Experimenting Can Be Fun........

For just about as long as we have had a computer I have been making the old tried and true fabric rugs printed on muslin, stuck to freezer paper. This is where I learned to do it. http://www.printmini.com/printables/fabric.shtml Jim Collins has lots of great printies and offers this info on a side bar. It is kind of hard to read so just right click on it and poke "Select All". That will make it visible. If you search I think that there are some other sites that have instructions. The main thing is taking care in preparation and cutting of the paper and fabric.

For these particular rugs, I simply folded under the edges and glued them with white glue and then fringed a separate strips of muslin and glued them to either end of the rug. Yes, I know that the top one needs pressing. They have been in a box for years. They are part of a stash that I went crazy making when I first learned how to do it. I sprayed them with Patricia Nimock's Matte Spray Sealer. The color has held up pretty well.

At my usual 3:00AM "wake up and make plans for the day" time, because I can't get back to sleep, I had a light bulb go on above my head. Don't ask me why. I have no idea, but some of my best "spearmints"(experiments and spearmints were interchangeable words to my daughter when she was little) come to mind at that time of morning.

I said to myself "Self, why can't I iron #22 hardanger cloth that I use for cross stitch to the freezer paper and print on it?" I actually thought about it long enough that it didn't disappear by morning.

Here's a piece with the corner cut out so that you can see what it looks like. I wouldn't run this one through the printer because I didn't cut and measure carefully and I wouldn't want it to get stuck. The fabric and paper must be fused together well, especially at the edges and there should be NO threads hanging when you do any of this kind of thing. Printers tend to get hungry for spaghetti when they see threads hanging and start devouring your paper/fabric from the edges in.

I guess I didn't explain why I wanted to do this. There are many beautiful rugs on the net. It would be so much easier if you didn't have to graph them all.

http://www.1001arearugs.com/ Here is one of my favorite rug websites. The nice thing about these are they are a flat image that you can just use as is. If you poke the thumbnails you get a rug that is about 1/24" scale. If you poke that one you get one that is a pretty good 1/12. If you want it larger you can save it to a file and enlarge it.

Soooooo.....Here is the end result.

Now I will be able to start stitching. I think that if I do it again, I will run a test sheet on regular paper to make sure that the size of the rug will work on my #22 or #24. This one comes pretty close without trying. I was lucky. I also think that this method will be better for abstract designs and non formal.

I will keep you posted on how it stitches. I am off to find thread now.

See you tomorrow.