The Printed Fabric Bee: Inspirational Words Giveaway

This month, Queen Lynda Heines had all us worker bees producing fabrics with the theme, Inspirational Words.

I thought a while about what I wanted to do and decided to use the Adinkra symbol for strength. This symbol is two stylized sets of ram's horns coming together to form a beautiful symmetrical design. I've often played with variations of this symbol. I love the swirling spirals. When I make this symbol, I think of friends or family recovering from illness and in need of strength.

Lynda's requested colors were: orange, light green, blue and plum. Of course, I couldn't print just one piece! I had to play with the color combinations. I also wanted to be sure that I had enough fabric in case I made a mistake while printing. So...three color combinations. I'll be sending two off to Lynda (Lynda- the first two unless you prefer the third one. Let me know before Tuesday) and one off to the giveaway winner. The remaining fabrics may show up in a future fabric giveaway of my own.

Here is what I did...

After painting washes of color on white PFD cotton, I decided to use two of the pasta blocks from Issue #20 of Julie B Booth Surface Design News: Pasta Play. I wanted to have some interesting textures going on in the background.

Next, I designed and carved the symbol and two variations of the word, STRENGTH using a font I found online that looked "African".

I printed the Adinkra symbol over the pasta textures. I used a rectangular piece of craft foam the same size as the carved words to set the words off from the background.

Finally, I painted some details in the letters to make them pop!

Here are the final pieces.

And here is the giveaway fabric. It's a bit larger than the usual 6" square because I wanted the winner to get a repeat of the design.

Now...here's how you can win...go to either Lynda Heines' blog and post a comment under the giveaway photo OR go to The Printed Fabric Bee blog and post a comment there. Lynda will post a date for the giveaway and the winner.

Good luck!!!