So “vents” are apparently slits. By process of elimination and also by process of tearing out my hair for hours, I’ve deciphered my first garment pattern.
Special thanks to YouTube and the rest of the interwebs for helping me unlock the jargon of “Simplicity” New Look 6312.
Ok, I admit, I chose the wrong pattern for my first project, what a newbie, indeed! But it came out not too shabbily!
Next I made not one, but TWO little zipper pouches. Again, YouTube gets my gratitude and praise: The Crafty Gemini has some great tutorials.
My first zippered pouch, made using my own fabric design as well (Koi Pond) Second pouch, made with fusible this time instead of quilting
What to make next? I have a few precious swatches of my own Spoonflower designs, but they are on the smallish side. The tutorial hunt begins anew!
Taniku shokubutsu, or “spoiled child”, according to Weblio‘s definition of the word “succulents” in Japanese:
I guess a spoiled child would probably be ta-niku (have plenty of meat)!
I had absolutely no IDEA about the succulent-verse online until I photographed the adorable little things as I was walking one day. Peeps are real serious about these plump plants! Using the PRISMA app, I made a colorful fabric pattern out of some little succies I photographed while walking near Date Street in Honolulu, HI.
Then using the Prisma app on my phone, I applied different filters to the photo:
Then I took a screenshot of my phone and opened it in Photoshop (CS5, version 12.0). You can also save the photo or e-mail it to yourself. (Prisma cropped my photo so I had to run it twice, once on each side of the photo.)
After cropping out the phone stuff and the app, I aligned and joined the 2 halves of the photo together into 1 layer. Then I made a backup, duplicate of the entire layer and turned it off, just in case I messed up later.
Next I used the Lasso tool to duplicate a few flowers. I just traced around the edges of a flower and Copied as New Layer a few times, until I had a few extra flowers to be used later as ‘filler’.
Then I used the Offset filter (select menu Filter>Other>Offset) to turn the picture into a repeat with four corners.
Offset filter applied. Now just gotta fill in the center area with some filler flowers.
Using my new flower copies, I filled in the blank space in the center where the four corners meet. Then I used the Smudge tool to blend the four corners together.
It’s derived from a phrase in Japanese — “nan toka” — which means “something or other.” Students of literature may also be remided of the Japanese poet Santoka. Or my Twitter handle @zan_toka ! 🙂
Wait, what’s Spoonflower, you ask? It’s a fabric print-on-demand service, where artists from around the world design, buy and sell fabrics, including yours truly — take a look!
