Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Hot Pattern Weekender Sunshine

I love the Weekender Sunshine Top by Hot Patterns and it seems that I'm always modifying it.
On my trip to Chicago earlier this year, I saw a really cute knit top in a ribbon store we visited.  I love how they pleated the neckline on the top. Here's a photo is took
Their version has ribbon (of course) added, but all those pleats going the same direction completely around the neckline.  I immeidiately thought of the Weekender Sunshine top as my starting pattern.

I took my pattern and sliced the neckline to add more fabric for pleating.  Since I didn't want the entire top/hem wider, I just slashed and spread partially down.
Here's a photo fo the original and modified front pattern piece. 
 
and here's a photo of the back pattern pieces.

and here's a close up of my completed neckline, inside back and outside front.  I cut the facing the same as original pattern, interfaced it, and after pleating, put the facing and top wrong sides together, pinned very carefully so that all pleats laid flat and sewed three rows.  I then trimmed the facing.  I didn't hem the neckline as it would be too much bulk.   I love the results! 
and here's the completed top, front and back. 

Monday, August 1, 2011

Painting...

The second class I took at the Long Beach Quilt Festival was with Polkey Bolton the editor of Quilting Arts Magazine and it was gel mono printing. [Polkey is really nice and and a great instructor, if you get a chance to take a class with her, I recommend it, you'll have fun "playing"]  We used fabric paints and a gelatin base to paint fabrics.   We used a new product call http://www.gelliarts.com/ which made the process really easy as we didn't need to use real gelatin.   We covered the gelatin base with fabric paints using a Brayer or a sponge brush.  A sponge brush gives you much more freedom as you can apply the paint to specific areas of your Gelli.  Each technique gave different results.  I really liked mixing the paints and creating different textures with the brush.  Some of the painted surfaces we imprinted with various found objects or rubbing plates (plates usually used with paintstiks) which design was transferred to the fabric.  Here's a sample of some of my printed fabrics.  After I got home, I did some machine embroidery on a few.

It was a lot of fun and with my leftover yardage, I'd like to make a continuous 2+ yards for a dress for my niece.  If you are not going to wash your fabric, you can basically use any type of paint.  If you are going to wash your fabric, be sure to use fabric paints and heat set when paint is dry.  You can heat set by running an iron over it, or as I did, tossing it in a hot dryer for 20+ minutes.

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