We thought it might be fun to give you a peek in to what goes in to the making of the annual Halloween card.  So we saved a few of the set up photos and I will show you some of our secrets.

We set up this one in the basement.  This is our set up shot to make sure the scene is in the frame and we have everything where we want it.  This took us about an hour to figure out.  Then Andy spent a little time placing lights and setting flashes and marking where the tripod should be.  We borrowed some flashes and a “soft box” from a friend (thanks Jesse!)  We actually shot it in two pieces, one for each side of the image.  That way one of us could be behind the camera and we didn’t have to constantly run back and forth to do the self timer or try to hide a remote control.  We took about 100 photos in about 2 hours.

Then we go in to Photoshop.  We have learned that there is a balance between what needs to be “real” and what can be Photoshopped pretty easily.  I hate lipstick and I wasn’t about to go buy any for one photo, so photoshopping was the perfect choice.  Most of the Magic Mirror’s desk is deliberately lost in the shadows, so it didn’t need to be anything special.

My costume was made for the photo.  The pattern is a discontinued wedding dress pattern, which I modified.  It had the great neckline, I exaggerated the collar and a few other tweaks.  The collar, for those who are curious, has a double layer of interfacing inside and the seam up the back of the collar pieces is held together with magnetic necklace clasps.  Once you clip magnets on the seam closed, it stands up beautifully.  The Magic Mirror shirt is ink-jet iron on transfer paper.  The props all come from various places in the house.  We raided Andy’s computer junk drawer.  The skull candle holder came from my Uncle Lester and a turkey feather from my mom’s back yard.  The mask of the Magic Mirror was created this summer with friends over the course of several weekends.   Our friend Cy taught us all to make Italian style masks from carta lana (wool paper).  Andy’s mask got to be the magic mirror and you will see mine if you are on our Christmas card list.    We will write another blog post all about that mask making adventure soon!

Thought it would be fun to post a retrospective of some of the Halloween cards throughout the years.

Our annual gallery fundraiser at work was last night.   I don’t have a lot of time to make very elaborate pieces of art, so this is my goal each year, to make a dress to wear to this event.  This is based on a vintage-inspired pattern, with some tweaks.  The fabric is digitally printed silk/cotton from my friends at Spoonflower.  The same scribbly circles from the skirt show up smaller scale on the top although as a very subtle color variation (you can’t really see it in the photo) and the fabric has a lovely silvery sheen with the green.

The image I based the fabric design on is a photo of a pile of video cables.  I love the juxtaposition of 1940′s inspired dress with digitally printed video cable design.  My friend Jay does something high-tech with keeping TV stations running and sent me a couple dozen photos from his last trade show gig that were pictures of coils and tangles and piles of bright colored video cables.  I love that I have friends who don’t think I am crazy when I send messages like “OMG, I need that photo to make a dress, can I use it please!?”  Ok, he might have thought I was crazy, but he sent me that photo and 15 more.

I had a lot of fun walking around last night and talking about the dress and the design.  Two of the people from our local printing company (who do the newsletters and things for the center) wanted to know all about the printers and how many colors they use.  Because I work at a place where I am surrounded by some amazing artists, at least one person commented on the hand-picked zipper (where else would that happen to you?) and everyone needed to touch the fabric.  On Tuesday I will show it off to a highschool class we are doing a residency with.  They are coming to dye some fabric with me to accompany their own Spoonflower printed designs.

Polyvinyl acetate aka the good stuff

I just finished ranting about hot glue and four year olds over on Facebook and I thought I should share with you at the blog.  We have a dye lab where I work, which is a super-cool-amazing classroom space that is set up for just about every kind of messy project out there AND you can rent it for the day and do all of your messy projects right there.  It has 4 ventilation hoods, it has safety equipment, it has washers and stainless steel counters.  It is seriously cool.

