What to do with awesome Fat Quarters

Over the last year of making Fat Quarters for my etsy shop, I've gotten some pictures back from customers who were nice enough to share the projects they've made from them.

You can make bowties...



Or a fun little bag..



A dear friend made some awesome one-of-a-kind pouches that show off the prints so well.





Most recently, someone made a cute bag with my Silence print.



This makes me want to make more FQs...or rather, I really should get on it considering my stock is getting a bit low. I think I'll be having a screen printing day sometime very soon.

E is for Edward who wore Fabulous Furs

And while I've read a bit about Edward Gorey, I still am not sure why that is...I guess he just really liked furs.

In any case, I did an Edward Gorey themed swap on craftster on a whim. There are super awesome artists participating and I have always loved Gorey's macabre quirky style. When I got my partner I was a little stymied because she wanted pretty much practical items, and while I am totally on that bandwagon, I think my talents tend to lie in making non-practical, art stuff. So I thought...and tested my sewing skills! and then planned and executed!

I decided for my first item to do an embroidered hoop since my partner was starting a collection for her wall. I sketched a few children characters and made small changes and did a little Gorey-esque type scene. Hopefully you can see my attempt at shading with the floss.





My favorite little girl. Of course she's the one with the scissors.





The next item I thought would be fun so my partner can pretend she is a Gorey character! Or is it just me that thinks that's clever and funny...in any case the yarn was super soft to work with, though changing colors every 5 rows was a pain and slowed down my crocheting speed significantly.



And lastly, the thing that took the most planning and forethought and preparation - a screen printed tote bag! The tote bag I posted about a few weeks ago was a practice run for this. The image, I think, is quite fitting, as my partner said she loves to read, so book bag it is.





Now to go about figuring out what was up with the furs? Anyone know?

A new Bloggy Banner and other ramblings

My apologies, this week has been non-stop so far and has left me very little time to sit down and type out a blog post. In any case, I'll ramble a bit and promise you a more put-together post later in the week.

I have been working on a new banner for my blog. Ideally it was supposed to replace the banner on my etsy shop too, but fitting it into a width that is only 100 pixels without cropping out all the awesomeness is a harder challenge than you'd expect. I'm going to have to make another one to work as my etsy banner so you can look forward to that later.



It's a lot of layers of screen printing, and I love how it turned out. I made a few new screens that are really more of a texture effect than drawings. It's actually a little brighter in person but I'll have to play with the pictures to try to get that come out a bit more. There also some embroidery on there because so much of what I do has embroidery in it. I did hold back on going too crazy with it though, so as to not overwhelm the already busy design.

Speaking of embroidery, it looks like my year-long love affair with embroidery and my patchwork bags has given me an unpleasant case of carpal tunnel. I have never had it before so when my hands started hurting unexpectedly I wasn't sure what was happening. But sure enough, it is definitely related to all my stitching adventures which breaks my heart...but I won't stop stitching, that's for sure. I just need to take it a little slower, more breaks, and take care of my hands as I've known I had to when I started this whole thing. If I'm a little slower at bag production and the like, this is the reason why.

Later this week I am going to be testing out my skill with some confectionery delights....which should be interesting considering I'm a mess in the kitchen at times. My work does a bake sale every year for our partnership with March of Dimes so I'm going to try my hand at some fancied up rice crispy treats and brownies. I'll be sure to share all my messes and successes with you guys =)