Bringing It Home: Apronalong Guest Post

I only made one Christmas gift this year.  I decided early on that I wasn't going to make any.  I thought I'd use pregnancy as an excuse to not stress myself out over the holiday.  But I did end up making this one gift for someone special.  Although next year....

I made another screen printed apron. This one was for my mom, who is also an art teacher. Her name was printed across the front pocket, which is why I'm showing a side view.  I used a heavy weight denim for the apron and white ink to print.   I also used my same art supply drawings to cut my stencils.   My screen prints were a lot better this time around.   I didn't do anything differently.   I used all the same supplies I did before, but I was careful about stretching the sheer fabric really, really taut.   I also didn't skimp on ink.   I squirted out more than enough for each print.  I really enjoy this home screen printing process.   It's different than just using a freezer paper stencil because you can print the same stencil over and over again (since the stencil is fused to your screen instead of your fabric).  I am working on a way to make it accessible and easy for my students.  Maybe my art club should print their own tee shirts.  How cool would that be?

Anyway, I'm bringing home my how-to on quick and dirty screen printing from my Apronalong guest post over at Did You Make That?  I was absolutely thrilled to write this post when Karen asked me to a few months ago.  It was a fun project.   And I wear my apron almost daily- I really do!!  It definitely wins the award for my most worn garment of 2012 ;)

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Hey you, Apronalongers.  My name is Liza Jane and I am super excited to be guest posting here at Did You Make That?  I hope you are all having major success in making your aprons and looking like domestic goddesses.  I know I enjoyed making mine. 

 

My apron is not for doing domestic duties, if you can’t already tell from my photos.  I’ll be honest, I’m not very good at doing any sort of domestic duty.  My apron is for work.  My day job is an elementary school art teacher.  I teach art to around 650 five through eleven year olds every week.  Calling my job messy is an understatement.  My days are calamitous. Practically everything I own has at least one spot of paint or ink or glue or glaze on it, though I tend to still wear things if it’s just a little spot.  An apron is my saviour for keeping the big stuff off my clothes.  I wear an apron all day long.  I’ve even caught myself leaving for the day with it still on before.  So when Karen asked me if I’d like to guest post for the Apronalong, I jumped at the chance to make a new one.  And I took a little creative license in creating the fabric.

I’ll start with the boring details first.  I did use a pattern, though really I could have just traced around an old apron had I had one handy.  I toyed with the idea of making a fancy, frilly apron.  But in the end, I decided utilitarian was the way to go.  My apron covers me and has pockets.  That’s all I need.  I snagged Simplicity 9565 at a 99 cent sale and used it for the pattern pieces.  Yes, that is a “Sewing for Dummies” pattern– which is totally appropriate for me most of the time.  I just used the pieces and put the apron together the way I thought it should be put together.  I can’t comment on the instructions except that they looked super in depth.  I used a white cotton bull denim so my apron is heavy duty and hardy.

Now I bet you’re wondering where I found my totally appropriate art teacher fabric.  And if you’re not, well then… too bad.  Indulge me, please.  I screen printed it myself and I’m awfully tickled with how it came out.  It’s definitely not perfect screen printing.  In fact, a lot of my individual prints are pretty poor.  But I’ll tell you why that happened.  I’m really just excited about testing out the process.  I’m truly a printmaker at heart and I love process.  I think that’s one of the reasons I love sewing so much, too.

This is not a tutorial.  It is just an explanation of what I did.  I was inspired by a photo I spied on Pinterest this summer.  I’m always on the lookout for simple ways to do more complicated art processes so I can adapt them for teaching kids.  I like to keep things easy.  So this is super basic screenprinting.

 

These are the supplies I used.  My screen was actually a piece of polyester window sheer fabric.  I have about six yards of this in my stash and it has been there for about three years now.  Obviously my illusion of making curtains for my giant picture window fell through.  The fabric was not ideal.  If I did this again, I would use actual silk (as in silkscreen…).  Or I would use a sheer fabric that was smoother and had a tighter weave.  This fabric had an uneven weave and it was pretty scratchy, which made it difficult to attach my stencil.

The sheer fabric was stretched in a embroidery hoop.  My stencils were made from freezer paper.  I cut my stencils with an x-acto knife. And I printed with a screen printing ink from a local hobby store and used an old credit card as my squeegee.

