Sewing & Design

24 July, 2015

The Verdict is in: Pfaff Expression 3.2

beckarahn2015-07-24T09:19:52-05:00Everything Else, Sewing & Design|Comments Off on The Verdict is in: Pfaff Expression 3.2

It’s love.

One of my most popular posts according to the analytics I see when I log in is the post I wrote about my Saga of Sewing Machines and the reviews of the Bicor, Viking, Bernina and more that I have loved and hated through the years. When I wrote that post I had had my Pfaff Expression 3.2 for about a week. It’s now been 8 months and about a million stitches, so it is definitely time to follow up. (I have been busy!) I can say with all honesty that this is the best machine I have ever owned. I have stitched through layers of leather, not to mention denim, silk organza, felt, polar fleece. I made a quilt with it. The stitches are beautiful, the tension is beautiful. I still love the zipper foot. It’s quiet and heavy enough that I don’t push it around the sewing table.

If I have to pick out a pet peeve it’s that the reverse button is little and a little awkwardly located. Reverse has two “modes”: one where you can hold it in and it reverses and when you let go it goes back to forward stitching; and the other mode clicks it into reverse and it stays there. Inevitably I do the wrong thing and get it locked into reverse when I want it out or vice versa. It’s mostly user malfunction, but it annoys me. (Now I wonder if I can change that to always do one or the other. I will have to check the book.)

I was skeptical about it being computerized, but so far that hasn’t been a problem. I bought a rolled hem foot that I cannot get to work reliably, but I think that is probably me needing more practice. All in all, I think I finally found the machine that I love.

The only thing I haven’t done is settle on a name, which I know is silly. Nothing so far has stuck, but I am sure she will let me know what her name is at some point.

15 June, 2015

I’ve got T-shirts!

beckarahn2015-06-15T14:46:12-05:00Everything Else, Sewing & Design, Weaving, Felting & FIbers|2 Comments

Today is the day! I am launching a brand new line of designs printed on t-shirts and coffee mugs. I took some of my most popular 1 inch button designs with fiber art puns and have turned them into t-shirt designs. These are printed by a company called RedBubble on a variety of different t-shirts. You choose the design, size, style and color and they will print and send it to you. There are a lot of different companies that will do this, but I like the selection at RedBubble and their customer service is totally top notch. I have several t-shirts from RedBubble designed by other artists and I just got my own “Knit Long and Prosper” shirt to celebrate my own new designs. These have been SO FUN to design and I am planning to keep adding more. (Let me know if you have a special request!)

I am featuring my “Reed Me” design in this post to celebrate the first day of the Midwest Weavers Conference here in Minneapolis. I did a volunteer shift for the conference this morning and I am teaching some workshops on Saturday. I wanted to time the opening of this new online shop so that I can talk about it in my “Marketing Yourself Online” class at the conference as another way of having your work for sale by making coffee mugs or notecards or even t-shirts with images of your work.

I have added a link in the sidebar (over there to the right) so that you can always find your way to my shop from here, or you can search at RedBubble under “beckarahn”.

24 March, 2015

Hennepin History Museum #MuseumWeek

beckarahn2015-03-24T10:12:39-05:00Gallery Exhibitions, Sewing & Design, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|1 Comment

It ‘s #MuseumWeek on Twitter this week and that seemed like a great excuse to talk about my favorite museum in the Twin Cities: Hennepin History Museum. Museum Week is a fun celebration of museums behind the scenes. Yesterday the theme was “behind the scenes secrets” and today the theme is “souvenirs”. And I have some great souvenirs from HHM!

I visited the museum a few weeks ago and brought along my camera. HHM is housed in a turn-of-the-century mansion that is full of beautiful details. When I was there taking photos, an exhibition of hand fans had just opened to coincide with a “Fireside Chat“, an afternoon lecture by a local fan collector. HHM holds these chats every other week and they feature local authors and history experts talking about everything from beekeeping to baseball.

I was really enamoured with this painted feather fan. It is made from white goose feathers which are painted with a floral spray and tipped with peacock plumes. Since I have been designing skirts non-stop the last few months, I looked at this and saw a skirt (naturally). My wrap skirt design is a 3/4 circle, which is a tough shape to work from, but a fan is already a 1/3 circle shape. It was a natural fit!

I love those peacock feathers around the hem! The museum staff was so excited that I was making things inspired by the collection that they invited me to have this skirt on display along with the fans. It was neat for me to see the two side-by-side and you can see them too if you stop by.

I also took some photos of the woodwork details in the Fireside Room. This helix patterned trim is featured throughout the room.

And that also inspired a design. I haven’t stitched up the sample of this one yet, but you can see the sketch. I used this bit of woodwork trim to make radiating stripes from the waist to hem. I also designed a basic stripe based on this woodwork pattern, which I will hopefully be printing to make silk scarves for the HHM shop a little later in the spring.

One visit and two pretty awesome designs! I feel like I found buried treasure. I can’t wait to go back and see what else I find.

