you’ll need PVC piping. PVC piping comes in a variety of widths and lengths and is available from home repair stores such as Lowes and Home Depot. Often you can find shorter end pieces for sale. Generally they are in a bin at the end of a row where the piping is sold. It’s a good deal because you can buy useful lengths in different widths often for less money than a long piece of one width. Different widths will give different results. (A tip:  If you find end pieces, try to nest one inside the next so that you can get a variety of widths and store them more easily.) Otherwise, you can buy a full length and ask a clerk to cut it to whatever lengths you want to work with. Generally speaking, the longer the pole, the easier it is to wrap large pieces of fabric. However, when starting out it’s far more manageable to use a shorter pole and smaller pieces of fabric (such as a quarter or half) to get the hang of things. In this tutorial, I’m using thinner width, shorter pipes.

First you’ll need to wrap the fabric around the pole. I do this by placing the fabric onto a table. Then, in this example, I am starting with a corner and rolling on the diagonal. Slide the pipe in one direction so that some of the pipe is always sticking out from one side.  Try to keep the fabric flat.

In this example, I’m wrapping a piece of fabric that I folded in half.  You can try all sorts of things like wrapping on the straight, creating a tube, fold on the diagonal, and so on.

After you have so much fabric rolled on, push the fabric toward one end of the pipe,

and secure the bottom portion of the fabric with a rubber band.

Continue rolling and pushing the fabric down until all of the fabric is scrunched together.

Secure the other end with a rubber band. While I am using rubber bands, you can wrap string around the fabric.  You can also experiment with using string to tightly wrap the length of the fabric to create an additional resist. The tighter your wrap, the more resist there will be. If you have a large piece of fabric, a very tight wrap will create more of a resist meaning less paint will penetrate the fabric. It’s a matter of experimentation and knowing what your goals are. If you like a lot of unpainted areas, push the fabric closer together and tighter. You’ll see I don’t worry about precision.  If you want precise, you can use a butter knife to push any ends neatly into folds.

Once you have some poles (pipes) wrapped, you can begin painting.  Although I haven’t done so above, you can wrap more than one piece of fabric on a pole.

For this piece, I mixed black Jacquard fabric paint with water. It’s about half and half.  I also added a touch of metallic black.  (I stopped using the Golden fabric additive long ago and have not ever had any problems.)  Brush on your paint.  If you want more resist (or white showing), keep the paint on the outsides only.  If you want less resist (or more paint showing) keep applying more paint so it soaks in deeper.  You can also try misting the fabric with water before adding the paint.  The more the fabric is initially misted, the more the paint will run and less resist you will have.  In other words, experiment.

When it’s finished, I leave it inside a five gallon pale and continue to the next piece.

For the next piece, I’m combining primaries. Add lighter colors first to give them a chance to penetrate.  In this case, I am starting with yellow.

Next I added red.

For some interest, I added a less diluted bright pink.

The last color I added was blue. Each color was brushed in as I wanted the colors to penetrate as much as possible while still having enough resist to make a pattern.

Continue painting your pole (pipe) wrapped fabrics until you are satisfied with it. Because these poles aren’t very long, I placed them in a five gallon bucket. I used a folded hanger from the dry cleaner to keep the poles from bumping into each other. Next, leave them to dry overnight (and clean up the mess).

The following day I unrolled a portion of each fabric to see if they were dry enough to unroll.  Unlike dye, even they are a little bit damp, I will unroll it and hang it on a line to finish drying.

Here are the results:

The full piece using the yellow, red, pink, and blue.

A close up.

The piece that was folded in half.

A close up.

The piece painted with watered-down black.

Another piece painted with black and undiluted bronze.

Both of these fabrics started with ones that I previously dyed.

Wrapping a previously dyed fabric — especially the initially rejected paler stuff — and painting it with a solid color can produce some very nice results.  It also works great on dyed solids (I’ve had success with commercial solid prints – but remember to pre-wash in hot water to get off any sizing).  You can also over paint your Shibori painted pieces.  For example, if you end up with more white than you like, water down some paint and work it into the fabric.  The key is to experiment and have fun.

Imporant! After your fabric is dry, be sure to iron it with a hot, dry iron to set the paints.  I iron both sides.

To wrap up the tutorials, here are the final two from two talented ladies,  Judy Coates Perez and Alma Stoller.  Click the image to go directly to their tutorials.

Judy's printing on teabags!

Alma's tutorial on recycling magazines!

