I finished the wall hanging two days ago but haven’t posted it here yet due to a lack of direct sunlight in my apartment. I think my camera got a reasonable facsimile of what it looks like today. The image is still rather darker than it is in real life, though.

The embellished part is about 16″x16″ with a 4″ border around. I decided not to add beads so that it’d be easier to frame if I decided to do so.

Here are some details. Top left:

Top right:

Bottom Left:

Bottom right:

I am pretty excited about how it came out, although the cloth darkened a bit, which makes the contrast lower. But overall I like it. Looking at it side by side with the plan, I think it turned out pretty much exactly as I wanted (I did make some changes to placements).

I still have a lot of fabric left.

I’ve made a lot of progress on the wall hanging. First, I decided to change the concept a bit. The flowers are closer together now and the embroidery covers the flowers more. The layers of appliqué and embroidery were more what I was going for when I envisioned it originally.

So far I’ve applied most of the flowers except for a few that need darker color thread that I haven’t gotten yet. Sorry about the picture quality. It looks better in real life, I swear.

To do this I printed out two to-scale patterns of the image. One with the flowers, so I knew how to place them, and another of the embroidery. To do this I used a free program called PosteRazor. I also printed out the two types of flowers and traced them onto cardboard as a pattern for cutting out the flowers.

Cutting out the flowers was a pain! Afterwards I safety pinned the flowers onto the base cloth and overhand stitched them on. I tried blanket stitch but it was kind of ugly.

Next I have to trace the embroidery patterns on and then get down to embroidering. Hopefully I’ll find similarly colored turquoise/seafoam thread.

In my last post I mentioned that I was going to try and use the fabrics that I found at home in an interesting way. I decided that the Japanese vintage floral cotton that my mom gave me was too cute as a group to make separate items out of them. My first thought was to quilt them together into a pillow or small blanket, but I wasn’t crazy about mixing all those prints sewed right up next to each other.

So I came up with the idea of making a wall hanging by appliquéing the fabric onto a thick, off-white piece of cloth, then embroidering directly over them in another color. I used photoshop to make an approximation of what it’ll look like with the photos of the actual fabric. The image will be printed out so I can use it as a guide when I put the actual pieces of fabric together. I’ll post updates on its progress. There’ll be fabric left afterwards for other projects.

Having plan like this is useful for a couple of reasons. I know how many pieces of fabric to cut of each print, which is nice since I’m working with remnants and I’d like to conserve what little fabric I have. I can also see all the colors come together and make sure I get the right color embroidery thread. I’ll also be able to remember exactly how I want the pieces and embroidery placed.

The appliquéd flowers and leaves will be blanket stitched to the base, while the embroidery (turquoise) will likely be done in a combo of split stitch and chain stitch. Thanks to futuregirl for the blanket stitching tutorial. I’m going to be adding beads to the embroidery as well. Haven’t decided on the scale yet. Probably 2′x2′ or smaller.

These are the drawings that I made for the embroidered flora & fauna. I might as well share them; if you use them, please don’t profit off of them and please either email me or give me a link to a picture of what you made :). Click for bigger version.

When I showed the plan to a friend for feedback she asked me for a tutorial on how to do this. It’s really easy if you know the basics of using “patterns” in photoshop. You need photoshop (or a similar program), a photograph of the fabric you want to appliqué, and a drawing pad (optional) to do this.

1. Draw the outlines of the fabric parts. I use a tablet, but you could use your mouse or draw it on paper and scan them in. This took a lot of copy/pasting since my flowers are mostly the same shape.

2. Open the image with the photograph of your fabric on it, and make a separate “pattern” for each type. To do this, use the select tool to select your fabric, then Edit > Define Pattern and enter in a name for your fabric.

3. Now select the negative space of your drawing, and select inverse so that the parts where the appliqués will go are selected.

4. Choose the pattern stamp, then select your pattern. You can now use the stamp to color in the outlines.

That’s it. Let me know if this helps you or if you can think of a better way to do it. Another easy method is using a mask, but the way I did it was quick and dirty and suited my needs.

I’ve been borrowing my friend’s sewing machine lately, which reminded me to bring back some of the gorgeous Japanese silks that my mom gave me. I found them tucked away in a box that also had some other pretty fabrics that I’d forgotten about.

