Spring, New Fabric for Mom and Make And Decorate Podcast

Spring has been nice and long here in western Mass. The grass is just starting to grow - it isn't long enough to put the sheep on it yet but it will be within a couple weeks. We will need to get the temporary fences set up which is a job. The Farmer isn't very steady on his legs yet -- that will take having the second hip replaced. We are hoping we can find some help with that project -- someone who doesn't mind the ticks that are ravenous this time of year. Yuk. 

I have been working on a project for Mom. She wants to recover her porch furniture and wanted to use one of my fabric designs. Because I can, I designed 4 new colorways for her of my Bird and Flower Pattern - all the while thinking about Mom's lovely screened in porch and the many hours we have spent there together as a family. I designed 4 colorways - light green, brown, leaf green and gold - and then resized the pattern 4 times so that she can pick the colorway and scale she needs for her particular cushions on her couch. 

I have sent the fabric off and I look forward to hearing her choice. I like them all and I think she will be happy with one of them. Once she decides, I will re-do the computer files and order the fabric for her at Spoonflower. I will also put the pattern up for sale in my Spoonflower shop. 

As you can see, Henry had to get into the photo action as cats are bound to do. We have a litter of kittens due soon and we are hoping that Henry is the dad to some of them. He has such a great personality and is a beautiful boy so fingers crossed he did his job. Unlike some male cats I have had, he hasn't been marking territory. I will get him neutered but want to see the type of babies he fathers. He came from an island in Maine so it is good to have some new blood. Like with our sheep, the male is half the progeny. 

Lastly, I want to let you all know that I am on a podcast hosted by Stephanie Socha called Make and Decorate. I taped the interview several weeks ago and it is now available to listen to. Stephanie started her podcast not that long ago and she is such a fun chat. She is a very enthusiastic conversationalist with lots of different interests that we had in common. Stephanie has been an interior decorator for several years, quilts, crochets, sews and hails from the midwest. We talked about all kinds of fun things including quilting, color, fabric, pattern and more. Have a listen here. 

I listen to podcasts a lot while I work on my ceramics and sew. I use the app on my phone or ipad called Stitcher although there are many options for listening including on a browser. There is so much to learn out there. Click here to listen to my interview on Make and Decorate. 

Have a great week everyone!

Creative Retreat #1 of 2018 - Fabric Printing, Crewel Embroidery - Day One

This past weekend I had the first creative retreat of 2018 here at Leyden Glen Farm. If you read yesterday’s post, you know that The Farmer had his hip replaced a couple weeks ago. The surgery came up rather quickly — his hip was in such bad shape and he was in such pain that they worked him into the surgery schedule earlier than they normally do. This of course was after I had scheduled the 2018 retreats so I had no clue that I would be dealing with an ailing husband, trying to run the sheep farm, and holding creative retreats all at the same time. Luckily I have had a lot of help from friends, family and neighbors and somehow most of the sheep have survived (darn coyotes), the house and studio were cleaned and polished, and the students had a good time. 

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The first day of the Creative Retreat, we did Fabric Stamping and Crewel Embroidery. I don’t have a lot of photos from the day - unfortunately. I think I was just so exhausted that I forgot to take step by steps of everyone working. There were five students but unfortunately I forgot to snap a photo of Maureen's printing. 

In the afternoon, we added Crewel Embroidery to the printed fabrics. I forgot to take photos so I will share my most recent project that I have been working on...... I am adding Crewel Embroidery to this handprinted fabric.

More photos tomorrow. 

Webs Tomorrow + Kim using my Mod Suzani Fabric on a Very Cool Chair

Tomorrow I will be at Webs in Northampton from 2 to 4 doing a "Book Event" for my new book Crafting A Patterned Home. I will have many of the projects from the book with me and will answer questions and share some of the techniques I have used in the book. You can sign up here but please - if you want to come and cannot figure out how to sign up - come anyway. I would love to meet you. So far, there haven't been many folks signed up. It is a tough time of year for an event with all the graduations and family things going on. But I will be there with bells on! Here is the link.

A couple of years ago, my friend Lucy introduced me to Kim and Bill Chagnon who run an upholstery business in Greenfield. Not only do they do upholstery but they also have an on-line teaching website called Kim's Upholstery. Kim is a creative dynamo and Bill is behind the scenes making the videos and more all run as smoothly as possible. They have so many fantastic videos on their YouTube channel here. They also have a Membership site to teach upholstery to anyone who wants to learn. Kim also travels the USA teaching upholstery at different locations. 

Kim and Bill are building a Community of Upholsterers and Wanna Be Upholsterers. I was fortunate to be asked to be on one of their Facebook Live videos where I demonstrated fabric printing. It was lots of fun. 

Now - I have the thrill of watching Kim upholster a beautiful chair with my Mod Suzani Linen/Cotton Fabric in the Orange colorway which you can see in my Spoonflower shop here. She painted the wood base of the chair in a chalk paint from DIY Debbie in hot pink and a second chair in turquoise. The chair is turning out fantastic. Check it out on their YouTube channel. 

I love that I am meeting lots of new people who do interesting things through branching out beyond the world that I am most known in. There are so many great things to learn and share with others and I feel fortunate that I have the platform here on my blog, at the Farmers Markets, and in stores such as Webs to share with others. 

