Guest Post! Amy's Advice on Creating Your Own Print

I am soooooooo excited today to present Beau Baby's first ever guest poster, my friend Amy! This summer we worked together on creating the perfect dress for her to wear to a wedding-like event in Scotland this Fall. Amy created her own print using Spoonflower.com, which I used to sew a custom-fit bombshell dress. The results were amazing, and some of you wanted to hear more about how she turned a photo into a super special print. (Keep in mind, neither of us is sponsored by Spoonflower, though we wouldn't turn down free fabric if it's being offered!). Amy's tutorial below kinda blew my mind; now I know how easy it is to turn a photo into a completely unique print — that in no way resembles the original photo. I didn't think I had the skills to do something like this. But now I think we all do. So read on!

Greetings Beau Baby blog followers!  I offered to do a guest a post to discuss the design process for my fabric. Full disclosure: I pretty much have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to using Photoshop or Illustrator (I had been known to be slightly drunk during my graphics design class in my undergrad program), so my process here was somewhat inartful and crude. But the good news is that Spoonflower seems to be aware of that and has really simple and user-friendly tools to help inexperienced, somewhat lazy people like myself. Originally I wanted to do a solid color, and Sue suggested a print and keeping the design simple. Since her print choice on her dress looked great, I thought this was an excellent direction to go in. Picking a print would have been tricky and prolonged given the Atlantic between me and Sue; I could look for prints in London but would need to send her samples for her to okay the print size and the fabric type, or she would have looked in NY and then had to send things over to me to approve in terms of my tastes. I started looking at a million prints online to send her things that I was really into, and ended up at Spoonflower. I stumbled into the bit where you make your own design and immediately all the Project Runway HP design challenges flashed into my mind like some sort of dreamy Mondo-led montage. I really like making things as personal as possible, so I started looking at the photos I took in Prague, where Lewis and I met 5 years ago.

Here are the two photos that seemed to have some interesting design potential.

The first one is the astronomical clock, which is pretty famous in Prague and really beautiful. The other one is some church. 

Once you have a Spoonflower account, you can upload various file types.

Once uploaded, you can crop the photo in their embedded photo editor, Picmonkey. You can also crop it beforehand in picasa or whatever. It's good to play around with this because the larger the image file is, the more flexibility have in terms of size of the print later. PNG files are best. Spoonflower will stop letting you make the print size bigger when they know that blowing it up any more will make it look gross.

You can also play around with the colors a bit. I wanted the gold to be brighter and more orangey but the big risk for fall colors is looking like a pumpkin. 

I started with this:

and got it more like this:

Here's the main editor in Spoonflower:

On the right, you have choices on how to pattern the print. "Mirror" usually works best if it's a cropped photo. Otherwise, you need to line things up properly when you design them.

The thing I really like here is that you can abstract the image a bit using the color palette. Notice how there are 4 colors at the bottom of the screen. And in the menu to the left it says "CHANGE COLORS." You can make it only 2 colors, or up to 24 or something. This is nice because it makes it look like color blocking or paint. So it's more like a print and less like a photo that you scanned on a tee shirt. You can also totally alter the color scheme from what it is originally in the photo to match your aesthetic and season. 

Here were some of the runner-ups to the one I ultimately ended up choosing.

 Some parents use Spoonflower to take their kids' drawings and make clothing out of the prints they create. I think that's such a lovely way to showcase your kids' art and make them feels special beyond the magnets on your fridge. Spoonflower is also doing wallpaper now. Pretty neat.

Ordering and shipping was very easy. It's always recommended that you order a swatch first to check colors, etc. This really worked for me and Sue given our distance - I ordered it from London on my computer and had it shipped directly to her house!

Hope this helped. I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments section.

I want this

I NEED one of these labels for the hoodie I am making my husband  — as a completely unsubtle reminder how much effort went into his Christmas gift this year.

They're $4.50 for four labels, at Sublime Stitching. I saw them in Bust magazine's Holiday Gift Ideas email.

Male Pattern Boldness Day!

