A Wrap-Up

Last autumn I gave you a sneak preview of a wrap-around tunic I was working on at the time. I finished it eventually, but I haven't yet shown you the result.

The pattern for the tunic is from the book Simple Modern Sewing. 8 Basic Patterns to Create 25 Favorite Garments (Interweave). It's the tunic you can see on the cover. It's a fairly simple pattern, but I had some difficulties with it, as there were errors and vagueness in both the pattern and the directions. But with a little help and good advice from a colleague I finished it, and I'm pretty pleased with the result.

I added an intricate design in raw-edge reverse appliqué on the back:

It would have made a lot of sense to free-motion sew the appliqué, but I actually sewed it with the feed dogs up and an open-toed presser foot (appliqué foot), and a short stitch length. I wanted full control of the stitch length, to make sure that the appliquéd fabric won't fall apart when I wash the garment. It took me hours to sew the design, with a lot of lifting and lowering the presser foot in the curves, and then hours to carefully cut out the design, but it was doable. Here's a detail:

Now I'm working on this skirt. Again, I've made changes to the pattern, so it's slow work, but I've made good progress. My skirt will be in red and black with a Japanese theme. I hope I'll be able to show you images soon!

Have a great week, and thanks for visiting my blog! - Annika

Where Did the Weekend Go?

Gosh, the weekend just flew past me, and here we are: Sunday evening again. I promised you more images of my spray printing experiments, and here they are.

I used stencils and masks (hand made, commercial, as well as found ones), and printed with them each time I'd sprayed over them. No point in wasting good paint! So I have both positive and negative prints now. Very nice. Another thing I tried was spraying wet into wet, and letting the paint seep through the fabric onto another peice of fabric underneith. That produced the cool patterning you can see second to the right in the bottom photo. Spraying is fun. You should try it!

Thanks for visiting, and have a good week! - Annika

Spray Printing in a Small Space

I'll do a quickie this week. But I wanted to show you what I've been up to. There will be more images later, so stay tuned!

This week's theme was spray printing. Here's a print I made with stencils that were wet with paint after I'd sprayed over them. Instead of rinsing or wiping them clean, I printed with them. Waste not, want not.

If anyone wonders where I work, I'll show you a view of my kitchen table when I'm in the middle of spray printing.

As you can see, I did my best to avoid splattering the furniture and window. I still managed to spray the yellow chair a little. Oh, well.

Space is always an issue, and this time I found this solution. Not the best one, but I had to make do. And, no, I don't normally store anything on the stove, and I don't recommend it to anyone either. But as I said, I had to make do this time.

I rent, so the green tiles are not my choice, by the way... ;-)

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week! - Annika