Embroidery Detour

In the process of getting ready for the Artistic Artifacts open house, I took some time to reacquaint myself with the embroidery capabilities of my DSM.  Really, in the 3 years since I bought my Baby Lock machine, I have only had a "passing acquaintance" with this feature.  With holidays approaching I thought I might want to do some gifts with embroidery and also combine it with the screen printed fabric, so I set out to explore the built in designs, and found several to try.  Here are 2 that I stitched out.

I knew I also had the capability to purchase designs on the internet and download them to my machine, but had never tried it before, so decided it was time.  Better late than never, right?  I have used Embroidery Library in the past so went to their site to see what I could find.  Of course, there was lots to choose from!  Fortunately, I realized that my order history was in my account so I was able to download previously purchased designs in the new format (my old machine was a Pfaff) as well as make new purchases! And the process to transfer to the machine was straightforward.  So, the embroidery component is back in action!  Here are some purchased designs.

The cardinal above was a challenge - much more stitching here.  The problem came when the machine jammed - not once, but twice! Major thread jam under the throat plate.  However I was able to get it resolved and finish stitching, and actually learned a key point about putting the machine back together by reading the manual - fancy that!

 I especially like these 2 redwork designs. 

I think I've shown these in previous posts, but above are 2 mug rugs that combine screen printing and embroidery in the same project. More of these are in progress!  Coming soon - a tutorial on how I made the mug rugs.

Open House

We had lots of fun sharing thermofax screen printing on Saturday at the Artistic Artifacts open house.  There were 4 of us demonstrating different techniques and our printed bookmarks/gift tags were a big hit.  Here are a few pictures from the event.

 These are our samples of bookmarks made with paint chips, gift tags, mug rugs and gift bags.

 Elizabeth is packaging screens, alongside Julie Booth, who was demonstrating printing with food!

 Beth is working on her bookmark and tag.

 If the print isn't the best, no problem!  Just paint the whole thing green, let it dry, and print over it!  We used brown kraft paper as a table cover and practice printing sheet - worked great!

 Showing a young friend how to screen print.

 These are the PG Fiber2Art screens for sale at Artistic Artifacts.We've added a section of special winter holiday screens.

One of the other make and take projects was greeting cards using gift papers and wooden printing blocks.  Lots of creativity going on!

Winter Holiday Screens

Saturday, Dec. 6 we will be at Artistic Artifacts for the annual Open House, where we will be demonstrating screen printing and have some make & take items available.  For this event we have created some new screens and added 4 to the Etsy shop.  These are the 4 new screens in the shop.

On the left is a public domain vintage pine cone from The Graphics Fairy.  It is sized to 2.5 x 1 inch.  On the far right is a grouping of 3 vintage snowflakes, also from Graphics Fairy measuring 2 x 5 3/8 inches.  The two in the center are text screens.  Center left is made up of microwords such as family, cheer, merry, peace, love, etc.  It measures 4 x 7 inches and is great for backgrounds.  Center right is made up of 4 words - Hope, Joy, Peace, Love - and measures 2 x 5 1/4 inches.  Here are some things we've been working on with these and other holiday images.

We will be working on gift tags, bookmarks, component pieces for mug rugs.  What else might you use these designs for? 

Holiday Images in the Etsy Shop

As the holidays approach, we wanted to add some more holiday/ winter images to the shop that you might use in some of your holiday projects.  Our pine branch image has been there forever (one of our first designs), and we added a single pine cone this summer.  To complement those, we have added 3 new designs.  One is a small pine sprig; another is a grouping of 3 pine cones; the third is a vintage pine sprig. The 3 pine cones image is a medium size screen; the other 2 are small.

The image on the far right is the vintage pine cone.  This image is from The Graphics Fairy and is in the public domain.  The only restrictions on use are to use no more than 6 images from The Graphics Fairy in any one project.

Above you see a sample of the pine cone group and pine sprig used together.

This photo shows the vintage pine sprig paired with our bird.  The bird in the Etsy shop is a medium size (4.5 x 2.5 inches).  For a more compatible scale, the bird can also be ordered in a small size (2 x 3 inches).  Send us a note if you would like the smaller size and charges will be adjusted accordingly.

What could you do with these?  Well, ornaments of course, as in the last post.  Perhaps you send holiday postcards instead of commercial greeting cards.  How about some holiday dish towels or placemats?  Print some yardage and use it for Christmas stockings or holiday pillows.  What else can you think of?

Watch for a few more holiday images in the shop coming soon.

Holiday Ornaments

Last week I was in need of some hand crafted holiday ornaments to donate to the Virginia Quilt Museum.  Of course they needed to have some screen printing, so I selected a few holiday images that I thought would work, and decided to print on some linen fabric for a natural look.   I cut 5 1/2 inch squares of the linen.  The screens I used were a vintage tree design made up of rows of birds, and a vintage pine branch that I combined with a bird.  I also remembered I had some wooden printing blocks that were trees, so I used those too. These are the initial prints.  You might be able to see that I drew a diagonal chalk line to help me center the image.  The top 2 are the screen printed designs, the bottom 2 are the block prints.

I had bought some embellishment products at Artistic Artifacts when I got this idea, so next I pulled those out to see what I could do to liven them up a bit.  One is a metallic thread, and the other is an embellished ric-rac trim, both made by Tentakulum from Germany.

On the block printed trees, I did french knots on the branches - they look almost like beads.  I used the ric-rac on the screen printed tree, and on the pine and bird design I made 2 french knots in the bird's beak to look like seeds.

The final step was stitching them together & stuffing, with a ribbon in the top corner for hanging.  I put the 2 block printed trees together, one on each side, and the screen printed designs together, one on each side.  Of course, you could easily put another holiday fabric on the back to make more ornaments.  Hmm...that's a good idea if I make more!