#spoonflower

16 August, 2019

Design Your Own Fabric Inspired by Textile Traditions

beckarahn2019-08-16T14:28:44-05:00Classes - Fabric Design|Comments Off on Design Your Own Fabric Inspired by Textile Traditions

The Museum of Russian Art is pleased to invite you to a hands-on workshop with Becka Rahn in conjunction with the exhibition Village Wardrobes: Traditional Dress from Western and Central Ukraine

Be inspired by the shapes and colors of the costumes in Village Wardrobes: Traditional Dress from Western and Central Ukraine and create your own digitally printed fabric design. Artist Becka Rahn will help you to create your own pattern inspired by the exhibition, then show you how to manipulate it using simple software to help you make repeating shapes and textures that can be printed onto fabric or paper. You don’t have to know anything about sewing or computers to be able to create your own surface designs; beginners are welcome! Each participant will get a swatch of their fabric design to keep and have the opportunity to contribute to a collaborative project that will be on display at the Museum.

This workshop will be available on both October 1 and October 2 at The Museum of Russian Art | 6:30-8:30 pm

CLASS REGISTRATION: TMORA Members $20 | General Admission $25

Each workshop is limited to 12 participants. Advance registration is encouraged. The Museum of Russian Art features free parking directly across the street (Diamond Lake Road) in the Mayflower Church parking lot.

16 August, 2019

Design your own Fabric Inspired by Textile Traditions (FULL)

beckarahn2019-09-29T12:12:39-05:00Classes - Fabric Design|Comments Off on Design your own Fabric Inspired by Textile Traditions (FULL)

The Museum of Russian Art is pleased to invite you to a hands-on workshop with Becka Rahn in conjunction with the exhibition Village Wardrobes: Traditional Dress from Western and Central Ukraine

Be inspired by the shapes and colors of the costumes in Village Wardrobes: Traditional Dress from Western and Central Ukraine and create your own digitally printed fabric design. Artist Becka Rahn will help you to create your own pattern inspired by the exhibition, then show you how to manipulate it using simple software to help you make repeating shapes and textures that can be printed onto fabric or paper. You don’t have to know anything about sewing or computers to be able to create your own surface designs; beginners are welcome! Each participant will get a swatch of their fabric design to keep and have the opportunity to contribute to a collaborative project that will be on display at the Museum.

This workshop will be available on both October 1 and October 2 at The Museum of Russian Art | 6:30-8:30 pm

CLASS REGISTRATION: TMORA Members $20 | General Admission $25

Each workshop is limited to 12 participants. Advance registration is encouraged. The Museum of Russian Art features free parking directly across the street (Diamond Lake Road) in the Mayflower Church parking lot.

16 August, 2019

Mini Spoonflower Tutorial: Two ways to see your designs as finished goods

beckarahn2019-08-17T10:16:15-05:00Spoonflower & Fabric Design, Tutorials, Videos|2 Comments

Spoonflower recently rolled out some cool new changes to their website and the ways you can look at designs. Instead of only seeing a swatch or a fat quarter, you can now see your designs mocked up as sheets, curtains, pillows, tablecloths and more. And it’s now built in to the site; you just have to know where to click. I made this mini video tutorial (10 min) to show you two ways you can look at these new mockups, both as a shopper and as a designer. I think they are both great ways to help you visualize the scale and impact of your designs. If you don’t see the video thumbnail here, click Read More > below.

Want to learn more about designing fabrics for Spoonflower? Try out my online intro class! It’s free and will walk you through a design from idea to upload.

15 July, 2019

Tea Towel from a Recipe Card (FULL)

beckarahn2019-09-26T10:54:56-05:00Classes - Fabric Design|Comments Off on Tea Towel from a Recipe Card (FULL)

Do you have a favorite handwritten recipe card in your collection? Make your own keepsake tea towel by scanning your grandmother’s handwritten recipe card and learning how to digitally print it on to linen fabric with Spoonflower to make a one-of-a-kind tea towel. Beginners welcome; basic computer skills needed. Shared laptops will be provided for students for class; you may bring your own computer if you would like to. Bring a 5×3 inch recipe card with you to class. Your printed fabric will be mailed to you after class.

Updated 9/18/19: This session is full, but I am working on scheduling some more classes in the metro area. Just send me a quick note on my contact form if you are interested and I will send you an email when I have the details arranged.

