I craft therefore I am

I have leapt from one crafty project to another over the last few months. My underlying interest came from  10 fabric printing tutorials in this link from Babble.
 It has inspired me to investigate as many fabric printing and dyeing methods as I can and then use my favourites in some home furnishing and clothes.

In my quest so far I have explored screen printing, rubber stamp carving and printing, and shibori fabric dyeing. 

But all this has not distracted me from my recycled knitwear projects. I have been lucky to receive bundles of jumpers from Jenny and Jo recently - so a shout out to my thrifting friends.

The pom pom blanket is my latest sustainable sewing project. It is made from only the softest old knitwear. I warm wash the jumpers to slightly felt them and then cut them into squares, sew them together, blanket stitch the edge and add some labour intensive giant pom poms. Great fun!

 Aren't giant pom poms just delicious?

I can hear you wondering - how do you make pom poms this big?
Well... buy some very chunky wool. Wind it around your four fingers (held in the salute position) about 30 times, slide it off your fingers and place the bundle on a 20cm length of the wool, tie it up around the middle, snip the loops at either end,  leaving your tie ends long. Trim with scissors into a perfect ball shape. Then grab a wire brush to tease the fibres out a bit to achieve the fuzzy ball of pom pom goodness we all know and love.
There is a great pom pom tutorial here.

And maybe you are wondering how to make this recycled jumper blanket - well have a look at my tutorial here.

Leave me a comment if you like.... I'd love to hear from you.

screening mad

I'm thrilled to bits to be doing a screen printing workshop at Harvest Textiles next weekend. The Harvest Workroom is where all the action is and I hope to learn the ropes in one big session.

I'm so excited I'm literally incapable of looking at the paints and implements I bought online to have a play with.  I thought I might do some colour tests and some drawings to see what shapes I like. Nup! Nothing hapening! So I will go to my class like an open book, ready to be  inspired by the lovely folk at Harvest.

I have bought some  linen fabrics to print my design onto. I hope to make some tea towels out of it.

I have also got more linen like fabric to print on and if that works out I will make cushions out of it. You can never have too many cushions - Right?

I've been scouting around the internet for images of animals to draw in silhouette. I'd like to make a screen print over another print - the oh so lovely chevron. Can't beat a good chevron. 

minted.com

I can see a zebra head or a deer superimposed over the chevron.

mmm I can see I'm going to be a blithering wreck by the time I do this class. I hope the instructors take me firmly by the hand and tell me to focus!

A few other random shapes to draw -definitely the pineapple, antlers, cockatoo...

There's just something about the good old cocky that says go ahead, make my day. So I think a tote bag with this outline and the cocky comb printed in an unlikely colour could work. 

 I'm going to stop now.

The End