Showing posts with label pasta print blocks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pasta print blocks. Show all posts

Monday, September 1, 2014

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!!!

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Pasta Play and Book Update

I've been arranging pasta patterns to make print blocks for the next newsletter.

I spent Sunday in the studio... playing with pasta! I'm preparing for the next issue of Julie B Booth Surface Design News. A couple of the blocks took quite a while to put together. I have a greater appreciation for mosaic and inlay work! I can't wait to see the fabric prints I can make with these pasta blocks. I'll post a preview right before I publish the newsletter.

On the book front... You might have noticed the book icon just to the right. It's a link to my page on the Quarry book shop.

The "working" cover for the book. The final cover design is in the works and will be ready soon.

From there, you can click on your favorite book seller to pre-order Fabric Printing at Home. I spent an hour on the phone last week with Quarry's marketing manager and will be talking with their social media specialist today. I'm learning A LOT! Apparently, pre-orders are what to strive for...so... I'm hoping that some of my blogging buddies out there will put in an order soon! (especially those of you who contributed to the gallery section of the book) :-)

Okay...enough shameless plugging for now. I'll be off to Old Town Alexandria this morning to meet with my F.I.N.E. buds. It will be great to see what they've been up to the last couple of months. And...even though it's raining, I'll be bringing my camera along in case I spy some PINK (Roy G Biv on August 20th).

Hope you all have some creative plans for today! I'll be back to gluing pasta this afternoon....