Me with the world's most popular and (arguably) the sweetest male sewing blogger

It feels a little like Boxing Day (that's the day after Christmas for you Americans).  That's because today is the day after the First Annual (I added that part, but I hope it's true) Male Pattern Boldness Day, a day in which sewers from all over the Tri-State area (and beyond) gathered together to man-handle the collectibles at Chelsea Flea Market, be inspired by sporting clothes through the decades at FIT, and shop every divey fabric store frequented by our guru in all things glam, gathered and on-grain, the inestimable Peter Lappin of Male Pattern Boldness.

Our benevolent leader Mr. Lappin ushered us from one location to the next with all the grace of a senior summer camp counselor. Though I kept referring to my new friends by their place names (Florida; El Paso; Washington Heights), Peter somehow managed to remember all 25-ish people who showed up for the event.

The first stop was Chelsea Flea Market (not to be confused with Chelsea Market, which my husband clearly did when he said, "ooh, you can get cake!"). The Chelsea Flea is located on 25th Street near Sixth Avenue and it most definitely doesn't serve cake. I've been once before, years ago when I first moved to New York. It's an institution and Peter says he has even seen such celebrities as Parker Posey and Catherine Deneuve shopping there on a Saturday morning.

I didn't buy anything though I was tempted by some housewares and antique toys. But the price points were so...Manhattan. And after the first few times I queried the price of something and was quoted a sum five times higher than what I was expecting, I just stopped considering these were things for sale (the pair of dress form-shaped lamps will just have to live on in my memory). Because I am Canadian, and we don't negotiate. If we did, there wouldn't be a weird little strip of Minnesota in Ontario's Lake of the Woods region. When a Canadian hears the price of something is five times higher than she expected, she says something complimentary ("So beautiful!") and then scoots her ass out of there before she breaks something. Of course, others in our group found some great buys, so maybe it's just my problem.

Following the flea market, we joined the rest of the group at the Fashion Institute of Technology for the Sporting Life exhibit. I've taken three classes there now, but had never been to the museum. I'm always running to class right after dropping Lucy with a friend who watches her until my husband gets home. Look at how many sewers showed up for the main event!

I stole this pic from Peter's blog post. What are you going to do about it?

The exhibit was a treat. I loved seeing how impractical play clothes for women once were:

Woolen bathing costume!

Sailing outfit — because a floor-length skirt is what you need when you're hoisting the main

I didn't take any of my own pictures because there were enough security guards in the little museum to start a basketball team, and I didn't want the embarrassment of getting kicked out.

After that, the lot of us ate lunch around the corner at the Brown Cup cafe before moving on to the fabric shopping portion of our day. I usually head to the same two or three places, and was excited to see what shops Peter would take us to. Nothing was as divey as I expected (he's always blogging his $2/yard finds, so I was expecting to find wood shavings on the floor). On 38th Street, we hit Sil Thread and The Spandex House, then H&M, Chic and Mood. I bought black silk organza at H&M ($8/yard) to underline a silk dress I will hopefully start working on soon, as well as more ivory tulle ($1.50/yard) for Lucy's flower girl dress and a cute vintagey coral jersey with a muted stripey pattern ($5/yard). It was really fun to hear what projects the other sewers were working on (I wish Tambira had a blog so I could see how her sexy sequined skirt turns out!).

On the way to Mood, we passed by Olivier Green from this season of Project Runway, sullenly carrying a Mood bag. On his way back to Parsons to complete the day's challenge? That would be my guess.

What is with that guy's accent? He's from Ohio!

Later at Mood, the already-packed store was suddenly flooded with people carrying walkie talkies. Project Runway production staff prepping for a shoot? What else could it have been? We didn't stick around to find out.


That's because the group still had energy to spare, so we walked to Around the World Magazines (on the south side of Bryant Park), which stocks international pattern and fashion magazines (as well as pricey textbooks), before finishing the day at nearby Kinokuniya, a super cool Japanese bookstore that sells lovely pattern and design books. Then my new pals grabbed snacks and iced coffees and relaxed in Bryant Park. I had to run to a three-year-old's birthday party and was sad to see the day end. I hope MPB Day becomes an annual tradition. (I could totally see Peter with a headset on the top floor of a double-decker bus leading dozens of international sewers on a personalized tour of NYC....think about it, Peter!)