26 November, 2018

No Bah-Humbugs here.

beckarahn2018-11-26T11:00:46-06:00An Artist's Life, Gallery Exhibitions|Comments Off on No Bah-Humbugs here.

One of the most fun partnerships I work on is designing pieces for the Guthrie Theater Store. Last year I did a whole series inspired by Sunday in the Park with George. I have made designs inspired by the Guthrie itself. The photo above shows one of those Guthrie-inspired designs in an ad in the program and one featuring some new designs in another program.

This year they asked me to do designs for their annual production of A Christmas Carol. I know the story, but I hadn’t seen their production, so they sent me photos from last year’s production. Such fun to study all of the details and colors! Several themes or scenes jumped out at me right away:

Time is a big element in the story and there are clocks prominent in several of the scenes.
In a number of scenes I noticed actors writing with white feather pens.
In one scene of people singing carols around a piano I noticed the wine glasses lined up on the piano.
Bright streetlamps and a tiny bit of snow.

We decided to go for something that was “seasonal” without being holiday specific, so I chose rich vintage-inspired colors and bigger ideas from the story. All of the designs are made from cut paper illustrations using recycled paper.

I started with a design I called Timeless. It is made up of pocketwatches and watch chains. The colors are all soft twilight shades. The chains are also an echo of the chains on the “Ghost of Christmas Past” from the show. The papers I used for this illustration were primarily colored art paper, but “grunged up” with some alcohol ink spray to give them a more weathered texture. The background of the design is a scanned piece of hand-marbled paper, which is also a visual theme I used throughout.

Next, I designed Quills. Quills refers to the feather quill pens you see throughout the show, but is also a little nod to Charles Dickens, the author. The pens and inkwells are all made from recycled paper from vintage issues of Hennepin History Magazine. Hennepin History Museum last year gave away copies from the 50s-80s that were excess in their collection. I also gave these some texture with alcohol ink spatters and a little wash of paint to obscure the text a little bit. I cut the feathers on the diagonal, so the lines of the text on the pages gave the texture to the feathers. The background of this design is a piece of marbled fabric I made and scanned. I chose marbling because that is very often used as the endpapers in old books and I felt like it was a nice fit with my writing theme.

Mistletoe and Forget-Me-Nots started as just a little zipper bag. But Kay (the shop manager) and I decided that we liked it so well that I went back and reworked it into a repeating pattern at two different scales, so that I could make bow ties and larger zipper bags as well. In the Victorian “language of flowers” mistletoe and forget-me-nots symbolize fond memories and a connection that lasts through time, which are strong themes in the story. This illustration is all cut paper overlaid with snow made from spattered paint.

We also wanted a couple of tea towels because those make great gifts, so I pulled two quotes from A Christmas Carol that I thought were great messages for gifts you might want to give. Singing Carols and Lamplight are the two tea towel designs.

The piano keyboard is all made from more history museum magazines and the pattern from the inside of a security envelope (like the kind you get bank statements in). The wine glasses are made from tracing paper, so they had some translucency. The snow is more paint spatter. The woodgrain on the piano is more marbled paper.

It is really fun and exciting to put together a collection like this based on a theme, especially when you have such a rich story to draw from. All of these designs are available exclusively at the Guthrie Shop for the holiday season, both in the theater shop and in their online shop. The collection includes three sizes of zipper bags (velvet), clutch purses (velvet), neckties and bow ties (twill and crepe), and tea towels (linen-cotton).

16 October, 2018

Book Review: The NEW Spoonflower Quick Sew Project Book

beckarahn2018-10-16T13:40:56-05:00Sewing & Design, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|Comments Off on Book Review: The NEW Spoonflower Quick Sew Project Book

Just last week, Spoonflower released their second book, The Spoonflower Quick Sew Project Book. You might know that I worked on the first book, The Spoonflower Handbook and we get a little shout out in the intro for this new book.

The author for the Quick Sew book is my friend Anda Corrie. I have known Anda for a long time, although we only met in person in 2016. Anda worked at Etsy for many years and I asked her to be a juror for a grant program that I administrated when I still worked in the arts admin world. She also was a contributor to the first Spoonflower book. She has a project (pg 85) and she did the illustrations for the book. I love the aesthetic of her fabric designs: colorful, whimsical, and simple, but in a way that has so much character.

