Thursday, November 11, 2010

Great Fabric

On my recent teaching trip to Greenville, NY, one of my students brought fabric she had designed and then had printed through a company called Spoonflower. It was beautiful fabric based on images from her flower garden. She used the photo editing program - Photoshop Elements, the one that I use. She took a photo of her garden, put it in photoshop, hit "filters" along the top, then in the drop down menu, she hit "artistic" and then "posterized edges". She had the Posterized Edges print and the finished product with her, but not the original picture, so I wanted to show you what happens with that particular filter. The picture below is from my garden pulled up in Photoshop Elements and then...
I hit filter, artistic and then posterized edges. I love this particular filter; it makes the print a little more alive and the edges more distinct. It's especially noticeable in the greenery in the background.

Here is Sheila's fabric; she was able to do all of this online, sending the photo to Spoonflowers with lots of options for repeats, mirror images, and sizes of prints.  This was a lovely quality cotton, silk was more. I was very impressed with the quality of color and fabric.
Sheila had also purchased some wonderful batik fabric that worked beautifully with her designer fabric. She made the top of the jacket with the batik and the bottom with her own fabric. Sheila felt it needed some perspective so she added some small images of mountains along the horizon, not only to break it up but to give it distance. She used the Pigma brush pens which are permanent and come in a variety of colors. They were new to me. I'm familiar with Pigma pens but not these; it was nice to see a new product and how successful and easy it was to use.
Next came some thread embellishment done mostly with metallic threads but just the right amount.

Next, some flowers from the print were backed with fusible web and cut out individually to bring up into the batik fabric area. I really like the perspective!
Just perfect!
Sheila promised a picture of the finished jacket which I will share with you. I know it will be wonderful! Another student, Sandy, started this "sampler" in class to hold the many techniques we covered.
It was coming out so pretty, she decided to make it into an art quilt and put many of the techniques in a sampler notebook for future reference and use. One of the things I love on this piece is the stone firepit, created from a photo of the one in her yard. I think it turned out really nice.
I also love the couching techniques (the leaves) which are hidden under a piece of screening (the kind you buy at home improvement stores). It's a wonderful "fabric", I use often. It softens the color and pattern underneath and gives great texture.
This is going to be a great piece.
Next time - more adventures in Greenville involving cemetaries, murder on the bridge and "spooky" old houses - all on my aunts old property.
Until next time

No comments:

Post a Comment