I sketched some art supplies before I started.  I tried to think about the objects in terms of positive and negative space since I would be cutting each as a stencil.  Once I worked it out in my sketchbook, I traced the shape (1) on to a scrap of freezer paper sized to fit on the embroidery hoop.  I cut my stencil with an x-acto knife (2) making sure to save the pieces that needed to be fused separately.  Then I stretched my screen in the embroidery hoop (3) taking care to keep it as tight as possible– like a drum.  Next, I fused the stencil to backside of my screen (4).

 

Here is a picture of how I fused the freezer paper stencil (5).  I laid a scrap of denim on my crappy old dining room table.  I don’t recommend ironing on your dining room table normally, but ours has really turned in to a hobby table.  I’m going to paint it one of these days.  Next, I laid the stencil, plastic coated side face up.  Then I laid my stretched screen so the stencil would affix to the backside.  Followed by another scrap of denim as a press cloth.  And yes, my iron fit perfectly in my embroidery hoop.  That was serendipitous.  I’m not completely happy with the way the freezer paper stencil worked, but I think that was because it did not fuse seamlessly to my scratchy, rough weave fabric.  If I did this again, I would use contact paper or acetate to make a stencil like I’ve seen in other tutorials.  Or better sheer fabric.  I saw another tutorial where someone painted glue on the screen to block out an image, but I would imagine that would make it hard to get a crisp edge.

 

Once my stencil was fused in place I was ready to print.  I laid my screen on my apron fabric and squeezed out a blob of screen printing ink at the top of the stencil (6).   Leave enough room around your stencil so the ink doesn’t go off the edges.  I used an old credit card as a squeegee to pull the ink down and through the screen (7).  And then I repeated many, many times adding more ink as needed (8).   Like I said before, my prints are not perfect (9).  They got better as I went along.  It took some practice to gauge whether I was using the right amount of ink.  The larger stencils took a fair amount.  You don’t want to continue to push ink through the screen or it will squeeze under the edges of your stencil.  I think my images would be a lot clearer with a smoother fabric.  But this is quick and dirty screen printing.

 

The best part is that the screen is easy to create and dispose of.  I took the whole screen out of the embroidery hoop when I was finished with it and then created the next (10).  The fabric paint I used dried enough in between stencils that I didn’t smear previous prints when I added more images to my apron.

And that’s it!  I heat fixed my screen printing ink after letting it dry and sewed up my apron in no time.  I love it.  I love it so much, in fact, that I haven’t worn it at work yet.  I don’t want to get it messy.  Hmmmmmm……..

 

Thanks so much for having me, Karen!

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Wishing everyone a fantastic New Year!   Hope it's full of sewing, fun and never ending bobbins!

 

Snug Life

  

Yes, my husband is not ashamed to wear a picture of his cat on his shirt.  A very literal version of wearing your heart on your sleeve I suppose.  Tee hee.  Love you, J.

 J had a birthday last week.  For his birthday gift, I finally got around to making a tee shirt that we had talked about making for years.  The idea for this tee shirt was born while we were on our honeymoon three years ago.  While walking around Old San Juan, we went in to a tee shirt shop where they had a pug life tee shirt on display.  We thought it would be hilarious to make a snug life tee shirt instead.

 

See, we have this cat.  A cat named Socks who loves to snuggle.  I mean SNUGGLE.   I'll be honest, I've never seen anything like it.  Neither has J.  Socks will snuggle morning, noon and night.  I wake up in the middle of the night and he will be flopped on his back with his head on my shoulder.  He snuggles like a person.  He snuggles so much that sometimes it's really annoying and you have to push him off.  But you can't be mad at him for too long.  I mean, how many cats do you know that are so loving?  Our other cat is pretty indifferent to us.

   
 

I went though our photo roll and found lots of snuggle pictures, but some are just too embarrassing to post.  But here's one.  Socks' story is a funny one.  I was not a cat person before Socks.  In fact, I often claimed I hated cats.  Then my aunt asked me to cat sit for a year while she was doing humanitarian work in Africa.  That's when I got Socks.  He was a born in the gutter stray that she took in.  J and I laugh about he would never have made it out on the streets with his proclivity for warm places and snuggle.  He's too much of a wimp.   Anyway, he snuggled his way in to our home. When my aunt came back from Africa, I couldn't let him go and she was kind enough to let me keep him.  And now I can't believe I ever said I didn't like cats.

  

Back to the tee shirt.  I wanted to try out a photo screen printing kit I saw at Hobby Lobby by Plaid.  It was quite pricey ($40), but I used a 40% coupon which made it more reasonable.  Still a little pricey for my tastes.  I was not totally convinced it would work when I started this project.  I did some photo silk screening back in college and I remember needing a lot of sophisticated equipment.  We put photo emulsion on the screens in a dark room and used a huge glass light table to expose the screens. But this little kit does the same thing on a smaller scale.  It came with three small screens that already had photo emulsion on them in a black bag, a box with a socket and light bulb to be used for exposing the screen, and supplies to actually print your image after you make your screen.