Here’s a recap of Art Spark members who have tutorials from this wave on their blogs:

Melanie Testa’s Cloth to Headband
Jane LaFazio’s machine felting tutorial
Diana Trout’s Sumi Smoosh
Lyric Kinard’s Painted Shoes
Alisa Burke’s Altered Striped Tank
Tracie Lyn Huskamp – Nature Inspired Greeting Card
Kelli Nina Perkins – Spoon Poetry

Today in Art Spark’s  tut tsunami are tutorials from Kelli Nini Perkins and Tracie Lyn Huskamp.   Click on the images below to go directly to their free tutorials.

Kelli's Spoon Poetry tutorial

Tracie's Butterfly-tastic Greeting Card

If you didn’t yet check them out, here are the prior tutorials from Art Spark:

Melanie Testa’s Cloth to Headband
Jane LaFazio’s machine felting tutorial
Diana Trout’s Sumi Smoosh
Lyric Kinard’s Painted Shoes,
Alisa Burke’s Altered Striped Tank,

Next up in Art Spark’s  tut tsunami are tutorials from Lyric Kinard and Alisa Burke.  Click on the images below to go directly to their free tutorials.

Lyric's funky painted shoes

Alisa's Altered Strip Tank tutorial

And if you missed them, be sure to check out

If you missed the first wave of tutorials visit   Melanie Testa’s, Diana Trout’s, and Jane LaFazio’s blogs for their free tutorials.

A break from vacation photos to share … free tutorials!  Over the next several days, members of Art Spark will be adding tutorials to their blogs.  I am planning for my tutorial to be here on Saturday.  When new tutorials are posted, I’ll let you know.  Today, Melanie Testa, Jane LaFazio, and Diana Trout each share very cool free tutorials. Click on any of the photos below to go directly to their tut.

Melly's tutorial is called "From Cloth to Headband"

Jane's tutorial is on needle felting.

Diane's tutorial is called "Sumi Smoosh"

Robbi Joy Eklow, who is an amazing quilter, shared a fantastic way of burying her quilt threads.  It’s faster than what I was doing — well, I should say that I’m told it’s much faster than what I’m doing when I bury tail.   K. Grace Howes posted a video of this methoc on YouTube, which I’m sharing here.  Grace gives more insight here.

There are many ways of creating repeating patterns using computer programs.  The following are basic directions for creating a repeat pattern using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.  Again, basic, but it should get you started.

1.  Open a new document.  It really doesn’t matter the size, as it will be re-sized later.  I selected the default paper size.

2.  For illustration purposes, I’m using a custom shape from the custom shape palette.

Tip:  To find  more custom shapes, open the flyout menu and select All and click Append.  This will append a bunch more shapes to your shapes palette.  This is in Photoshop CS4.  Elements has this feature (top right illustration)

3.  Drag to create your shape, hold down the shift key while dragging to constrain the design to a square.  Select the crop tool.  The goal here is to create a square with a border of white.  Put the crop tool in the center of the design.  Hold the option/alt key and the shift key together and drag out.  This will make an square around the item.  Turn on your Rulers if they are not on.  View>Rulers.  Drag a vertical and horizontal guide to locate the center of the shape. (top left illustration)

4.  Use the marquee tool to select the left half of the image. (top right illustration)

5.  Open the layers menu (Windows>Layers).  Copy the left half that has the selection around it and then Paste.  You’ll see the copy of the section on its own layer in the palette. (top left illustration)

6.  Click on Layer 1 to make sure it is active (it is highlighted in color) and then use the move tool to drag it to the right.  (top right illustration)

7.  Click on the background layer.  Marquee to select the right side. Copy it and paste it.  The copied image will appear on its own layer, in this case Layer 2.  (top left illustration)  Drag it to the left. (top right illustration)

8.  From the fly-out menu on the Layers palette, select Flatten Image.  This will merge all of the layers into one (top right illustration)
9.  Repeat the steps, but select the top half, copy/paste it, then move it to the bottom.  Return to the background layer, select the bottom half, copy/paste it, and move it to the top.  (top left illustration)

10.  Determine the size you want your repeat pattern.  Go to Image>Image Size. Leaving Constrain Proportions and Resample Image ON, insert 60 x 60 pixels in the top Pixel Dimensions area (or insert whatever dimension you want).  Click OK.  The image will change size. (upper top right)  If you cannot initially see it, be sure you are viewing it at 100%.

