I went treasure hunting… INSIDE an old quilt!

30 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by Julia Monroe in fabric, home decor, sewing

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We’ve had this quilt for about 30 years. We know who made it but the history of the quilt is now lost.

The old red, white and blue quilt.

The quilt was mostly just displayed folded or kept in a box. When I got it out the other day, I noticed a new tear in the fabric. I looked closer and then peeked into the tear and was amazed that there was another quilt inside the old quilt! I know quilts have been “recycled” like this for centuries but had no idea the older quilt existed.

I carefully removed the hand stitched binding from one edge of the quilt and turned the quilt inside out to see the old quilt. What a beautiful surprise!

This old quilt is actually inside the red, white and blue quilt, which has been turned inside out.

Such pretty fabrics!

There is significant damage in several places of the old quilt. But I find the worn spots warm and charming, much like the tattered sections of old jeans. It’s a sign of having lived fully.

The tattered sections of the quilt are beautiful to me.

The next quilt I make will have intentional peeks at the insides. It’s all beautiful.

I think I’ll leave the red, white and blue quilt side turned inside for a while and enjoy this lovely pastel beauty for a while.

I made fabric from photos of my carvings

01 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by Julia Monroe in fabric, home decor, projects, sewing, Spoonflower, woodwork

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carving, fabric, fabric design, floral, sewing, Spoonflower, woodwork

If you’ve been following my Instagram feed here, https://www.instagram.com/juliaamonroe/, you can see the progress I’m making carving wood panels for a terrarium.

Before assembling the carved wood panels into a terrarium base, I thought they would make a nice striped fabric so I took photographs of the panels and created a seamless, railroaded Floral Wood Carving Stripe fabric design. The design repeat is a little over a yard. You can find the fabric here on Spoonflower.

Fabric design from photographs of the carvings I’m making for a terrarium base.

Close up of carving detail printed on fabric.

Another close up of the carved fern section.

The Floral Wood Carving Stripe also makes a great gift wrap.
It’s available as wallpaper too.

The design is railroaded, with a repeat a little over a yard.

I’m looking forward to making pillow covers from this fabric. They will look so nice outside on the deck. Or I might make cushions for the deck rocking chairs. Hmm, that will be a hard decision!

Floral Wood Panel Fabric

Pencil Rolls and Coloring Pages

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by Julia Monroe in All Sparkled Up, art, Christmas, color, crafts, DIY, fabric, On my Worktable, photography, projects, Spoonflower, tutorial

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colored pencils, coloring, coloring books, DIY, fabric, pencil roll, photography, sewing, Spoonflower, tutorial

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s. We did!

I made the girls Pencil Rolls and custom coloring pages for Christmas. They loved the sets.

Colored Pencil Roll

Pencil roll with special coloring pages

I used Julie 1971 fabric from Spoonflower.

Julie 1971, a fabric featuring houses made of felt, is available on Spoonflower.

The inspiration for Julie 1971 is a piece of artwork I made when I was 12 years old, in 1971. I made the little felt houses from bits of felt and glued them to the back of a piece of laundry detergent box cardboard.

The pencil roll was very easy to make. The lining, pocket and flap are linen, the decorative cover wrap is cotton canvas.

Felt Houses

Even after all these years, the cardboard is still in great shape.

The back of the Felt Houses artwork is cardboard cut from a box of All laundry detergent.

My father cut the picture frame from a single piece of wood. The Felt Houses art hangs in our guest room.

The original artwork is still vibrant and prints beautifully on canvas and linen fabrics from Spoonflower. Here you can see the original art next to canvas, which I have aged a little by machine washing it in warm water.

The pencil roll open, with flap folded over to protect pencil tips and keep the pencils from spilling out during transport.

Outer cover – made of a piece of decorative Julie 1971 fabric 17″ x 8.5″, sewed to a piece of linen 17″ x 4.5″ for the flap, to make a rectangle 17″ x 12.5″.

The outside of the pencil roll, with the flap open.

The outside of the finished pencil roll, with the flap open.