 

All you have to do is print out the black and white image you want to use.  I used the photo of Socks above but altered it in PicMonkey to be only black and white.  In case you are wondering, I made it black and white first, played around with the brightness and contrast and then "posterized" it to only have two colors-  just black and white.  No grey.  I did add to the image since we wanted to see the top of his ears and whiskers on the other side of his face.  I worked back in to the image with a sharpie and then photocopied it.  I just used regular paper, not a transparency.  I laid my printed image face down on my screen and laid a piece of glass on top and then exposed it in the light box.  I did not use a piece of glass the first time I tried it and my image was not as successful.  The heat from the light bulb caused the paper to curl up even though I taped it down and missed a lot of detail.  So I highly recommend using a piece of glass on top.  I took a piece of glass out of a picture frame to use.

 

After exposing the screen for 25 minutes, I soaked it and removed the emulsion to form the image.  The emulsion that is exposed to light stays put and the emulsion beneath the black image is washed away.   I had to put the text on a separate screen because we wanted the image to be as big as possible.

 

Once the screen was dry I was ready to print.   My image was way too close to the edges but I attached a wide masking tape border before I printed.  That kept me from spilling ink over the edge of the screen.  The size of the screens was a bit of an issue.  I needed them to be just a little bit bigger.

 

I did a few practice prints before I printed J's tee shirt. I actually printed two tee shirts for him; a white ink on black tee and a black ink on gray tee.  I like the black image better.  The white ink soaked in to the tee shirt and looked very faded, which is ok.  I may make him one more.  You can wash the screen and use it again.  You can see below that the image is pretty close to the original print out.  There were some minute details lost but it's pretty darn close.  My only complaint is that the photo emulsion does not seem like it will last very long.  The edges feel pretty gummy and the more times I washed it, the more I felt like the edges would peel up.  I don't see it lasting for 50 prints like the instructions claim.  But it was great for making a few tees.

 

The verdict on Plaid's Custom Silk Screening Kit?  Fun and good for a printing a few small scale images.   But pretty expensive.  I wouldn't have bought it without the coupon.  You can also buy replacement screens but they are pricey, too.  Good thing Hobby Lobby lets you use a 40% coupon everyday if you like.   And no, I didn't receive any free stuff or compensation for this post which is why I'm not linking to the product.  You can look it up online if you are interested.  Just my honest opinions.

 

He's going to kill me for posting this photo, bwahahaha!

 

J likes his tee shirt and that's all that really matters.  

Happy Birthday to a man who is not ashamed to snuggle with his cat!  

St. John

 

Sandy Cay, BVI's.  The colors in this photo have not been edited at all.  That is actually the color of the water in the Virgin Islands!

This is a gratuitous vacation post, just in case you're only interested in the sewing posts.  Though there were lots of handmade things worn in St. John.  I went in to a sewing frenzy before we left.  I think I sewed a grand total of six different items for our trip in the last two weeks before we left.  To tell you the truth, I was a little drained by the time I was done.  I was frantically finishing a dress late at night before the morning we left at four a.m.  Anyway, I'll post about the things I made later on.  This is just a summary of what we did, what we saw...  mostly for me to look back on more than anything else.

And yes, maybe to be a little bratty, too ;)  It sure was a beautiful place.

 

After snorkeling around Waterlemon.

The shorts came in handy!  I wore both pairs multiple times.  They were great for all the beach going and hiking around we did.   We did so much walking, swimming and snorkeling everyday that we were worn out at night.  I think we went to bed around nine every night.  

 One more time, Waterlemon.  The water here was absolutely insane. Again, not edited.

We rented snorkel gear the first day we were there and took it everywhere we went.   You could just walk in to the water, put on your mask and go.  The snorkeling was amazing.  I've never seen anything like it.  The first day we were there, we went to Maho Bay.  J was in the water for five minutes and popped up screaming, "Turtle!"  I'm sure we didn't look dorky at all.  We followed about five or six sea turtles as they leisurely munched on the sea floor for the next hour.  It was pretty amazing.