I had never actually heard of Hennepin History Museum before a year or so ago, even though it has been around since the 50s. My friend Cedar is their new Executive Director and I think she has some pretty awesome ideas and the enthusiasm to bring their knowledge and collections more into the community. In fact, I joined the Board of Directors in January, so I can help her out with that project. If you are in the Twin Cities area, I hope you will stop by and visit or come for a Fireside Chat.

6 March, 2015

Inspiration from anywhere

beckarahn2015-03-06T14:15:20-06:00Sewing & Design, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|Comments Off on Inspiration from anywhere

My niece drew this picture of a sewing machine for me. Her message “Don’t miss the sniff” is to let me know that not only is there a scratch and sniff sticker there, but she drew it using smelly markers. Important stuff when you are 4. I am in love with this picture.

“Kid art” is a really hard thing to translate into fabric design. And honestly, I look at pretty much everything anymore and think “How can I make fabric out of this?” So I wanted to capture this fabulous drawing in fabric.

via gofugyourself.com

The new fall line for Dolce & Gabbana offers this. Which I honestly think is hideous. If you click that photo it will take you to a whole slide show of their runway show, which has a whole collection of “kid art” prints. They all look like they are printed on shiny satin besides, which also doesn’t make any sense. Formal crayon wear? Ugh.

So instead of trying to go with a literal interpretation, I decided to use Mia’s drawing as inspiration instead.

So, I drew the sewing machine and all of the other doo-dads and shapes in Illustrator, making it into a vector design so I could rearrange, resize and so on to make a repeat. This one is about 18″ because I wanted it to be big and bold. I wanted some textures to overlay on designs like this, so a few weeks ago, I spent an afternoon making fibery textures. This one is perfect for this design. I also used Mia’s drawing for the color inspiration. I think my version has enough pink in it for her to approve.

I don’t see this is a clothing fabric (although she would probably wear it) so I decided to think of it like a craft/quilting fabric instead, which meant I wanted to have a collection of coordinating prints to go along with it. Solids with the same fibery texture, “cheerios” and little banner flags so far. I think I need one more. Any ideas?

I know it is sewing machines (and you do now too), but I think this also could look like tribal/tiki/monster as I can see a few faces in there. And that also works for me.

24 February, 2015

Video: A skirt in 3 minutes

beckarahn2015-02-24T23:40:45-06:00Sewing & Design, Spoonflower & Fabric Design, Tutorials, Videos|2 Comments

I spend so much of my time behind a computer screen that it is hard to show “behind the scenes” shots of what I do. And I know that people love to see works in progress. I do too. So I made this video which shows my process in about 3 minutes. I captured it in 2 sessions and sped it up 1500%. This is a wrap skirt that I designed that should be one of the ones for sale at the American Craft Council show I am participating in. I just finished it so I haven’t seen the fabric in person yet.

The video shows the whole process from drafting the skirt in Illustrator to adding the photos in Photoshop. In this case it is a wrap style skirt and I used 3 photos: long exposure shots from a nighttime “parade of lights” we watched at Disney several years ago. This is a simple design relatively speaking. The photos are so cool that I didn’t need to do much manipulation to them. I left in all of the things I tried and rejected. You will see that I thought about a row of polkadots at one point. It’s tiny – it’s not meant to be a tutorial, but just so you can join along in the process. Enjoy!

20 February, 2015

“Stuck in a rut” or “Variations on a theme”?

beckarahn2015-02-20T11:32:13-06:00Sewing & Design|Comments Off on “Stuck in a rut” or “Variations on a theme”?

I have had scissors on the brain lately. Maybe because there are always several pairs of them on the dining room table. (And yet, never any when you go to look for them. But that’s a rant for another post.)

I started drawing this set of scissors to make earrings. I do a set of fiber art related jewelry for a local shop. Button earrings, zipper earrings, earring made from snaps. And I wanted to add something new to the collection. I love making laser cut doo-dads and I had a brainstorm to make little tiny scissors from mirrored acrylic that look like Gingher sewing shears.

Those were so much fun that I also drew some little embroidery scissors and stork embroidery scissors. I did all the artwork in Adobe Illustrator because I was making vector shapes. That’s what you need for laser cutting. But the cool thing about vectors is that once you get them drawn, you can scale them up and down without anything getting rough and jaggedy. So then I thought, since I have these scissors I should also make a fabric design. So that’s the design at the top. Which I think will make really great project bags and I might even make a t-shirt. Why not?

So then I made it in another colorway. And then I got on a roll and did a knitting design to match the style of those scissors. And then a design for lacemakers with bobbin lace and tatting. (I get a lot of requests for lacemaking buttons through my Etsy shop, so I know they are out there looking for things!) And then when I showed off these designs to a friend at Textile Center, they gave me a hard time about not having a design for crochet and weavers, so those are in the works. I’m even considering a skirt design all made of scissors shapes.

So one drawing of one pair of scissors has now turned into 9 different designs and more in the works. Stuck in a rut? I don’t think so. By taking the time to draw those vector shapes, I have now added them to my toolbox. It’s like finding a new color in the crayon box. I did the tedious work of making the vector shapes but now I can just drop them in anywhere and play with them. I am sure that I will get tired of them at some point, but for now the variations seem to just keep coming.