I wanted to tell you about this new book and a little about what I think is great about it. (This isn’t a sponsored post or anything like that. Everything I say here is my own thoughts and impressions.)

The book in a nutshell

It’s a sewing book. Where the Spoonflower Handbook focused on teaching you ways to create your own design, the main focus of this book is sewing. It has a great variety of projects that use different amounts of fabric from swatch to several yards. Although there are several projects that show you how to design something that is personalized, that isn’t the main goal. In some ways, I feel like this one is the prequel to the other. The Quick Sew book teaches you how to sew some great basic things with designs you get in the Marketplace, the Handbook takes it one step further to showing you how to then design your own fabrics. They are great companions.

Sewing skills needed for these projects vary. Some are great beginner projects for those who are just learning to sew. Some are a little trickier or demand a little patience. I tried one of the trickier projects, which I will show you later in the post.

Projects I love

I picked out three different projects which I wanted to highlight. My favorite section might honestly be the Notions & Trims section of the book.

I have looked at a lot of beginner sewing books and I have never actually seen a section that breaks down and shows you how to make bias binding, piping, and covered buttons. I use these things all the time and I always make my own because I have a certain way I want them to look or a color I need to match and the premade things that are available are pretty limited. The piping is my favorite from this section. I figured it out by a lot of trial and error, which was not always successful. Did you even know you could make your own piping?

Next, I love this bear rug from the Multi Yard Projects section. He made me smile when I first saw the photo and I can imagine this would make for super cute baby photo props. He’s made from minky, so super soft and cuddly and I think the fabric design choice for this one was perfect. It’s “officially” a rug, but I can see it being so much more. I know my youngest niece and nephew would have dragged this around to watch tv with and pretend the bear was like a flying magic carpet so they could fly across the living room (because you know the floor is always lava.)

Here’s what I made

I decided that I needed to make something if I was going to do a proper review, so I decided to make the Tiny Circle Purse, which is one of the projects in the Swatch projects section. I had some scraps of faux suede left over from one of my own projects, so I used those scraps instead of a swatch to make my little bag.

I have to admit that I cheated a little bit. I didn’t have a 10″ zipper that the pattern called for, so I shortened a 12″ one. I also didn’t have extra wide bias binding, which is used to finish and connect the ends of the zipper, so I just used a couple of scraps of fabric and turned under the edges to make it work like bias tape. To draw 4″ circles, I traced around the lid to a container which just happened to be the right size.

The raw edges of the fabric and the zipper on the inside are contained inside bias binding, which is tricky to sew in a little tiny circle, but looks pretty cool. I had some premade in neon green, so that’s what I used for this step. Because bending that zipper around in a tiny circle is challenging to sew without wobbles, if I were doing it again, I would just hand baste the zipper in first and then sew the seam, zipper and bias binding all in one step. It’s a cute little pouch and I think I am going to use it to keep bandaids and such contained in my purse. A fun project; a great use for a swatch or two.

What didn’t I love?

I don’t think it’s an honest review if I only write about the things that I love about the book and didn’t tell you anything else. So here are things that I noticed that bothered me. The fabrics featured in the book are beautiful and there are some great designers featured, but I would have loved to see more of the wonderful weirdness that makes up Spoonflower. I had exactly the same feeling about the designs featured in book I worked on. For me, part of the reason I love Spoonflower is that there is EVERYTHING there that you could ever want to find on a fabric. Corgis with sushi, oboes, vintage calculators, or steampunk robot whales. As Kermit says at the end of the Muppets Take Manhattan:

That’s it! That’s what’s been missing from the show! That’s what we need! More frogs and dogs and bears and chickens and… and whatever!

I get so very tired of everything looking like a perfectly photographed, exquisitely vanilla Pinterest or Instagram feed. Snore. But that’s a pretty personal thing and it’s just not my style. That being said, there are some really great simple modern and geometrics featured throughout the book. If that’s your vibe, you will see some things there you love and you won’t have a hard time finding similar fabrics to make your own versions of the projects.

You can get both books at Spoonflower or on Amazon. If you try something from the book or even just spot it in the wild, post a photo on Instagram and tag @andacorrie so she can see it (and me too, I always love to see your projects!) After working so hard on a project like a book, just a little note saying that you’ve seen it is like giving the author a chocolate cupcake. It seems like just a little but it means a lot.