I have spent much of the month of March AWOL from here. This is the first full weekend I've been home for a month. On the plus side, for most of that time I've been on vacation. I've caught a few diaries remotely, but except for a bit last weekend haven't had the ability to comment much.
Been some good diaries during the month.
The end of last week I attended the Quilting and Sewing Expo in Schaumburg, outside of Chicago. Spent much of the 2 days in classes learning and having fun.
Follow me below the orange squiggle for some discussion and pics!
The first class I attended on Thursday was on surface design, basically intense pigments that would work on paper, ceramics or cloth. Given the focus of the event, we worked with cloth. Teacher was good; a bit of a Chinese accent, but readily understandable for most of us. We used Tsukineko inks, specifically All Purpose Inks. Not cheap but nicely intense colors. She showed us how to do marbling with a few drops of ink in shaving cream, use some sort of stylus to swirl and place the cloth on top. It picks up the dye very quickly. Heat set with iron.
Interesting effect, but not likely of much use to me.
Next we did some stenciling with dry inks (VersaCraft, again from Tsunkineko). This I definitely could see a use for in quilt projects. This wasn't my best work, but I got the idea. Again heat set with an iron.
After that I did some shopping. Helped out the economy in my own small way.
Friday I was in classes all day. First class "Tints and Textile Design." Pretty much no one in the class was sure what we would be doing. It ended up we would be making a notebook cover. I am going to change that into a cover for my tablet.
Basically we worked with Transfer Artist Paper and Lutradur. I do like Transfer Artist Paper. The Lutradur seemed to be a heavy weight paper with a high fiber content. Interesting, but not sure it would be worth the cost. First we dyed the Lutradur for a background. For this we used intense ink pencils. Drew some random lines on the Lutradur and then sprayed with water and swirled the colors around. After drying the Lutradur, and "aging" by singeing the edges a bit, we used the TAP paper to transfer an image to the Lutradur. A key point on using TAP is that you must pull away the TAP while it is very hot, or it doesn't release. Yes, that is Angelina fabric (shiny, colored cellophane like strips) around the edges of the picture. It was called for in the project, but I don't like it.
We also used the intense ink pencils to dye some lace. Key point was to make the lace rather damp before trying to dye it.
The afternoon class was on paper piecing using a sewing machine. I had taken paper piecing classes before, but mostly for hand piecing.
The pattern was called Spring Tulips. I believe you can see why.
I've discussed how to paper piece in the past, so won't redo that here.
I'm also working on knitting. I'm on my second knit hat for the Warmth for Vets project. This is a ribbed hat. Going to see if I can keep the ribbing going mostly up into the top of the hat.
As well as beginning my first overall lace shawl.
I've finished the edits on Mrs. O'Leary's Boarding House and it has gone to the formatter. It should be up at Amazon in 10 days.
Hats and scarves for Vets NN14 update
We are now up to 87 scarves and hats!! Sorry about the formatting. And if I have forgotten anyone, please let me know. I have a feeling I am.
Hats Scarves
WFH 3 2
NAR 1
Susan S. 3
Shellly L. 2
Tabatha 1
Eve 1 1
Kat Dwyer 1
Kathy T. 2 2
Nicole 1
Jody Lynn Nye 1
Sharon Nelson 1
Marguerite 3
Broths / Barb 20
Fineena 5
Elizaveta 2
jlms qkw 1
BLW 2
Temmoku 1
mommyof3 2 2
Texas Mom 2
Cali Scribe 2 2
Arlene 2 2
suejazz 4 4
Frankenoid 1
Question Authority 2
HappyinNM 1 1
McRonan 1
Supenau 4
What are you working on?