 

And he wore the shirt!  He's a good husband :)

 

Hawksnest Beach

All the beaches on St. John are public.  We rented a Jeep for the week and traveled around the island going to a different beach or two everyday.  They were all beautiful.  I'd have to say they are some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.  We went to Maho, Waterlemon, Salt Pond, Hawksnest, Trunk Bay, and Jumbie.  I'm absolutely spoiled rotten now.

 

The last day we were there, we chartered a boat and trolled around the British Virgin Islands.  We stopped for lunch at Willy T's.  It's a boat in the middle of the ocean that serves as a bar/restaurant.  And the food was really good!  So were the drinks.

 

In addition to Willy T's, we snorkeled at the caves at Norman, stopped at Sandy Cay and swam up to The Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke.

 

My best pirate impersonation.  And I made that cover up-- to be blogged soon.

The boat trip was probably my favorite part of the trip.  Actually, I don't know if I can pick just one favorite part.  It was all pretty awesome.  If you ever have a chance to make it to St. John, do it.  It was absolutely unreal.  We had such a great time.

 

Until next time, St. John!  

Don't Be a Lion's Lunch

I think the Once Upon a Thread series that Katy puts on over at No Big Dill is my absolute favorite blog series around.  It combines so many things I love-- children's books, artwork and illustration, and sewing, of course.  Anyway, I decided to play along again for chapter three.  Though this time around, I tried something completely new to me.

 

I made a softie.

Softie, stuffie, plushie, stuffed animal- whatever you call it.

And this softie is 3-D, which I'll explain more about later.  I know my lion is a little block-like.  He's not the most sophisticated softie in the world.  In fact, he's pretty ridiculous.   But I'm awfully proud of how he came about.

But first let me talk about how this all started.

I read Lion's Lunch? by Fiona Tierney to one of my first grade classes the other day.  I collect any sort of kid's book that has to do with art or drawing or anything like that.  

The story starts when Sarah wanders in to the jungle where she is accosted by an angry, grumpy lion.  

Lion is upset that Sarah is walking and singing in his jungle and tells Sarah he is going to eat her for lunch.  

Sarah pleads with lion not to eat her.  She strikes a deal with lion that if she can do something no one else in the jungle can do, she can stay (and not be a lion's lunch).

What can Sarah do that no one else in the jungle can do?  Sarah can draw.  She draws all the animals in the jungle.  And she draws lion.  But lion doesn't like what he sees....

You'll have to read it to find out what happens in the end.  It's a cute story with very cute jungle animal illustrations.  And Sarah draws and saves the day, which I like.  After I read the book, one of my first grade friends was inspired to draw some jungle animals just like Sarah.  She drew this picture and gave it to me.

It is the most awesome lion I have ever seen.  You can totally tell that he's a grumpy lion, can't you? That expression.  The upside-down-heart nose.  I absolutely, positively LOVE kid's drawings.  I know I'm in the right profession, being an art teacher.  Kid's drawings have so much personality and style. They are totally fearless when it comes to art, something we adults should take note of.

Also part of the inspiration of this lion was the discovery of artist Wendy Tsao via this article.  Tsao turns kid's drawings in to one of kind stuffed animals.  Her blog is definitely worth a look.  Such a genius idea.  I bet her waiting list is insane.  So between the book Lion's Lunch?, Once Upon a Thread, the drawing and the idea of turning kid's drawings in to softies.....

 .... this fella was born.

I giggled the entire time I was making this.  Seriously.  It was so much fun.

At first I thought I'd make the lion more two dimensional by cutting out a front and back just like the drawing and stitching it up.  Then I decided I wanted to be fancy.  I wanted to make it three dimensional.   But I was stumped on how to come up with a pattern.  Are you ready for how I did this?  I'm pretty stoked that it worked.  It was just kind of brought forth from playing around.  I wasn't too sure it would work out in the beginning.  

Ok, you may not be as excited as I was, but still...

I made a very rough body and head shape out of newspaper and tape.  We were just finishing up a paper mache project where we did just this to build an armature.  Then I used muslin and straight pins and I cut the pattern pieces by draping and pinning the muslin on my balled up newspaper body.  See those scraggly looking pieces of muslin in the photo?  They are the basic shapes.  I refined and traced them out on paper, then used my paper pattern to cut the orange fleece.  I made the body in two pieces so I would have seams to sew the legs and tail in to.  I crossed my fingers and stitched it together. 

And it's a 3-D softie!

Hilarious.

You can see the seams pretty well in the photo above.   Now I know that my lion is pretty, um, square.  He kind of has a block head.  But I'm so pleased that working with a 3-d form to make the pattern worked.  This is backwards from the way I'd normally create a pattern.   And my experiences are pretty limited, mind you.  Anyway, the possibilities are endless. 

