a bird in the hand.

Or my adventures in fabric print and design.

But first, you may remember the embroidery pattern I made inspired by a Korean wedding kimono, well after many hours I finally finished it:

It's the first big embroidery I've made and I really learned alot from doing it. The fabric has pulled in some places, and some of the stitches are a bit too long, but all in all I like it.
Laura and I have decided to use it for a dress she can wear to my sisters weeding in May.

I used the same inspiration in a silk dye and screen printing course at school. But here I only used the bird motif.

First I did alot of testing both with ground colours, pattern layout and howmany times the dye were to be brushed through the frame, it's a really time consuming procedure because you have to dry, damp, wash and iron the fabric between each routine.

I ended up dying and printing two pieces of fabric measuring about 1 square meter. They are far from being perfect, but if used as scarfs where all the flaws are less visible I think they look ok.

I also uploaded the pattern to spoonflower to try it out. The colors turned out pretty much as I had hoped, but I was quite surprised at how small the bird was (the original drawing is on the left)
It nedds some correcting; there are some streaks I hadn't noticed at first (I don't have photoshop or illustrator and made this using paint and picnik)

But it's quite fun to have some fabric I myself have designed, and I allready have ideas for other designs...

Finally I really have been lucky in both the doll quilt swap, and the pillow talk swap.

I received a wonderful quilt from Emma Louise

And a gorgeous pillow from Kerri

Don't they look good together?

That's all folks... Thank you for tuning in, take care, and drive safe :-)

sunday stash

This week I don’t have any fabric to show, but I do however have something I have been working with all week:
Copic sketch markers.


In the week before Christmas I went on a fieldtrip with my school to the National museum of Denmark, to get inspiration for an embroidery pattern.
Besides a lot of historical Danish artefact, it also contains a lot of effects from cultures all over the world.
From this trip we were to pick an item to be inspired from and do a study about

I fell completely in love with a traditional Korean bridal kimono, I’m sorry for the bad picture, but it was really hard to take one without lights being reflected.
The embroidery depicts bird Phoenix with chicks and symbolizes life, resurrection and fertility.

I did some research on the subject and came up with the idea of a dragon and a phoenix, symbolizing ying-yang, male-female, water-fire and so forth.



I coloured it in different ways, trying to decide the final layout.
I got a bit sloppy in the last one (and a bit dizzy from the marker fumes…)
Not yet sure which one to pick.

I’m going to sew it up on dupioni silk with silk floss.
The final project isn’t due until March 18’th, but I think I know how my evenings until then will be spent.

Happy Sunday :-)

Isa

Busy as a bee

Well I haven’t been but the other members of the Euro bee has.

I’ve joined my first bee and was assigned with the first month. I sent out my fabric and instructions just before I went on vacation Saturday before last.

And already there are some amazing blocks popping up in the flickr group. I’m really excited about them, and get butterflies in my stomach every time there is a new pic.

Since we’ve been on vacation I haven’t been doing any sewing, but I brought along some embroidery supplies including patterns from Polka dot bunny. I’m thinking about using them for a fairy tale wall hanging, mixed with Heather Ross far far away,

and other fairytale themed fabric.

When returning from vacation Nicole from polka dot bunny

had sent me this great package filled with great goodies.

Thank you Nicole, it really made it so much better to return to normal life again.

Take care

Isa