Lining – made of linen cut to 17″ x 12.5″.
Pencil pocket – two pieces of linen 17″ x 4″.

The cover piece with flap was sewn to the lining piece, right sides together, with a small opening for turning at the bottom. This cover piece was turned right side out and pressed flat.

The pencil pocket was made by stitching the two 17″ x 4″ pieces of linen together with a small opening for turning at the bottom. This piece was turned right side out and pressed flat.

The pocket piece was sewn to the bottom of the cover piece. Here you can see how simple the pocket is attached to the cover piece.

The pocket piece was stitched inside the cover piece at the sides and along the bottom.

To figure out where to stitch for the pencil pockets, I simply stuck pieces of masking tape vertically, all across the pocket piece, with a little margin between each piece of tape, and stitched between the pieces of masking tape. Several of the pockets weren’t exactly the same size but that was fine. That method of marking for the pockets was super easy and didn’t need any measuring or marking the fabric at all.

To keep the roll shut, I used what I had on hand – stretchy beading elastic tied in a loop.

For each girl, I made a custom set of pictures to color. I used Photoshop to alter photographs and printed the coloring pages on cardstock.

Some of the coloring pages I gave to the girls.

Boxes for pencils are nice, but there is another layer of artsy satisfaction when you unfurl a roll of creamy pencils tucked in soft linen.

Coloring with pencils

Here are two free coloring pages for you keep and print out.

Free coloring page – Do what is Beautiful and Never Give Up

Girl with Flowers in her Hair – a free coloring page for you.

Enjoy!

My QR code fabric was a success!

25 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by Julia Monroe in crafts, fabric, On my Worktable, sewing, Uncategorized

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crafts, fabric, On my worktable, QR code, QR code fabric, sewing, Spoonflower

QR Code Fabric. The white QR Tale design was printed on silky faille on the left. The gray QR Tale design on the right was printed on Kona cotton.

Yay! Pardon all the exclamation points but how cool is that! Woot!
My QR Code fabric on Spoonflower printed beautifully.
I’m surprised QR code fabric isn’t available by the bolt yet. I’ve searched all the major fabric companies and haven’t found anything. The options for code in fabric are endless and super duper fun.
I had this fabric printed via Spoonflower. I call it “An Unfinished QR Tale” because each block of text contains just a hint of the story. There are over 30 separate phrases in QR code in this fabric. The code squares printed up beautifully in silky faille and cotton. I thought perhaps the fabric grain would interfere with the QR reader but there was no trouble at all reading the code. I don’t have a smart phone so used a QR code app on my tablet.

with nary a moment to spare

Yay!
I had designed another QR code fabric for a ModCloth contest but didn’t win. Here is my entry for the ModCloth contest, a sweet little design featuring code and wings. This design has different text from QR Tale, mostly light and airy phrases.

As soon as the QR Code on Wings proofs, I’ll be able to offer it on Spoonflower.
The first two QR tale fabrics printed perfectly so they can be purchased on Spoonflower now. I plan on making more.
~ Recipes in QR code for making an apron
~ QR Check design for a picnic table cloth
~ Poetry, perhaps haiku or limericks
Imagine wearing a shirt or dress and hearing “May I please read your dress?” haha
Imagine a restaurant with QR code napkins or placemats… Reading the code would make waiting for the meal much more enjoyable…
Ah yes, so many ideas.

Also, I really want to do color. These designs are all black and white or gray scale. The picnic table cloth will be a lot of fun to create and even more fun for picnic guests to use. :)

Spoonflower!

10 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by Julia Monroe in community, crafts, fabric, home decor, projects, sewing, Spoonflower

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crafts, custom fabric, fabric, print your own fabric, printing on fabric, sewing, Spoonflower

Last year I had the wonderful opportunity of touring the Spoonflower facility, located in Durham, North Carolina during their Open House. I love that place! The minute you walk in there is a rush of “Eau de Cotton”. For anyone who loves to sew, there is nothing more inspiring than the smell of cotton. Mmmm…

Spoonflower is a small company that prints fabric on demand from your very own designs, by the yard. Such an awesome idea. I discovered them online while doing a search for “print your own fabric.” I’d been trying unsuccessfully to print my own designs on fabric with my home printer. I managed to print on muslin taped to cardstock with masking tape but that nearly ruined my printer, the sheets were just 6″ x 8″ and the colors were washed out so I gave up. What I wanted was yardage so I was thrilled when I stumbled upon Spoonflower.