I won, I won, I won!

This has been seriously getting me down for the past two weeks:

But you know what brings me up today? Winning a vintage pattern from the World's Most Popular Men's Sewing Blog Male Pattern Boldness (if you don't already follow Peter's posts, you should. Even if you don't sew. He's a funny writer and a recent photo essay he posted about a New York night out with his "cousin" Cathy was so entertaining.)

Someone make me this, please?

If I only had a garage. And tools. (Oh, and some time to spare) I would totally try to make something like this for my apartment. Or if you live in Cape Town you could buy it from a number of shops that sell this South African designer Katie Thompson's repurposed furniture.

Poly What?

 I sometimes think about what aspects of myself I would like to see my daughter inherit. Actually let me rephrase that: Sometimes I think about what aspects of myself I would like for my daughter NOT to inherit. Chief among the genetic variations I would like to die with me are my butt's unfortunate ability to make a wedgie from any pair of underpants and an internal thermometer permanently set to high — often resulting in extreme sweatiness. Sadly, the term "diaper wedgie" has been in her vocabulary a year. And on a typical summer day in NYC our whole family looks like we just went swimming though we've been nowhere near a pool. Actually, on any day between the months of April to October you may find us sweating it out alongside our snowsuit-clad neighbors. (Dominicans seemingly get the chills when the temperature drops below 20 C — also the temperature at which my sanity is restored.)

That's the reason I put half the items that catch my eye back on the rack (and the reason I never shop in my neighbourhood): polyester makes me feel like I'm dying. And then I stink. Well, I don't stink. My polyester shirt stinks. It's not surprising considering polyester is basically plastic. 

So it's odd that I brought home this end piece I found in the bin at a fabric store downtown. But I like the bold pattern and colours, and if there's one advantage to polyester it's that the colours never fade.

There was just enough to make a short-sleeved version of the Batwing Top from Burdastyle.com. I'm hoping the airy Dolman sleeves will keep me from sweating my bag off.

Our Etsy Little Christmas

 

At 3:40 a.m. today we awoke to the sound of two guys fighting in the street outside our apartment. Loudly, of course (is there any other kind of streetfight?). It was all in Spanish so we had no idea what the fight was about or if threats were being made, but we called 911 nonetheless, because hearing someone get beat up wasn't how I wanted to come down off my holiday high. And, as usually happens in these types of situations, as soon as we dialed 911 the streetfighters took their bout elsewhere. 

Anyway, with our semi-sick kid in our bed we awoke this morning to play with our new toys, some of which were bought on Etsy. Next year I might try to buy all my gifts there. The wooden sewing machine above was a steal at just $25. I know, it's a little "Just Like Mom" considering what I do all darn day, but there's only so many years in your child's life during which they actually look up to you before they turn to scorn and ridicule. I'll be making the most of that time.

 And here's my favourite gift: a handmade spool rack, which I sorely needed. I think my husband bought it for me because I had threatened to make my own using a power drill, chopsticks, a 2X4, and wood glue. It was a good idea, though I'm not sure our little apartment could withstand the rigours of woodworking too. Better to leave that up to the experts ...or at least someone in Pennsylvania with a woodshop in their garage.

Spoonflower

You know how awesome the online fabric store Spoonflower is? When I go there, I never even make it off the front page. It's a crazy start-up that lets any old person design, print and sell their own fabric designs. Kind of like Etsy for textile designers. But everything is priced the same (starting at $18/yard for quilting cotton and up to $38/yard for silk crepe de chine — fancy!), which I think is cool because everyone's work is valued equally. I'm such a socialist. You can buy other people's designs printed on a variety of fabrics. Or you could upload your own design/drawings and have it printed for a special project (Holly Handmade, get on this!). All you do is upload a JPEG/GIF/TIF/PNG or whatever of a photo, your artwork, or a design you created in Photoshop or Illustrator. If I needed a new hobby, textile design would be it. (Some tips for creating an image).

