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Sunday, July 17, 2011

Rugs and Clocks

I had a go at printing fabric on the weekend. It was now where near as horrible as I thought. Had visions of the printer going berserk and ink going every where! But no it is as easy as printing on paper. Just a bit more preparation. I had some 'pretend' linen. Not the real thing, bit out of my budget range. Gave it a good iron. Sprayed an A4 sheet of paper with spray glue and laid the fabric on top. Patted it down to make it adhere. Sat a heavy book on it for a bit to let it really set. Trimmed off the fabric . Making sure it was neat and exact. Print it out on the glossy photo setting. I let it sit for a bit to let it dry and then gave it an iron on dry setting ink side down. Now the ink is not set. Meaning it will run if it gets wet. I have tried all sorts of things to set it and so far none of it has worked. You can buy a rinse I think that will do the job but I didn't want to spend anymore money and I don't know how well it works. Alternatively there are fabric sheets I could have bought but again more money I didn't want to spend. I have however given my rugs a quick going over with my spray matt and that seems to do the trick but I still wouldn't wet it completely. Just allows for sprays n sprinkles that seems to happen. I cut them out with a rotary cutter. Left half an inch at the ends. I used a light iron interfacing to back the rugs to add a little body and to help stop fraying. I sewed along the edge of each print so that I could fray the edges. I set my stitch length to 1.5. It also helps to add body as well as stopping it from fraying too much. So many rugs can be found doing a Google image search. I made the little alarm clock out of bead spacer, pins, findings and buttons. The main body of the alarm clock is just two buttons glued together. Backed with a finding cause it pretty. Cut off brass pins stuck into the back through the holes for the little turny things. Bead spacer for the donger thins on top and another cut off pin for the hammer. A tiny bead cap for the foot. Printed out a clock face. Ages ago I found these see through scrap booking things that are perfect for the domed glass. Love those $1 bins! The wall clock was made out of cardboard and an assortment of brass findings. I used a hole punch and cut out four circles from a cereal box and glued them all together for the clock body. Then just arranged the findings and glued them in place. The same thing again for the clock face. Working on doing one with a chain and pendulum.


4 comments:

  1. They are all brilliant! I love the clocks.
    Just FYI, I found out how to fix the bug that keeps us from commenting on our own posts.
    If you change your Blogger settings to have a pop-up instead of the comment box below your posts, you should be able to add comments. A lot of people were emailing saying they couldn't comment on my posts and I couldn't either.
    Thanks to Caterina for that info. Hope you don't mind me putting it here.

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  2. Hi Daphne. Ha Ha did it. Thank you so very very much for the help. I so don't mind you putting it here at all. It was driving me crazy!!! Thank you so very much again. And thanks to Caterina!!

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  3. Love your rugs! Too clever.
    Nice being able to comment without signing out and in too.

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  4. Carrie -

    Just found your blog (love it!) and realized I've had your records listed as a "favorite" on Etsy for quite a while. Thank you for the tutorial on printing rugs on fabric. I am trying to make a rug for my half-inch scale version of Kate Winslet's cottage from "The Holiday". I've resigned myself to stitching it, since I can't find a close enough version of it online, but with your tutorial I may try Photoshopping something similar and printing it out. Yours are lovely!
    Cheers! -Alessandra

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