Fly Brain Fabric

My printed fabric from Spoonflower arrived last week. I wanted to test it out first by getting a swatch. I decided on an image that my friend, a scientist, had made from one of her experiments - A Fly Brain!

I thought the darkness of the image would really test the limits of the printed fabric. And besides, the fly brain is so cool looking that if it came out well enough then it might be nice to make stuff with it. What stuff, you ask? I have no clue, yet. That's why I took so long to post this. I wanted to make something and post all stages of the project, but that will have to wait.

It's pretty amazing looking, but this might not be the best use of Spoonflower. I think the colors are too dark. You can tell from the close up below that you lose some details compared with the original.

All in all, it's pretty amazing to order your own fabric, so I would definitely use them again... As soon as I come up with a great design. There are certainly people out there who have used Spoonflower in amazing ways, one of my favorites being The Small Object who made a letter to her niece on a quilt.

Hello Yellow.

You've been oh so patient. Waiting on your little shelf. Hoping for that special day.

But, you were so tricky. So delicate and thin. What could possibly become of you?

Well, yellow fabric... your destiny has been revealed. I hope you live up to it.

To be continued....

Kauai fabrics and patterns

 I just came back from Kauai. It's so beautiful there.

 
I went to this fabric/quilting store there called Kapaia Stitchery. They had so much stuff to choose from and you could tell that the continual growth of so many flowers all over the island have definitely influenced the fabric designers there.

I wanted to get some local fabrics so, this is what I chose:

Bright colorful and fun.

The turtle print is exclusive to the shop.

And these are my absolute favorites. I love them so much! I am not sure what these will be used for yet, but perhaps a quilt would be nice mixed with some white fabric, of course.

At the last minute, I picked these two pattern books up at the airport. I'm sure they had them at the quilting store, but I just didn't think of it then.

Nautical fabrics?

Hmmm. I was going to post about how I went to Mood Fabrics this week (made famous by Project Runway), but now it doesn't seem so important.

Basically, I was asked to make a tote bag for my boss. She wants it to have nautical colors and is able to hold four beach towels for her family. I gave her a variety of color themes and she was fine with all of them and left it up to me. I found the following fabrics at mood...

The red and white stripe canvas would be the outside and the navy polka dot on white would be the lining. I haven't picked the handle webbing yet, but it could be navy, yellow, off white. Now, I picked the red and white canvas because they didn't have any of the other colors I would liked, such as teal, yellow, blue, etc. So this whole thing could have gone in a totally different direction.

The problem is: does it look like a flag now? Is it too patriotic? I actually had a dream about it last night where I showed my boss and she hated it.

I have to think about this more. Should I have a different lining fabric? Would yellow handles help? Or do I have to just try it and see? I guess from the outside it would still be cute.

I want this sooooo bad.

one.dress.finished, originally uploaded by annamariahorner.

This dress is gorgeous. I love it and I want it.

Anna Maria Horner designed the fabric and her daughter (the model, I believe) designed the dress. Maybe the 90 comments or so on her blog will convince her to sell the pattern to us all. The fabric, called Drawing Room, is not on sale yet, but I'll be sure to get some as soon as it's ready! Maybe I can find a pattern simple enough to test it out on. Although, with my record, it might take me 5 years or so to get up the courage to try it out.