See an example of awesome large-scale print that would be great to stretch over a frame and hang over your couch (just tilt your head to the right and imagine):

 There are also a number of print, cut and sew dolls. You would be a Christmas morning hero with this set of hand puppets:

Also super cool: fabric printed with calenders. From one yard you could make four wall hangings (or tea towels, or however you think it best to gift a textile calender) to give as gifts:

Crafty Corsages for Christmas

Last year my husband and I spent more on our holiday tip for the building's super than we did on each other (we had a $25 limit). And the only other person we purchased a gift for was our daughter, who was around 18 months at the time and in need of new toys (I hear people -- mostly moms -- say this all the time: "We just have sooooo much stuff!" like it's such a huuuuuge problem. Too much stuff. I wish we had that problem.) Anyway, instead of presents we shot a Christmas music video with the three of us and sent it out to family. I'm sure there were some who just thought we were self-centered and cheap. But really, the reality was we could not afford to buy Christmas gifts. And we were not going to accumulate more debt to do so. There was no moral high ground there. Just the shameful reality that people are going to buy you presents, and you are not going to be able to return the kindness. Even making stuff would have cost too much for us at the time. Purchasing materials was just beyond our mid-recession budget. 

This year, things are better. But we are still committed to living within our means, even during the holidays. But at least we can afford handmade this year. Like the above felt flower corsage, which I made a bunch of for grandma gifts (Lucy has three official grandmas, plus one honorary grandma, and all of them are so good to her). I didn't make it up myself. I followed this tutorial at Holidash.com. My friend Lizzi hates it when I say something like this is easy, but it really was. (Just get your 10-year-old to make you one). I think it would look cute on a wool coat, or a hat or even a tote bag.

I Believe It's Called a Bait-and-Switch?

  The tricky thing about Christmas with a small child is that everything about the holidays is shiny and sparkly and so, so pretty....for a few weeks you pull out all this stuff that's all new to them because their memories don't extend back 12 months to last Christmas. So of course they want to manhandle everything in sight. That means broken decorations (or not bringing them out at all, sniff).

I thought it made sense to make something my kid could get her grubby paws all over without a problem. And maybe (though who am I kidding) that would keep her eyes off the other stuff: like the vintage glass balls found at a antique market in Winnipeg or the retro bubbling faux candles on our tree, for, example. (Who knows what that liquid is inside the little glass tube. All I know is it stains hardwood floors — badly. That can be good. Anyhow...)

I remembered seeing these little fabric stacking trees from the Small Object blog and thought they'd be perfect. Toddlers love building, stacking and then doing demo. Also: a great way to use up all the scraps I'm creating sewing up doll carriers for my Etsy shop lately.

  My plan, it worked. She plays with these things for, like, minutes at a time. Seriously: minutes.

 

 I'm not going to reinvent the wheel and tell you how to make these. Just follow the link if you care: The Small Object . There's even a PDF pattern you can easily download, though tracing a couple bowls and cutting each circle in half would be just as easy.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII (Corduroy)

 

First they came for our Christmas sweaters. Next they appropriated Sally Jesse Raphael's sassy red specs. Now, corduroy. Is nothing nerdy sacred anymore?

I missed the 5th annual meeting of The Corduroy Appreciation Club last month in Manhattan, mostly because I'd never heard of this band of ironic wale-wearing hipsters but also because I didn't have anything to wear (there's a two-Corduroy-item rule, and yes, they capitalize the word "Corduroy" out of respect). I would like to join the never-ending battle against velvet. But I guess I'll have to wait until next year. From the Corduroy Club's official website:

Both the NY Times and Gothamist jumped on the warm and wintry textile bandwagon with tongue-in-cheek stories about the club's annual meeting. I can't believe this is what the cool kids are doing for fun these days.

Anyway, the skirt below is the first project I've sewn from the book "Twinkle Sews," a great collection of unique and fashionable tops, skirts and dresses — many of them quite difficult. This was not, and printing out the zillion pages of the pattern, taping them together and then cutting it out was the most laborious part. It makes drafting your own pattern easy in comparison. See front:

and back:

 

When it comes to corduroy, there's a fine line between hipster and Hasidic. I had to cut four inches off the bottom of the skirt because a) I'm short and b) when I tried it on I looked a little Orthodox for my liking.