Note: Ignore the Print Size box underneath it; it only applies to printing and has no relevance here. Also, my 60×60 pixel size is a good size for the web.  For print, however, you’ll need more resolution.

11.  To define this design as a pattern, go to Edit>Define Pattern.  (above this illustration, on the lower right)  Name the pattern.  I named mine flowers. (top left illustration)  Click OK.  (top right illustration)  The flower is now part of the Patterns Library.

12.  Open a new document.  I opened a document that is 640 pixels by 480 pixels.

To create your pattern, go to Image>Fill.  Select Pattern from the dropdown menu.  Select the pattern you just created, which will be on the bottom right of your palette.  Voila, you have a fill pattern.

Experiment. Consider different sizes, shapes, colors, and so on.

Also, you’ll see my pattern has a small gray line.  That means that I didn’t select my image quite right.  I should have turned on the grid.  Even so, I’m okay with the gray line.  It sort of looks stitched.   A happy accident.

I came across this YouTube video from MacMost.  It gives instruction on how to create a customized slide show in iMovie (rather then iPhoto).   Besides the vacation stuff, it could also be a good way of providing marketing information to a potential client interested in your quilts or artwork.  You can put together some images, add titles, information under each image, and so on.

I’ve no idea if the stats in this video are accurate, but it’s provocative nonetheless. Thanks Del!

When making a hanging sleeve for a quilt, it is important to incorporate some give to accommodate the hanging device, which at quilt shows is generally some sort of pole.  If the sleeve is sewn onto the quilt without any give, the hanging device can cause the quilt to buckle and not hang as it should.  While there are many methods of creating a sleeve, the following method works for me.  I also must credit quilt artist Libby Lehman on the instructions she shares on the IQA website.  While I discovered sewing wrong sides together for a hanging sleeve by accident (there’s a story), her folding method resulting in the “D” shape for give is more exact than my older method of  ironing in a pleat.

Cut a piece of fabric that is about 10+ to 11 inches wide by at least the width of your quilt.

I place the cut fabric on the back of the quilt, and I fold over the edges to the approximate width that I want the finished sleeve.  I finger press it (no photo – sorry about that!).    Generally I place the sleeve about 1/2 – 1″ from each side.

Fold the edge over twice and sew a seam away from the folded edge.  If precision is more important, then you may want to trim, double fold, and then stitch closer to the edge.  Or, you may prefer two seams — one by each edge.

When finished, lightly press the fabric in half, right sides OUT.

Open the fabric and then fold each edge to the center.  Again, right sides of fabric out.

Press this with a hot iron and some steam to create a good crease on each side.  Both crease lines will serve as the hand stitching line.

Grab the two edges of the fabric to seam together.  The fabric remains right sides out.

Sew the entire length of the sleeve with a 1/4″ seam allowance.  I start about 1/2 inch from the edge, back stitch to the edge, and then stitch the seam.

When coming to the end of the seam, I sew just about off  the edge.  I then swing around the fabric around . . .

and sew about an inch or so in.  This way the end of the seam is in rather than right at the edge.

Iron open the seam, but take care not to create a new seam.  I use a mini iron.  If you use a regular iron, tilt the iron so that you’re only using the tip.  Again, avoid making new creases (you only want the two to serve as your hand stitching line.

The seam is pressed open, but the original crease line is still there.

Pin the sleeve into position.

The important thing is maintaining the “D” shape.  In other words, do not pull the sleeve taunt.  If you’re more comfortable, baste rather than pin it into place.

Another view.  Also, per Alison’s helpful comment, watch the top placement of the sleeve to confirm that it is not too close to the edge.  Otherwise, you risk the sleeve peaking out from the top when the quilt is hanging.

Stitch the sleeve into place using whatever stitch you prefer — blind, whip, etc.

Here is the side stitched down (and if you’re more careful, you’ll line up the edges of the seam better than I did).  Once the sleeve is stitched into place, the quilt is ready for hanging.

Again, Libby gets all of the credit for her folding method resulting in the “D” shape for give.  If you’d like a copy of her instructions, visit the International Quilt Association website here.  Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the download PDF link.  And, while there, if you’re not a member of IQA, consider joining.

I came across a free Mac OSX utility program called PagePacker.  The program gives you the tools to create a little 8-page organizer from one sheet of paper.

