beckarahn – Becka Rahn, artist

22 May, 2020

Friday Fabric Review: Spoonflower Organic Cotton Sateen and Cotton Poplin

beckarahn2020-05-22T12:54:59-05:00Fabric Reviews, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|0 Comments

I’m starting a new series talking about the different kinds of fabric bases you can print on at Spoonflower. I get an email from someone on a pretty regular basis asking for advice about different kinds of fabric and trying to decide what will work best for a project. I have worked with nearly every fabric base at Spoonflower for some project or another. I’ve printed my designs, sewed with them, washed them, and worn them. I wrote up a post about the Petal Signature Cotton and comparing it to the other cotton bases a while back. Starting with this post, on Fridays I am going to pick another fabric or two and tell you everything I know about them and tell you about what I like and don’t like about each one. I will also use Petal Cotton as a comparison for all of these since this is the lowest cost option and might be the one that more people have ordered a sample of.

I’m going to start today talking about Organic Cotton Sateen and Cotton Poplin.

About Sateen

I have definitely used the sateen for more projects than poplin […]

Maker from Becka Rahn on Vimeo.

6 May, 2020

Brains… (no, zombies have not invaded my blog)

beckarahn2020-05-06T11:27:54-05:00An Artist's Life, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|0 Comments

The Spoonflower design challenge theme for this week was “Designs for Good”. From the design spec, that is defined as “challenging you to create a repeating design inspired by a cause that is close to your heart. From raising autism awareness to creating food security in your local community, we want to know what inspires you every day.”

I decided to make my design about brains and if you follow any of my social media channels, you saw a little sneak peek of this design in a video I made for #GiveAtHomeMN to highlight some organizations that are trying really hard to figure out ways to help artists in this new world we are living in. In fact, I made the paper collage pieces for this design while I was listening and participating in an “Artists Town Hall” Zoom meeting.

I call this design “Your Brain’s Not Broken”. It is made from recycled magazine pictures and I really looked for things that were bright colors and interesting textures. I grouped them generally by color to make rough rectangles and then cut each one into the shape of a brain.

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20 April, 2020

Making masks. My version with some sewing tips.

beckarahn2020-04-20T15:50:22-05:00Everything Else, Freebies & Patterns, Sewing & Design, Tutorials, Videos|3 Comments

I posted a tutorial for working with a bias tape maker today on my social media channels (I will post that again below) and got a bunch of questions about how I was making masks and what pattern to use. So here is what I have been making. This is a version that is based on one that was posted by Fairview Health (associated with the University of MN). I have simplified the sewing instructions they provided because I saw a simpler and cleaner way to construct them. I am not going to provide a step-by-step tutorial here, but I will give you the basics.

Cut two rectangles that are 9 inches by 7 inches. They recommended using 2 different fabrics so you can easily tell the inside and outside of the mask if you need to take it off and put it back on.

Place the rectangles right sides together and stitch just the short sides, using about a 1/4 inch seam allowance. Turn right side out and press flat.

Make three tuck pleats about 1/2 inch each along each short edge of the rectangle. You can pin these. (I have a lot […]

29 March, 2020

GameNight: Blueprints

beckarahn2020-03-29T11:00:07-05:00Game Night|Comments Off on GameNight: Blueprints

We’re 14 days into “stay-at-home”. How about you? Hanging in there? We pulled out this game the other night as an effort to get away from screentime and I had forgotten how fun it is. I have to admit I bought this one without knowing anything about it. My dad is an architect, so any game called “Blueprints” was automatically appealing to me.

Blueprints is a dice game where the dice represent building materials: glass, stone, wood or recycled materials. It is played over 3 rounds and each round you get the blueprint for a building you are trying to build.

You keep your blueprint behind a screen so it is secret from the other players. Every building is made from 6 dice; the card shows you a side view and a top view and the numbers tell you how many stories high the building is.

Everyone takes turns picking dice from a shared pool, placing one in their building and then rolling and replacing one. It seems really simple, but there are a bunch of things to think about when you pick your dice. A dice that is on the second or third […]

16 March, 2020

Game Night: One Deck Dungeon

beckarahn2020-03-16T14:18:06-05:00Game Night|Comments Off on Game Night: One Deck Dungeon

Many of you are stuck at home with bored kids by this point, but here at Chez Rahn, it’s just us and a labrador who thinks that work-from-home-week is the most amazing thing ever. So today I want to tell you about a 2 player game called One Deck Dungeon. My husband and I really like to play games, but most things are really designed to work best with 4 players, so it’s a challenge to find one that’s really fun with two.

In One Deck Dungeon, you and your partner are exploring a dungeon. It’s a collaborative game, which means either the players win or the game wins, you aren’t playing against each other (which can also be awesome if your partner is a competitive sort.) One each turn you explore a room by opening one of four doors (flipping over the card). You will either find a monster or a trap which you have to defeat (or dodge) in order to move on.

Each character has a pool of dice to roll in order to defeat your obstacle. The dice have one of 4 different colors and each character gets different […]

14 March, 2020

Game Night: Carcassonne and The Princess & The Dragon

beckarahn2020-03-14T12:46:51-05:00Game Night|Comments Off on Game Night: Carcassonne and The Princess & The Dragon

Next up in my Game Night series is a game called Carcassonne. Carcassonne is a map-building game; players build the map collaboratively but your score is based on placing your “meeples” on features of the map that score points when they are completed. On your turn you draw and place a tile. Then you have the option of placing your meeple in a place where he can score. You only have a limited number of meeple tokens, and your guy is stuck there until the feature is complete, so there is a little strategy to knowing when to place and when to hold out.

For example, the blue player placed a meeple on this road when she placed the tile. When both ends of the road are connected to something, then the road is complete and the blue player gets the score and takes their token back. This completed road is worth 1 point for every tile with a road segment on it, so it would score 4 points.

Things start to get competitive when different parts of the map get joined up. Someone can place a tile so that two previously unconnected […]