The Grosgrain-inspired Leaf Sweater

I just the love the mottled sunlight that filters through the metal gate that keeps intruders from entering our apartment via the fire escape outside my kid's bedroom window. Now and then my husband will claim to have OCD, but as fas as I can tell, his condition only flares up when it comes to making sure that gate is locked before we all go to bed at night. (OK, he's also OCD when it comes to checking CNN's politics webpage during election time — which is ALL the time in the U.S.)

Anyway, here I am this morning in a newly revamped sweater that I got at a clothing exchange last winter. It's a nice sweater, but kinda boring so when I saw this sweater over at the amazing Grosgrain blog (where the very talented and prolific Kathleen is posting tutorials for all sorts of embellished sweater projects this month), I was inspired to make it...better. See hers:

 I'm not going to post instructions or anything. She's already done a great job of that, and if you're interested, go see her site and tutorial. I should note this whole thing took maybe a half-hour. It's a super quick project. The thing that takes the longest is felting the sweater used for the leaves. I had to wash and dry it three times before it was felted enough. Here are some close ups of the neck and wrists:

A dress for me

My apartment looks like shit right now. I blame this dress. (And homework for my patternmaking class, writing assignments, taking care of my toddler full-time, and finally enjoying some fall weather in NYC.) I even quit Twatting or whatever it is you do over on Twitter because I realized it was a timesuck that wasn't actually offering me anything positive. Mostly I just read stuff that made me mad (Thanks, Roger Ebert). Plus no one I know is on it, so all my followers were companies trying to advertise to me. At least on Facebook I can play Farmville (kidding, kidding).

While I drafted the pattern myself from my sloper, the design is Elaine May's adorable Coffee Date Dress, which can be found on Burdastyle.com. Not that I get to go on dates ever. That would require a babysitter. And more money than we would like to spend on a drink. Better to lock the baby in her bedroom and split a box of wine in the kitchen. Anyway, yesterday I wore my new dress to a matinee of Billy Elliot on Broadway. (Of course I loved it, though I have to admit much of the charm for me comes from listening to small children swear.) It feels so good to have the waistline at my actual waistline,

The instructions provided by Elaine May are very good. I also referenced the “sew an all-in-one facing” tutorial on Burdastyle) and the great instructions on Burdastyle.com member Grosgrain’s blog, which I am totally in love with and in awe of because she has three kids, blogs a new dress every week AND has great legs.

I'm going to make another one for myself, and maybe one for a friend to whom I owe a favour. I would totally recommend this project for anyone who's ready to go beyond sewing a pillowcase or whatever.

Holly Handmade's Toadstool Rattles

If you're in Toronto, check out my friend Holly Handmade's toadstool rattles, like the one pictured at left in Lucy's mouth. She'll be showing her handmade items at the City of Craft show Dec. 12 &13. I'm not sure why she's not selling her woodsy wares online yet, but hopefully she will be soon! Babies love the textures and colours, and you don't have to worry about any lead-paint-made-in-China crappiness that comes with many baby items.

My Baby, Burdastyle

One of my favourite online resources is Burdastyle.com, a Brooklyn-based open-source
sewing site. They recently started charging for their in-house-designed patterns, but there are also plenty of free patterns uploaded by the site's users, among them the Vivienne Toddler Jumper, pictured above on Lucy as she contemplates my Burt Bee's lip balm.

I re-used a pair of brown wool-blend work pants that no longer fit (did they ever? They're huge) for the outer shell, and lined it with this sweet yellow and white dotted cotton I've had lying around forever. The buttons came from a bag I bought years ago at Micheal's in Winnipeg. And since Lucy love all things round (balls, balloons, bubbles, etc.), I appliqued on a few circles in the print.


It's all part of my mission to rid my closet of items I no longer wear (or in some cases, never did), while avoiding spending any money on new things for Lucy.

Make diaper changes a snap

How awesome is this idea to convert your baby's pants into diaper change-ready snap-ups?
I love Craftzine's blog, and am stoked when they have baby stuff like this on there.