It is also the place where strange things go to die (and I don’t mean dye!)  Because it is a shared space, strange chemicals sometimes wander in and then don’t go back to their rightful homes.  About twice a year, I go through all of the shelves and boxes and sort out the mystery chemicals.  Sometimes it is things like laundry soap or salt, which are easy to get rid of, but sometimes it is things I don’t know what to do with, like glacial acetic acid or urea.  I don’t want to just dump things down the sink without neutralizing them or disposing of them safely.

So I always spend some time with MSDS sheets.  That stands for Materials Safety Data Sheet.  You can look up nearly any chemical and see what it is, what it does, what you should worry about and how to get rid of it.  Very useful.

So I looked up ethylene vinyl acetate, aka hot glue.

Hazardous decomposition products:  ACETIC ACID, TOXIC AND IRRITATING FUMES AT TEMPERATURES >204 °C.

Hmmm.  So I looked some more.  Hot glue melts between 250-380 degrees.  Easily hot enough to release bad fumes.  No other major red flags, but enough there to make me not want to use it with a classroom of kids without some good ventilation.  (And that’s ignoring the fact that it is hotter than boiling water and I don’t want anybody burning themselves.)

How to find them?  You can google “MSDS” with the name of the chemical.  ProChem (where we order a lot of the dye lab chemicals) has MSDS for all of their products posted right on their website.  Dharma does too.  End PSA.

Me and Kermit hanging at the Smithsonian.

“I really do believe that all of you are at the beginning of a wonderful journey.  As you start traveling down that road of life, remember this: There are never enough comfort stops. The places you’re going to are never on the map. And once you get that map out, you won’t be able to re-fold it no matter how smart you are.

So forget the map, roll down the windows, and whenever you can pull over and have picnic with a pig. And if you can help it never fly as cargo.”
― Jim Henson

I was supposed to have a class on Thursday but with nobody signed up right now it is looking pretty likely that I will have the evening free and get to go see the Yarn Harlot.  If you are not familiar with Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, you should go and read a bit of her blog.  It is one of my very favorites.

The new issue of Petite Purls e-zine is out and I am a contributor. Petite Purls is a knitting magazine that focuses on projects for kids.  This summer they decided to do a mash-up issue that combines sewing and knitting patterns (sometimes even in the same project).  They asked me if I would like to contribute something and I immediately thought of this Treasure Dog project.  My friend Rae also has her instructions for some cute kids pants, there’s a sweet little apron pattern and a baby sweater with a pocket on the front, which just makes me giggle.

I have been dying to share this tutorial, because I LOVE this project.  I originally came up with the idea because we had some leftover pre-quilted cotton at a summer camp and I wanted to use it up on zipper bags, which the kids love to make.  Plain black was pretty boring and so by adding a little felt and some ribbon, I created this sweet black lab with floppy ears.  We also made dog bone shaped keychains in the same class.  The whole tutorial and patterns are here so you can make your own.  You can use any kind of fabric you want to, so don’t worry if you don’t have any quilted cotton hanging around.  Just sandwich a piece of felt or batting in between two other fabrics, quilt it a bit with some lines or swirls and then you are ready to go.

In just about 10 days I am teaching a beginning embroidery class at one of my very favorite yarn/fabric shops, Darn Knit Anyway in Stillwater MN.  This is our sample project for the 5 stitches we will learn in class.  I thought it would be fun to do a “cheater” crazy quilt block.  The block is 8 inches square and is Spoonflower printed fabric.  I printed tiny white dots right on the design so that you can basically “connect the dots” with the various stitches and the dots will help you keep everything evenly spaced and remember where to put your needle.  I made 3 different colorways (because why not?!) and the embroidery 2 class will have matching blocks with 5 new stitches to learn.  For this block we will do running stitch (and some variations), chain stitch & lazy daisy, back stitch, chinese knots and cross stitch.  Embroidery 2 is couching, satin stitch, blanket/buttonhole, fly stitch and feather stitch.

I stitched some polkadotted batik fabric around the edge of my sample and it’s now ready to be a pillow cover or a “mug mat” for my teapot.