One thing that I like about Japanese textile design is the large, intricate, and often repeating patterns you can find on them. Making repeating backgrounds (digitally) is one of my hobbies, and I love to design them for my personal projects. For the current Studio Kitchenette and Kittenette backgrounds, I decided to mimic the flowing designs found on many kimono fabrics, which are sewn together in vertical panels that go from top to bottom. As the user scrolls down, s/he sees the pattern moving and changing as if seeing a bolt of fabric being unfurled. Since SK (Studio Kitchenette) is a project portfolio, I drew a cascade of papers that repeated themselves in an S shaped pattern. For Kittenette, I wanted to make it a bit more cute and ornamental since I didn’t have a header that was as intricate and large as on SK. So I drew in some cherry blossom petals falling along with the papers.

You can see the background for Kittenette below. I upped the contrast (the contrast is low on the websites because I wanted text to be easily read over them) and made it smaller.

These were the fabrics I found in the box at home. The first three are silks that were probably for Obi making or for making other ornaments, as I think they’re rather thin for Kimonos. They aren’t very wide but are probably about 3 meters long each- the width is typical for Kimono fabric, which as I mentioned earlier are sewn together in strips. Below is my favorite; I have a thing for florals, especially in this hue of salmony pink. It’s a thin, sheer silk patterned with plum blossoms. One thing that frustrates me is when people incorrectly sell patterns with plum blossoms marked as “Sakura” or “Cherry blossoms.” This is especially rampant on Etsy and makes it hard to search for actual sakura designs. Sakura are traditionally depicted with a “tick” in each petal.

I also held it up to the light so you can see how sheer it is in some places, though it didn’t show up very well:

Next, a really cool, modern-looking geometric pattern in silk:

Some chrysanthemums. You can really see the similarity to the backgrounds I made here by the placement of the leaves in a flowing pattern.

These were the other fabrics in the box that I had completely forgotten about. Some cotton fabrics with other traditional designs. I believe the blue fabric with the morning glory design was given to me by my Great-Aunt in Japan. She made it herself with indigo and the katazome method of dying fabric. My aunt gave us the other fabrics.

The rest are some remnants from some really cute fabrics that my mom bought in Japan probably in the 80s. I love the pink and yellow strawberry patterned ones.

So I’m not sure what to do with all this fabric! I’ve decided to just make stuff out of most of it (except the Katazome fabric, which I plan to display someday) and keep some of it as an heirloom. They’re all remnants, so I can’t really make anything serious out of them. I’ll be posting the results here if I ever figure out what to do with them. Any ideas? So far I’m thinking of making some stuff with purse frames.

Nagi Noda, (1973-2008) was an artist whose career I used to watch. Unfortunately I didn’t find out about her death until a couple of months ago, as she’s not particularly well known outside of Japan and the music video industry. She was best known for directing music videos for popular J-pop artists like Yuki, Tiga, and Ogiyihagi, as well as doing design work for Laforet, Nike, Hikaru Utada, Suntory, etc.

Her works had a sort of dark humor to them that often referenced their commercial nature by taking it to its extreme. The best example of this is probably a short film she made in 2003 called “Francfranc: a Small Love Story About Alex and Juliet” (Francfranc is a small Japanese chain selling stylish home goods). Rather than a romance between two people, the lovers are the commercial objects themselves: two bug-eyed mugs in a holiday-decorated store wonderland. Even the actors are bizzarely beautifully dressed runway model types. You can see it here:

Another of my Nagi Noda favorites is Yuki’s “Sentimental Journey” video. It’s a physical stop-motion scene involving hundreds of actresses, and shot completely in one take. Coca Cola liked the idea so much that they had her recreate it for them as well. It is somewhat reminiscent of the strange, playful charm of Michel Gondry (think of his video “Sugar Water” for Cibo Matto), with whom she was friends with. Here’s the video:

Her other notable works include the well known “Poodle Exercise” video, in which an “ex-fat-girl” speaks motivationally in a fitness video with human sized poodles, the “Horror Cafe” exhibition, with a supporting cast of coffin-clad people, her “hair hats,” hats made of hair shaped into animals and other bizzare shapes, a fashion line she collaborated on with Mark Ryden called “Broken Label,” and the popular Han Panda character.

Sadly she died in September of 2008 from injuries sustained in a car accident. According to the agency through which she worked, she passed away “in her Mark Ryden dress, Chanel boots, perfect make-up with Viktor & Rolf lace black eye lashes.” In a strange coincidence, her Han Panda exhibit takes on a fitting tribute to her death:

See more of Nagi Noda’s work …
Official Website
Poodle Fitness Video,
Monoprix Vegetables, Monoprix Jungle, Monoprix Mascara
Broken Label
Excerpt from Women of Design, Women of Design
Meg’s Precious Video
Giant Han Panda Exhibit
LG The Power of Steam
Interview- starting 7:00