After launching the program, you’ll see a template page with eight sections.  The program  comes with a variety of DIY Planner pages, such as daily, weekly, and monthly  to-do lists, calendar pages, and so on.  You then select a form and drag it onto the template.   You can also bring in your own PDFs and images.  Once the eight sections of the template are filled, it’s time to print.  After it’s printed, you fold, fold, snip, fold and – presto – you have a booklet.

In addition to the to-do list  reminder booklets, with some careful folding and a bit of glue stick, you can make a very cool little booklet with quilt images.  Or with some Misty Fuse or Wonder Under, you can make a small fabric booklet.  Once you understand the orientation and layout for each page, you can create as large a book as the paper your printer can handle.  How?  Print the book to a PDF.  Then import the PDF into a program such as InDesign or Photoshop and enlarge it as much as you need to.

If you don’t have a Mac, there is an online tool – PocketMod – that’s similar.  To run the application within your browser, you’ll need a Flash player.  Also, there’s a video that gives you a quick demo of the folding and snipping process.

There are a lot of online color tools.  And while researching an article on color-related websites for an upcoming article for the National Quilting Association’s quarterly journal, I discovered one called Color Sphere that I enjoyed and wanted to share. To quote, “Sphere uses basic color theory in order to automatically provide you with visually appealing colors.”  They also call it “an online color theory visualizer.”

By selecting one of the formulas, such as complementary or split-complementary or even clash, you can see how a selected color or colors will interact.

The tool also allows you to select a formula and simulate how the colors will look under different forms of colorblindness.

You can view the full spectrum, web smart, or web safe colors.  The above is the web safe palette.  While you cannot control the size of the swatch or mix colors such as a pastel with a heavily saturated color, it’s an interesting tool.

I was happy to learn that this tool, created by Mudcube and minus the sliders, is also available as a free Macintosh widget to download and add to your Dashboard tools.
Click here to download the Dashboard Widget from Apple.

ColorSchemer, Design in Harmony, also offers a free application for Windows users called ColorPix and another widget for Mac users called Galleria. Windows users can also download Just Color Picker from Anny Studio.  It that allows you to select a particular pixel under your mouse and transform it into different color formats and then select different color harmonies.

Did you ever look out at scenery and find yourself wishing you could take a photo that shows the entire breathtaking view?  Behold Photomerge.  Photomerge is a tool available in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements that allows you to stitch together two or more photos to create one photo.

Here are the basic of using the tool.  I’m working with only two photographs, but it works the same way using more than two photos.

1. Open the images that you’d like to stitch together. In this case. There are two:

2. Next, go to File . Automate > Photomerge.

3.  The Photomerge dialog box will open.

The center column defines the Source Files — the images that you’d like to merge together.  Because I opened the files before selecting the Photomerge command, I clicked the “Add Open Files” button.  My two files (called Picture 26.png and Picture 24.png — most of the time, you’ll be adding jpg files) opened in the center column.  (Note:  If you didn’t initially open the images, or if you have multiple images open and only want to use a few, select the appropriate options from the Use: drop-down menu.)  The Blend images together is checked — which is what I want, a blending of the two images.

The left column defines the layout of the images.  While Auto works fine for most situations, it’s fun to experiment with other layouts.

Once you have your images ready, click the OK button.  Then wait as the software does the work for you.

The resulting image is a merger of the Source Files.  I often find the results interesting to use as is or inspirational for something else.

If you open the Layers palette, you’ll see each image on its own layer with a layer mask blending the images together.  The merger is a result of the software examining the pixels and overlapping the seam.  The more seams, the more you may need to correct things.  If you are familar with working with masks, correcting seams is a matter of blowing up your image and adjusting the mask where needed.

To finish the panorama, use the crop tool to select the area you’d like to feature.  Drag the center handles of the crop in and out until you are satisfied.  Click the Return key to commit to your crop.  If you are unsatisfied with your crop, use the undo command and give it another try.

And here you have it!

Some tips:  Try to overlap a chunk of the scenery so that the software can better recognize and stitch together the overlap.  Keep the camera steady and at the same level for each picture.  To take the pictures, I generally shoot one, move two steps to the right and shoot another, move two more steps and take a third (and so on).  When I cannot do this, I twist my body.  However, the more twisting, the more there will be wonky angles on the top and bottom of your image that may require cropping.

Coming soon: more panoamic images and an explaination of how they were done.

I came across this new search engine, Search Me.  It’s visual-based, allowing you to see the site that relates to what you’re searching for.

