Becka’s Project Journal

See us on Twin Cities Live! (Actually it’s just me and a lot of footage of the kids.)

Quilted heart valentines. Etsy is doing a project to deliver valentines to Meals-on-Wheels recipients in Brooklyn and is collecting valentines. These are going off to them along with some Andy made too.

I already have this little cardigan in green, so when I found them on sale for $6, I got another in a different color and added this pink elephant. The elephant is from my Animal Outline Patterns, which you can find in my etsy shop. (I hope the people who have purchased them are having as much fun as I am. I use them all the time.)

Fox9 Tv Coverage. This reporter was really great and came to the Textile Center to film these segments.

Here we are this morning on KARE-11!

If you are around the Minneapolis area, check out my kids on Fox 9 News throughout the Friday morning show. (I will post a link if they put it on their website.) My seatbelt fashion project collaboration is getting some great press and they came to interview 3 of the teens this afternoon. I am not on camera for this one, I was just off stage giving them big thumbs up. This is one talented and fun group of teens! I love them all. You can see more about the project at its Facebook page.

For those blog readers who don’t know what I am talking about, I coordinated a project for AAA Minneapolis and the Textile Center to help a group of teens make fashions from seatbelts. Their workshop with us was this past weekend and we have a runway show on Friday with some fantastic prizes, a DJ, cool lights, and lots of glitz. Fun fun fun.

Just finished reading Flora Segunda by Ysabeau Wilce, around watching inauguration coverage. This one took me a while to get in to it. I felt like the beginning was trying too hard to introduce too many unusual things -like setting the stage was a little bit contrived. The story itself is a coming of age kind of thing. Fourteen year old girl finding her place and her individuality- I don’t want to give away story details. But the magical world she lives in is an interesting one, and by the first third of the book I was sucked in. I will look for the sequel.

I am going to try again and blog the books I read. I would love to keep track – I read a lot (usually several at once) and so I think I will talk about them as I finish them. The first read of the new year was actually a re-read: Jane and the Stillroom Maid, by Stephanie Barron. I love this whole series – mysteries starring Jane Austen. I needed something to read with lunch one day and just pulled this off the shelf. I love the language and the flavor of Austen. I am not a purist, I will read just about anything that is related to Jane Austen’s work.

Book number two: The Other Queen
by Philippa Gregory. Another subject I will read almost anything about is Queen Elizabeth. This book is told from the perspective of three different characters, alternating between them with every chapter. It is mostly the story of Mary Queen of Scots while she was imprisoned by Elizabeth. The narrators are Mary and the Lord and Lady Shrewsbury who were her supervisors while she was being held. Philippa Gregory’s books have been hit and miss for me – I loved the Boleyn ones and really didn’t like the Wideacre ones. This one was a hit for me.

Sublime Stitching, my favorite place to get embroidery patterns, has issued a challenge: tiny monograms. There aren’t many rules, but you can see the contest here: little pillow

I woke up yesterday with a cold, which kind of snuck up on me. So I decided to make a pot of tea, put on my bathrobe and stitch a tiny monogram. Here is my monogrammed pillow.

It is silk dupioni fabric embroidered with silk thread. The monogram is 5/8″ tall, the pillow is about 1 1/2″.

After the discharge paste dries, then you iron it on the silk setting with as much steam as you can get. It shows up pretty quickly. (But smells like warm old tuna) The stencil, I think, is beautiful. The discharge results are pretty good. It didn’t take out as much color as I was hoping. This was my first project, so I really didn’t know what to expect. I also don’t know how this scarf was dyed or even for sure what the fiber content/finsih is (the tag says 100% wool). You can see it well in the photo, but the weave is very open and kind of transparent, so I folded it up on itself to get a good picture. You can see if I put it up against white…

it nearly disappears. It is gorgeous but totally subtle. I am going to add some more to this scarf (although I am not sure what yet). Next experiment is to try it on some scraps of my handdyed cotton.

It was a weekend for an experiment. I bought a nice merino wool scarf at a holiday sale. It is plain peacock blue, which is a lovely color, but it seemed to need a little something. I thought about shibori dyeing it, but I am a little over shibori right now. So I went and got a bottle of discharge paste. What’s that? It’s like bleach in that it will take the color out of almost any natural fiber, but it is not as nasty to work with. Bleach will also liquify wool and silk, which is not usually an effect you want. I have heard about discharge paste, but never used it, so here goes the experiment.

I first cut a freezer paper stencil of a dragon. (love dragons) I was inspired by a medieval dingbats font. I redrew this guy and simplified him a bit to make a better stencil.

Here’s the stencil partly cut. I folded my paper in half and cut two at once so I would get a mirror image.

Then I ironed it on to the scarf. (If you want a good tutorial about freezer paper stencil, just google. There are a bunch). Next I painted on my discharge paste. It is roughly the consistency of egg whites and smells like old tuna. (No kidding.) Not seriously objectionable, but not so charming, shall we say?

The key is to make sure it soaks in to the fibers. This picture has it all painted on (although you can’t tell). The magic doesn’t happen until after it has dried and you iron it.

So, stay tuned for tomorrow for the results!