 

 This lion is made from fleece.  Fleece is very stretchy and forgiving, good for making softies.  His face is actually felt.  I embroidered his features.  I found some crazy fluffy trim in the home decor section for his mane.  His crown is a glittery vinyl I found at a craft store.  It's sewn on by hand.  Otherwise he's all machine stitched except for a little hole at his neck I slip stitched after he was stuffed.  I used a poly-fill stuffing.  Isn't he great?  He's going to live on my bookshelf at school.  He'll probably help read Lion's Lunch? to my first graders next year.

Guess who else likes him?

 

 That is the same grumpy expression, is it not?

 

Ridiculous.

Thanks Katy, for your ingenious series!  I enjoy seeing what every one comes up with and discovering new books.  So inspiring.

Happy sewing!

Hallelujah!

 

 

Cue the hallelujah chorus, my friends.  The sofa is done!

   

It's hard to photograph a looooonnnnggg sofa.... I swear it looks more spectacular in real life.  Or maybe that's just because I can lay on these fluffy down cushions and my feet don't touch the end.  Eight exquisite feet, people.  The stuff dreams are made of.  This is the place to take a nap.

 

  

Originally,  J and I had picked out a large print.  But we ended up going with this wavy dotted blue-green fabric.  A much smaller print.   And I'm glad.  Not too many pattern matching issues came up.  And the lines followed a geometric pattern, which made cutting easy.  I decided on the natural canvas cording despite my misgivings about the previous white upholstery job.   Fingers crossed that it will stay clean.

 

And here's the back.  Oh, the beautiful back!  If we did anything perfectly, it was this.  Stretched smoothly, stapled seamlessly, double welted impeccably...  and no one will ever see it.  I told J that we need to turn it around and have it face the window for a while.  Then the back would be the first thing you see when you walk in the room.

And here's some hot close-up double and single welt action for all you amateur upholsterers out there.

  

Check out that nifty little pocket where the zipper pull stays hidden.

 

By far, the most time consuming part of this project was sewing the box cushions.  Design*sponge just recently posted a fabulous boxed cushion tutorial if you are interested.  I reckon I spent about two hours per cushion.  That included making the cording, which was incredibly time consuming as well.  I made miles of it.  Miles.  

 

The actual covering of the couch was pretty quick.   I'm guesstimating it took us about eight hours all together.  Including double welt.   J spent quite a few hours patching and repairing the wood frame.  He thinks about six hours.  Granted all of this was spread out over, um..... ten months?

 

Ok, really we did most of it the last month.

Here's the timeline:

May- Bought sofa from Salvation Army for $27.  Husband and I decide to upholster it ourselves.

Early June- Strip down sofa to burlap, springs and wood.  Learn so much in the process.  Take muchos photos.

June through December- In paralytic shock over how much upholstery fabric costs.   The $27 couch becomes much more costly.  Sofa sits in smelly heap in living room for 7 months.

New's Years Eve- Spend Christmas money on fabric.

January- Upholster sofa through trial and error.  Also, have many arguments over whose modus operandi is better.  I fly by the seat of my pants.  J, well, is a researcher.  I think we needed a little of both.

 

Here's my unsolicited advice to anyone who is interested in trying something like this--

You can do it.

Seriously, you can.  There are only two things you need to survive the process:

Perseverance and lots of Dacron. (That's that fluffy business up there in case you are wondering.)

Yes, Dacron is your friend.  It smoothed out all the lumps and bumps and made the fabric stretching process so much easier.  I was super pleased with the finish.  We actually used more Dacron than the previous upholsterers (they actually used a batting) and I think our upholstery job is nicer.  We'll see how it all holds up.

Also, I think it helps to have two people to pull and staple.  Especially on a piece this large.

 

I swore I wasn't going to post any more kitty photos.   When I scrolled back through all my posts on the sofa, she's in every one.  Every. Single. One.   I'm sure there are people reading and rolling their eyes.  

Another cat photo? Sheesh.  Crazy cat folks...    

But she's just so darn cute.  And the couch is directly in front of the bird watching window.

 

Your perch is ready, my dear.

(Note to my mother:  It's not really her perch.  I swear I'm trying to keep her off of it.)

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Would you like to know more about this project?

Here are links to all my posts.

I highly recommend the stop motion video ;)

Introduction

Stripped Down

First Fabric Choice

A Letter to my Sofa

Repairing the Wood Frame

Jack White was an Upholsterer

Sofa Stop Motion

Cheers!