For example, when I search on my name, the first site that comes up is my personal site (which is good).  As I scroll through, I find all kinds of things — like an old interview of me done more than 10 years ago! — and  some pages that have nothing to do with me (my name is so common!).

If you’re a Mac user, you’ll see that the view is nearly identical to that “Cover Flow” view in the Leopard OS.

Under the Preferences, you can do things like create a “day theme” which makes the background white rather than the “night theme”  (the default) which makes the background black.

You can also select “searchme lite” which gives a vertical column of pages with a white background.

The program allows the creation of “stacks” — kind of like bookmarks, but visual.  To use stacks, first create a stack name.  Then, each time you find a page that you’d like to save into a particular stack, you drag the page and drop it into that stack.  Then, the next time you’re on the site, you can look at your stack to see what’s updated on those pages.  Search Me provides some stacks.  Being a news junkie, I loaded up the News stack, which includes 13 news sites.  There are other news sites that I like checking out.  To add them, I opened each and then dragged and dropped each page directly onto the stack.  The stack tools section includes the ability to email the stacks, share them, and so on.  There is also video tutorials on the site explaining how to create and use stacks.

Here’s the “news”  stack which I copies from their example stacks.  (Caveat: the stack was working when I added it.  If you don’t see it, first give it a chance to load, then check to see if you have a Flash plugin, finally let me know as it’s posible that they changed the code.)   Under the “share” link in the Stacks section, there is an option to share to a blog, which is what I did here. There is information on their site on how to do this (basically grabbing the HTML code and putting it directly into the source of your blog page).

Important to note: The site is BETA, and it requires Flash.  That means that while most of it works, it’s still int the testing phase and is a bit buggy.  Also important to note, if you clear your Flash cache, you will lose your stacks.   Here’s a workaround:  (1) Email the stack to yourself; (2) open the email and click the link to see the stack in your Searchme browser window; (3) click the copy link within site to save it to your stack. A caveat:  I do not know how long the email link is good for.  For this reason, save any favorites the “old fashioned way” — in your bookmarks folder!

Last night I had the pleasure of being the first guest in a telecast hosted by The Professional Quilter magazine. The topic was digital-related and it covered a few of the topics in my book. I was looking forward to taking questions.  However, the format of the telecast didn’t allow for me to hear questions from participants but rather to take them through email.  The following is one of the questions I received.  I’m sharing it and my answer in the hopes that it will be helpful to someone else in this situation.

The question:
I am trying to sell hand-dyed fabrics and am concerned about my potential customers being concerned that the color on their monitor will be the same as the fabric they receive. I was thinking of adding a swatch of white to each photo? Will this help.

Answer:

It won’t hurt, and it may give a point of reference knowing that the swatch should read white. Thus if the white fabric reads darker than it should, chance are the hand-dyed fabric would also be darker.

The main question is can you match what your customer sees on his/her monitor to the actual fabric they receive. The answer is you generally cannot guarantee what your customer sees.  Why?  There are several factors that are outside of your control.  They include:

• how the person’s monitor is calibrated (if it’s even calibrated);
• what the age of the monitor is;
• where the person views the monitor — is it in direct sunlight? shade? a room with brightly colored wall? and so on;
• is there is a busy, colorful background pattern surrounding the displayed website;
• even the person’s vision and color perception will come into play.

To alert your customers, consider including a statement on your fabric page that the color being displayed may vary from the actual color of the fabric. If color is critical, the person should contact you for more information. Something like ..

“I have made every effort to photographically represent that fabric as best as possible. However, because of the wide variations in monitor quality and color settings, I cannot guarantee that what you see on your monitor will exactly match the actual fabric color. If color is critical and you have any questions about the fabric, please contact me and I will be happy to help.”

If you have a digital-related question that you’d like to ask me, please drop me a line and I’ll try to help.

I learned of an Irvine, California company called scanmyphotos.com while reading an article called  “Your Photos, Off the Shelf at Last,” by  David Pogue in the August 13th edition of The New York Times.  This company sounds too good to be true – but apparently they are and it is.  I suspect if others react to what this company offers as I did, the company is going to be flooded with work.

Here’s what they offer:  Scanning 1,000 photos, burning them to a DVD, and charing you $50 for it!  Is that the deal of the year?  The decade?   There are requirements — things like the images need to be between 3×3 to 11×14, bundled together in like sizes, cannot scan from a photo album, and so on.   They also scan slides, negatives, VHS to DVD (ooh … that comes in handy).

Is it just me?  Or are you now adding another item to the “to do” list