finally dealing with fabric.

I feel like it's taken me a long time to get to this step, but this week I finally traced patterns onto my fabric. First, I ironed an adhesive to the back of my fabrics.

I had to iron the adhesive onto the fabric, peel off the paper backing, and then iron that fabric onto your other one. This secures the fabrics to one another, which is especially useful if, like me, you will not use a sewing machine to stitch the edges together.

Then, I laid the patterns down on the paper backing of the adhesive and traced them. At first, I forgot I had to trace the reverse patterns so they're facing the same way on the fabric.

I also traced out a pattern to use for my bibs. I bought a plain bib to use as a guide, and my mom suggested that I fold it in half to create a pattern. This is the best way, she said, to guarantee that the two sides of the bib are the same. I folded the bib in half and traced it onto the back of a sheet of wrapping paper.

Next week, I will trace the bibs and cut everything out.

The farther into this project I get, the more I'm enjoying it. As mentioned in Michael Owen Jones' article, I'm enjoying this project for various reasons. It's starting to provide me with aesthetic pleasure, and it's therapeutic and stress-relieving to work with my hands as I create something for someone else.

paper animals.

Over the weekend, I finally picked out the animal patterns I'm going to use for the bibs. The elephant and giraffe were pretty easy to find. I went through some children's coloring books that were laying around my parents house and saw these, which I liked. I will have to alter some things, however, so that the designs can feasibly be appliqued onto the bibs. For example, since I will hand sew all of the spots onto the giraffe, I will have to ignore the spots on this one and draw a couple big ones of my own. Also, I will probably make the elephant's tusk a little bigger than it is.

The monkey, however, was not so easy. I thought this photo would work, but when I showed it to my mom, she said that I need to consider how much stitching will be around it. The monkey's arms, for instance, are pretty skinny, so there would be a small amount of fabric on which I would need to make a lot of stitches. After looking at a bunch of coloring pages online, I decided to switch to a simple turtle, which I also found in the coloring book.

After I picked the animals, I scaled them to their proper size (about 5 inches tall), printed them and cut the pieces out. The elephant and giraffe will both have layers of fabric, so I needed a full body as the base. I will cut this out of one fabric, then layer the details on top of the main body. For the turtle, I only have two pieces, and they barely overlap, so it's much simpler.

I am starting to realize how much of an art applique is. I talked to my mom about it a lot this weekend, and there are so many details in the process that I would have completely skipped over had she not been there to listen to my schedule for making the bibs. I am realizing just how important and helpful it is to have someone guiding me through the process, teaching me tricks and reminding me of little steps along the way. I am very lucky to have a couple people in my life who have done applique before and who are skilled at it.

As mentioned in one of the class readings about craft classes and settlement schools, I am able to learn a craft through those who have been doing it for years, and through me, they are able to pass an old art form on to a new generation.

patterns.

This week, I tried to find animal patterns for the bibs. I've been looking at Web sites and coloring books to find them but haven't figured out which ones I want to use yet.

While looking over my class notes, I realized that my craft process is similar to the arts and crafts movement of the late 1800s to early 1900s. It's interesting to think that in the early 2000s, with as much technology as we have, I'm working on a project that evokes historical periods from more than 100 years ago. In Britain, the separation of workers from the products they made became became a problem. There's a sense of pride in creating something from start to finish then being able to see it in use.

Over the next few days, I'm going to decide what patterns to use, scale them to the proper size and prep my fabric so I can start cutting pieces out.

shopping.

Yesterday, I went to Hobby Lobby to buy all of the supplies for my project. I decided to make baby bibs with different animals on them (1 monkey, 1 elephant and 1 giraffe). I bought a plain bib to use as a pattern and some cream colored fabric for the actual bibs. Then I bought 1 solid color and 1 pattern for each animal. After getting a different color embroidery thread to match each of the animals, I had to figure out what tools to buy.

I ended up with some adhesives that I will have to stick to the back of the fabrics before putting them onto the bibs. After ironing them, it will help the fabrics adhere so that I can just whip stitch the animals on. That means that I can hand sew, which will add some color to the animals and reinforce the adhesive. My stitching, however, doesn't need to be very tight or close together since the adhesive should hold the fabrics together pretty well.

I also had to buy new scissors, a seam ripper and a marking pencil that washes out of fabric. Once I got back home, I realized I forgot to buy Velcro to put on the bibs. I won't need it for a few weeks though, because that will probably be the last step in the process.

Over the next week, I have to go to the laundromat or a friend's house to wash the fabrics to make sure they shrink before I cut out the patterns. I also need to find animal patterns that I like and figure out what size they should be.