Silk Screening is actually sort of fun! Hard work but fun!

This is my instructor doing a demo last night at class. I was a little bummed that I did not get any actual work of my own done last night but I did get a new screen and I got it all prepped and ready to get some work done this morning.

I got there a little later than planned at 9:45 but there was only one other person there working so not a big deal. And when I left at 1pm I was the only one there. People had come and gone but I was the only one there all morning. I did get some good work done.

So now I know that initial registration is very important to registering any over lays and other colors you are going to do.

Better but still not perfect.

This is as close to perfect as I got in this series.

So I started on a new series.

 Details - sample of the 2nd overlay.

 A whole bunch of tries.

This is the one I am going to turn in as my homework. I have to admit I sort of love it.

Are you having a good weekend so far?

Peace Out!
C

Finally won a battle with the silk screen!

I admit I was very discouraged by my inability to get an image out of my silk screen. During my class last Friday I decided to abandon that project and start on something simpler and more importantly smaller. And by goodness it was a great decision.

Today I got to the studio early and coated my screen. While it was drying a professor I do not know came in and told me that the coating was too think that it would never dry and that I needed to start over. He took my screen and started washing it out. I was partly horrified and partly relieved. He walked me through the whole process. Literally hands on doing the screen coating with me. Which was very helpful and may be what resolved my issues in the end. I thanked him, he was very kind.

Here is what my silk screen looked like once I got it all ready for printing.

That little yellow head is a silhouette of the profile of my lovely daughter.

I took several profile pictures of her over the weekend and she was very cooperative.

I have a plan to have other films that go with this to do overlays of features, a frame and a background. I now realize my big mistake was I should have burned all my films onto the screen with my prefect coating of emulsion. But the whole point is to learn so it will do me some good to have to do it again on my own. It is just a little labor intensive.

I was not sure what color I was going to print, but I had some cool black paper I wanted to try so black ink was out of the question. I was going for lavender but ended up with periwinkle. Again another good lesson in color mixing. It is sort of the opposite of sewing. In sewing you start out big because you can always go smaller. But in mixing ink you need to start out small because it is difficult to make it lighter.

However since this is my "homework" for my single color assignment it is good enough for now while I figure out where to go from here.

This is a test print on newsprint paper. 

 This is a batch of printed heads. I did about 8 of them before the ink started to dry a little. It was so exciting! I felt like a rock star when these prints came out so beautifully. I had spent over an hour setting up and hesitating over how to make myself get started. I really felt inspired and renewed when it worked. 

I am sure there will be more hurdles and more road blocks but maybe at least this will help me remember that I will be able to get past them.

Hope you are having a great week so far! Try something new when you can and even when you can't!

Peace Out - C

Now I know how to make panties.

I have been lazy about ye old blog this week. Not sure why? I was not really all that busy and actually did a lot on the sewing / artwork front this week.

First on Monday night I went to MAKE for the panty class. I have to say I love MAKE and I love even more that it is a 10 minute walk from my NYC apartment. This is one of the things I will miss when we leave NY. The class was taught by Laura Mehlinger of Lola Haze her lingerie company. She was super cute and sweet and had a very laid back approach to sewing and I am guessing life in general. Her things are beautiful and her website tells you where you can get them. I think once I loose a few more lbs I will buy something for myself as a treat.

The class was fun, the other students were pleasant and I left with a mostly finished pair of undies. Laura provided some stretch net for the body of the briefs as well as a patch of cotton for the crotch and elastic for the legs and waist.

Need to finish trimming out the seam allowances before these are finished.

I chose navy with a light blue elastic. But these are pretty much a practice garment, more of a technique / sample piece than a functioning pair. But they are still cute and tell me where I need to go from here in making my own undies. I am thinking of a high waist and slightly lower cut leg. (Laura - yours are lovely but I am not so tiny, need a little hold you in action that a high waist gives you).

I may have to make some custom undies for my skinny minnie daughter too, she always has a saggy rear but needs a larger size because she has very athletic thighs and needs larger leg openings. I am also going to use the techniques I learned to make us bathing suits this summer.

In other sewing news I got my dress further along, all that is left is to finish the inside (sew the lining to the zipper edge, add a hook and eye, etc...) and to hem the bottom. I could do all of this at home. Which I may do because I am thinking with my last three class sessions I will either make another dress for me? Or make the Divine Miss M a dress to match mine?

If you ignore the leggings and Uggs (yes they are sequins) the dress is looking awesome even if I do say so myself. 

Oh and have I mentioned that I got to meet Gertie! Of Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing! She was working on a sewing project at The Sewing Studio and liked my dress. I would have gotten a picture with her but it was late in the day and we were both looking a little rough. Maybe I will get to see her again and have some photographic evidence.

I will admit that I was using a new technique to finish the shoulder / sleeve edges and it took the whole class session to successfully finish both sides! However now that I have done it I am confident I will be able to do it again and it will be easier next time.

As for my screen printing class well...... let's just say giant frustrating mess that deserves it's own post for me to complain discuss the issues there.

I am still feeling a little homesick, miss my friends, house, dishwasher etc.... But the sun in shining so I think we are going to go play in Central Park today.

Hope you are having a great day / start to your weekend!
 
Hugs - C

Happy Valentine's Day!!

