Planet Ruby Starrs

this beetle inspired by the Natural History Museum features quite a lot in my designs I'll passingly mention the Corona virus as it impacts everywhere - College has stopped all group sessions - the buildings remain open to use the facilities for the time being but ominous emails about handing in digitally are arriving so I expect it's only a matter of time before it shuts until further notice.  For some students this will cause massive problems - fortunately I'm probably going to be ok.  I have pretty much got myself to a place where I can work from home, I have printed several scarves at college using the sublimation printing and heat press, and now its just a matter of embellishment.  My intention is to order a further 6 designs from an external printing company so I can have them printed bigger and on natural fabrics like silk and cotton lawn but his may not happen just yet.  This is at considerable expense and due to purse strings being a wee bit tight - Dr...

More and more scarf designs are starting to emerge in a more cohesive and collective manner - I have collated them all (80 plus) on to thumbnails so I can faff about and pick the ones that work best, that I like best, that Dr Fred likes best and those which I think have a commercial value... although really most of them are starting to look quite quirky and I think my target market might be less main stream than some brands appeal to - but realistically I have to have some designs which appeal to a quieter taste, they are still quite funky but in quieter colours and may be less bizarre imagery, not everyone wants to wear a giant home made chicken in a basket image around their neck!!! So now I have to make the final decisions and then spend the next couple of weeks making sure the art work is spot on and ready to go tot the printers so that they can come back to be hand rolled hemmed (approx 4 hours per scarf) but its a lovely finish and also I am going do some embellishment on ...

Some days just don't go according to plan... I decided to do my college work from home today.   It allows me access to all my fabric stash and the bits and bobs I anticipated needing to make my new project fantabulous.... The current idea is to sew and collage some back ground papers for my latest project!   I didn't exactly think it would be easy but I hoped it would fall into place, a few tries in it would all start to look ok and then quite nice and then potentially fabulous - well I'm at the ''this isn't working as well as I had thought it would '' stage.... I'm using a mix of calico, muslin, papers, waxed music and all sorts of bits of lace and other found embellishments, I can't seem to find the right balance... I may need a new plan. also... I just put the sewing machine needle through my finger - always an experience to be avoided - quite painful and it makes my stomach turn a little - and it broke the sewing machine needle which ...

pink with silver foil and beaded detail on cotton Its my hand day for the Skills for Making module next week, and as usual I am just starting to feel the love for it and ideas are starting to emerge for making it work!!! Its been quite a 'problem solving' module with all sorts of different challenges throw up. To start with I didn't quite get the drawing selection right - but nothing ventured nothing gained - this time it didn't quite work - I loved all the drawings independently but  not so much together.  But.... having selected them I persevered and then found the scanner wouldn't scan them 'squarely' for want of a term - next time I'll just use photoshop from the outset but I really wanted this to be a more 'organic ' experience ( not that I'm scared of photoshop haha ). This little hiccup meant the layers didn't sit properly and while it was frustrating it did give me the chance to experiment with different placings and  I did le...

two layers waterbased ink on calico fabric Two full days of screen printing practise has left me with an aching back but considerably more skill at getting nice clean crisp prints,some of which are multilayered and multicoloured.  I like screen prints, I like the clean sharpness they have but because of that I find them hard to work into with embellishment.  And.. the truth is I really like the embellishment business more then the printing...This difficulty is further compounded by my chosen design being very busy - lots of line work and detail, so because of that I decided to spend some time masking out lot of the detail and trying a different approach to the print finish. In the end after careful consideration I masked out most of my 'bottom' layer-  some very busy linework  originating from a tall ships drawing - and immediately the prints started to look tidier. silver foil on black velvet I also spent quite a lot of time experimenting with different f...