Creating with the Brother Scan & Cut

It is the first week of January, and we are in the deep freeze here in Ottawa. I am in my studio, and it feels good! So I'm working on this idea I posted about late last year. It started with an up-close section of a photograph I took of ferns on Vancouver Island in June of last year. I played around with some settings and filters in PhotoShop that emphasized these little black circles on the fern fronds and made them look more 3D. I have no recollection of what the setting or filter was. I was playing that day. I loved how the little black circles had value variations through them, darker on one side than another.

Here's the design worked out in my sketchbook, I will make the centres of the fronds less yellow, probably a lighter value of the same green I'm using for the main part of the fronds.

Late last year I also dyed a value gradation of a neutral black.Now I ask, why are we dyers always trying to find a neutral black/grey? Well I know why ... because when we go to paler and paler shades we tend to find greys that look more blue or green or ... but we want just plain grey. However, after the painting class I took a few weeks ago, I've come to the conclusion that greys are more interesting when you CAN see a bit a colour in them. Very little in the world is a neutral grey. However, for the purposes of this project, I'm sticking with my neutral black/grey.

Here's my design enlarged. I traced it to transparency film and projected it to the wall with an overhead projector to enlarge it. I did not draw out all the dots on the leaves. I just drew a few different sizes.

I thought this was the perfect project to try out my new Brother Scan & Cut Machine that I purchased 7 months ago from Ottawa Sewing Centre since there are so many repetitive little dots that need to be cut. When I purchased the machine, I thought it would be great for cutting tree bark for my tree collages, and I was excited about the possibilities of cutting shapes out of organza without using fusible web, and thus retaining the sheerness.

Then I traced my dots onto a piece of paper, one or two dots in each size.

I scanned this into my Brother Scan n' Cut.

I knew I should be able to reproduce the dots to fill an entire space the size of the scanning mat. It took a bit of fiddling and reading (I hate reading manuals). However, you can see here I did manage to figure it out. 

Hard to photograph the screen without it showing a glare, but I think you can see in the photo below, that I've now managed to fill the entire screen with dots. This gets saved into my Brother Scan & Cut.

I've taken a piece of fabric that is approximately 12" x 12" in size, and ironed fusible web to the back of it. I still had some Steam a Seam Light in my stash. Better use it up before it gets old.

I've pulled the backing paper off the fusible that I ironed to the back of the fabric, and I've positioned the fabric on the mat meant for cutting. Except I made a mistake and used the scanning sheet that I'd affixed an extra tacky sheet on way back when I bought the machine. I used that extra tacky sheet to cut organza without any fusible on it. Alas I erred here, and cut through the really tacky sheet, such that it became permanently attached to the back of the dots I was cutting.

Here you can see the first sheet cut. I then figured out I had used the wrong sheet, didn't need the extra tacky one, just the mildly tacky one.

Once I used the correct cutting mat, everything worked wonderfully. So here I have a table full of dots in a variety of sizes and values. I'll go and buy a couple of new mats at the Ottawa Sewing Centre. I purchased my Brother Scan n' Cut from them.

I now also have these cool sheets of fused fabrics that have holes in them.

Actually an entire little wall of them attached to my design wall. There must be a fun use for these?

For the rest of the design (the leaves themselves), I used my usual method of tracing them in reverse onto the fusible web, ironing the web to the back of fabric, and cutting them out.

Here's my first leaf. What do you think? I dunno why, but I am craving a white background, but we shall see. Am I going modern or what?

A few more leaves to go. The big reveal should come in a day or two.

Greetings of the Season

From my house to yours, I am wishing you the best of this Season. I hope you enjoyed a restful and Merry Christmas and are now looking toward a brand new year in anticipation.

One of the sights I love at this time of year is seeing my feline family settling down for a long winter's nap. OK, I confess that winter has not hit Ontario yet, but is due this coming week. We will likely pay for a Christmas day that was as spring-like as Easter.

Wilma

Peekaboo and her tongue.

For a while now, we've had a third cat at our house. "Foxy" comes around to eat each day and we do not know if she has a home. She seems to be outside at all hours of the day and night. This photo was taken a few weeks ago when we had a brief, light dusting of snow. My husband built her a shelter as per the Humane Society instructions. Actually we don't even know if "she" is a she yet. We could probably accommodate a third cat so she is welcome to move in, but it will have to be on her own time. However, it is also possible that she likes the food better at our house than her own?

If you read Quilting Arts Magazine, you may have noticed that they featured my last fabric line with Northcott in their December issue. While the Poppy Passion collection was released last April, it is probably still available at many stores. On the Northcott website, it has now been "archived" meaning that no more will be available for sale to stores.

I confess that I've been in a bit of a creative slump this past year, due partly to a busy teaching schedule. The last few days I've been warming up by sewing a bed quilt, something I have not done in more than a decade. I love polka dots, the colour turquoise, lots of white, and improvisational piecing, so I'm working on a new quilt for our guest bedroom. Remember the one that I painted in "Serene Moment" this past summer? Photos here. Yes that one, and it is also my office.



Some of you will recognize that these blocks are similar to what I teach in my Reflections class. In this case, however, I have only pieced half the block, leaving the other half white, and I have arranged the blocks into a spiral setting. The design possibilities are endless with these blocks.

Hoping you enjoy the rest of this Christmas season! I'll be working on a new art quilt during the first week of January. Can't wait to see how it progresses.