 

Yesterday we decided to make some cupcakes. We made half the batch with sprinkles for a friend's birthday and the other half (shown above) have pink hearts for the day of love that is today! I fully admit I enjoy Valentine's Day in a little kid sort of way. I mostly love the crafts and of course I am always up for any excuse for a gift.

On the topic of Valentine's gifts, is it terrible of me to exchange mine? My sweet husband gave me a watch from the store that I wanted but not the watch that I wanted. Am I mean and ungrateful to exchange it? I have not totally decided yet but I think I need something more flashy than the practical and pleasant watch that I got.

Today I was in the audience at the Martha Stewart Show! It was a super fun Valentine's Day show. Look at all the swag! Marion has already busted into that bag of sour gummies. And I gave the box of toffee to our magical babysitter. I have a feeling that my cousin Stephen might try and talk me out of the cook book - we shall see.


To see more about the show and all this stuff check out Martha's web site: http://www.marthastewart.com/891283/romantic-menu-ideas


I hope that you are having a foxy Valentine's Day!
And focus on the sweet kid-like aspect of this day, crafts and candy two of my favorite things in the world!

We keep adding decorations to our super white walls!

Peace out!
Chrissy

Silkscreening is HARD work!

I keep choosing artistic endeavors that are lots of work and mostly prep work. This is certainly true for sewing and I am discovering it is true for silk screening as well. I spent all morning yesterday prepping to print and did not get even one decent print for all my hard work. Now I remember why people who are learning to sew get so frustrated, sometimes projects do not work out on your first try.

Step one is to come up with the art work that will become the image for your silkscreen.

It is hard to see but this is my pencil drawing where I was practicing what I was planning to draw for my design. Yes it is an old rotary phone and an old TV. I have a fascination with old technology lately and thought that this would make for an at least somewhat interesting screen print.

This is a picture of my drawing on mylar.  My plan was to print it in a sepia tone-ish brown on gray paper making it look old since it is old technology. Well my plans did not work out.

I am not sure why but I was having major technical difficulty. There are tons of steps with fancy equipment that I will not bore you with. Mostly since the fancy equipment is not available to regular people and well therefor you don't really want to know.

But the short version is that I could not get a good print. I have two ideas of what the problem might be. One could be that I have an old re-claimed (aka recycled from last semester) screen and it may not have been properly cared for and be clogged. Two is that I did not mix the ink right and it was drying too fast.

I did the entire printing process twice so I am leaning towards the screen being the problem. So I am working on getting a new screen and we will go from there.

This is the best print I got. It the ink was bare in the same places no matter what I did. This is what makes me think it is the screen since it worked well in some places.

Any way I guess I will spend some time at class on Friday trouble shooting this. Urgh!!! It makes me crazy when I am not good at something. Practice and experimentation are the only things that are going to improve this problem.

In sewing news I got the invisible zipper into my dress perfect first try! The instructor showed me a little trick that I may have to share with you if anyone is interested? Only problem with the dress is that I have lost weight since I started it and I think it is going to be too big! Oh well I will throw on a belt and a cardigan and "Make it work"!

It is COLD and windy today so we ventured out to Whole Foods for brunch and groceries and are now snuggled up in the apartment.

Tomorrow night is the panty workshop over at MAKE! Should be fun and hopefully less frustrating than my silk screening has been.

Happy Sunday!
Hugs - Chrissy

Never lift the presser foot and go SUPER slow!

This is such good advise that over at The Sewing Studio they have it posted on all the sergers and in a little frame between the sergers. It is nice that they have sergers all set up and ready to go for you to use as you make your project. They have two machines threaded with white and two with black so you are pretty much ready to go when you need them.

At my 3rd session I made some more progress on my dress. I finally cut out the last piece that I needed for the skirt and got the skirt pieces sewn together and serged.

While putting together the skirt pieces I got the pockets in and serged as well. I had not cut out enough pocket pieces so in a "make it work" moment I used the sleeve pieces I had cut out and am not using since I decided to do the dress sleeveless.

I only made one small mistake. I did not hold the pockets together close enough when I attached the skirt to the bodice. Now I know why pockets are sewn together on well made store bought clothes. I am going to baste my pockets shut before I make my second attempt at attaching the skirt.

This should help hold the pockets in place while I sew the skirt to the bodice. I hope that the pockets will be more closed and lay flatter than this in the end. They are a little gap-py and weird right now. Not loving it.

Also the zipper and lining are not in so I am holding the dress shut if you are wondering why my arms look all weird.

In other NYC news; the weather is still pretty darn nice. No snow or rain and the temperatures have been in the upper 40s - 50s quite manageable really.

Today I got approved for membership in the Bowery Babes, a mom group. In hopes of finding us some moms and kids to hang out with. And Marion has been enjoying her time at the afternoon club at the New York Kids club. Today she got to do 2 gymnastics classes and a cooking class, she reported that they learned how to make Miso soup. She liked making it but did not try it because she says she does not like soup.

Tonight I walked my few block walk over to Parson's for the first of my 12 weeks of silk screening class. I am excited and a little nervous. I hope it is fun and thay I am any good at it at all. I will tell you more about it as we go. Tonight we learned about all the supplies we need and how to clean your screen. My homework is to get some designs ready.

We have a visitor coming on Sunday so we are going to have to spend at least part of our weekend cleaning up this joint! Hope you have some fun weekend plans!

Peace Out - C