The process is simple. You set up an account and upload your own design file to Spoonflower. There are ten different beautiful fabrics from which to choose, from silk to organic cotton to upholstery weight linen blends. Spoonflower prints your design on the fabric of your choice and mails it to you. It’s that simple. If you don’t want to design your own fabric, you can purchase fabric from thousands of other designers. They also print Wallpaper and Wall Decals so you can paper your whole house with your own design if you want.

I snapped some quick photos during the tour through the facility but would love to go back to get more. Seriously. I didn’t get a fraction of all the beautiful scenes. I’m sorry I didn’t take any photos looking up – even the ceiling was dangling with fabric delights. That place is filled with creative people and every part of the “factory” is a visual feast.

The first item I saw was this terrific Giant Stuffed Unicorn, made by some of the staff members of Spoonflower for a staff competition. You can read more about it here.

Spoonflower - Giant Stuffed Unicorn

Another staff-created project is the terrific Chevron slipcover for their office sofa, which you can read about here.

Spoonflower - Chevron Revolution Sofa

One area of the office featured projects using Spoonflower fabrics.

Spoonflower - Items using Spoonflower fabrics

Old spools were wrapped with strips of fabric printed by Spoonflower.

Another staff-created project was this reupholstered chair. What a terrific idea to update a piece of furniture. The pillow, the picture against the window, the giant “S” … all done with fabrics from Spoonflower designers.

Spoonflower - Reupholstered Heirloom Chair

Reupholstered chair pads, each a different pattern and color. I would love to do something like this for our occasional chairs, perhaps using fabric featuring my own children’s drawings, or fabric designed from one of my mom’s floral paintings!

Spoonflower - Guest Seating

I realize that this item doesn’t feature fabric, but it DOES have to do with Spoonflower… they fashioned a sofa from the leftover tubes that their rolls of fabric come on. That is SO ingenious!

Spoonflower - Recycled Cardboard Tube Sofa

Spoonflower - Recycled Cardboard Tube Sofa detail

I was quite fascinated with the actual printing room. Mist was piped down over the machines as the print heads zipped back and forth printing fabric.

Spoonflower - Fabric printer in action

In another area of the facility was the steam setting machines. Fabric was slowly spooled through the machine as the fresh ink was set with steam.

Spoonflower - Steam setting machine

Once a roll of fabric was printed and set, it was then moved to the cutting tables. Each order was cut from the roll and folded and placed in cubbies. The fabric was then carefully packaged for shipping. There are several large shelving units of cubbies filled with hundreds of folded pieces of fabrics waiting to be sent out to designers from all over the world.

Spoonflower - A glimpse of the cutting tables through the cubbies

I love this design printed on wallpaper on one of the walls.

Spoonflower - Wall covering

Fabric panels are stretched over canvas on an art wall

The tour was wonderful and inspiring and I went away with new ideas to use my own Spoonflower fabric designs. Best, I got to meet the great creators of the company and staff.

As I was leaving, I noticed a pillow on a sofa in the guest area. It was made with Granny Square Fabric. I was thrilled to see the pillow because, unbeknownst to my tour guide, I was the original creator of the Granny Square fabric! Someone from Spoonflower had purchased the yardage and made a pillow of it. What an honor to see the end result of my fabric.

Pillow made with Granny Square Fabric

If you want a custom fabric that is truly original, consider having your own designs printed by Spoonflower. Most of the fabric I designed has deep personal meaning to me, such as Granny Square fabric, Julie 1971 fabric, Vintage Snowflake Wallpaper and more. Having your own designs printed on fabric is a terrific way to create a unique heirloom.

And Thank You Spoonflower and Stephen! I loved the tour, you have a terrific company and I hope to stop in again this year.