Hope to see some of you tomorrow at Webs! 

Today's Big Adventure - Facebook Live with Kim's Upholstery

My friends Kim and Bill Chagnon have an on-line Upholstery Teaching Site called Kim's Upholstery. They have hundreds of videos on their YouTube site and 44,000 subscribers! Their on-line teaching site trains people to do upholstery themselves and to build a business. 

Kim and Bill are also professional upholsterers. I met them a few years ago through our mutual friend potter Lucy Fagella. Kim and I were in an evening pottery class together for one session. When I was working on my new book, I hired Kim to make a slipcover out of fabric I designed. This is the chair she covered for me in my yellow Bloomsbury inspired roses and diamonds linen/cotton that is also available on my Spoonflower shop here. 

I also hired Kim and Bill to recover my favorite chair with the fabric that I hand-stamped with a paisley design. That chair is on the cover of my new book Crafting A Patterned Home which you can buy on my website here. They delivered the chair the day of the photoshoot - I love the way it turned out. And Kim and Bill were so thrilled that their work was on the cover of the book. 

Kim and Bill are always looking for promotional ideas. They have so much energy and so many ideas. They are such a team. Kim is the Creative person and teaching personality. Bill is the behind the scenes person - he films all the videos, does all the editing and website stuff. He is amazing. If I had a Bill I could produce so much more but alas, I have a Farmer who has sheep and is too busy to help me with anything. 

Kim and Bill have always been trying to get me to promote my business but the time was not quite right. Now with the launch of my new book Crafting A Patterned Home I agreed to film a Facebook Live demo for them. This is the first time I have done a Facebook Live event and it was a lot of fun. I demonstrated how I printed the fabric for the chair that Kim and Bill upholstered for the cover of the book. 

Today at 12:30 we went live. It was a dicey day - on my way to their studio, my brakes started spewing black smoke and smelling really awful. I drove slow and made it there just in time to go live. It was fun seeing the questions that would pop up on the screen that Bill and Kim read. People popped in and out of the live feed. Kim told me that lots of folks watch their FB Live posts on their lunch breaks. The cool thing is that at the same time that the FB Live video is being live streamed, they are also capturing video. It is then uploaded to their YouTube channel so that you all can watch it. So - here you go - Kim and Kristin live. It is an hour long and there are some funny parts. It was fun to do and we may cook up some other ideas to help promote the book and promote Kim's great Learn Upholstery subscription website and my new book Crafting A Patterned Home. I'm in guys - just let me know. 

You can follow Kim on Instagram here. You can find her on Facebook here. And you can subscribe to her YouTube channel here. She also teaches on the Craftsy website - a class called a Custom Fit Slipcovers: Couches and Sofas. Thanks so much Kim and Bill for giving me this opportunity. 

You can still order signed copies of Crafting A Patterned Home on my website. I'll throw in free shipping and some free goodies. Thanks so much for your support. And welcome to those new to the blog. I hope you find it interesting and fun. 

Winter Work - New Fabric Designs from Kristin Nicholas with Spoonflower

I'm not sure if you noticed but I was a bit absent from this blog during the winter months. The reason for that was that I was trying to better my skills by really working on surface pattern design using my MacBook Pro, Adobe Illustrator and Procreate (on an iPad). It was super time consuming with hours spent looking at my computer screen. I made a lot of patterns and now I feel much more confident that I can design more surface patterns in the future. 

So here is the cool thing - at least I think it is cool. You all know about my new book Crafting A Patterned Home. It is packed with 35 projects that you can make yourself. Techniques include painting, fabric printing, stamping, knitting, crochet, sewing, ceramics and embroidery. There are a whole mess of projects that feature fabric printing with blocks. 

I am realistic and I know that not everyone is going want to spend time printing fabric themselves but they also might the look of hand printed and handpainted fabric. During the winter months I translated many of the hand printed fabrics into digital files. It took a whole mess of time but I did it. I scanned handprinted images and then brought them into Illustrator and built repeat files.

I uploaded those files to Spoonflower and now all of the designs that are featured in my new book Crafting A Patterned Home are now available as fabric, wallpaper, and gift wrap. There are almost 30 different types of fabric that you can order these designs on. All have been tested to make sure they print correctly.

Many of the handprinted designs translated into digital repeat files

Here is what the collection looks like on their website. 

Spoonflower prints fabrics, wallpaper and gift wrap. Here are a couple of screenshots showing my designs as wallpaper in their "room setting."

This is the handpainted wallpaper that is featured on the cover of the book.

This is the wallpaper version of the fabric featured on the chair in the kitchen.

Spoonflower also has a sister company called Roostery. They will take any of my fabric designs and make them into all kinds of products - table linens, bed sheets, duvet covers, pillows, throw blankets and more. It really is pretty amazing. I can't say that Roostery is very easy to navigate for my surface design patterns. I have to work harder on figuring that out. But here is their version of my block print tablecloth on a cotton sateen fabric. This project was featured in my kitchen and I hand stamped all the cotton canvas fabric. 

It really is amazing what technology is making available to us. If you can figure out the computer programs, etc. 

You can check out all my fabric designs on Spoonflower on my shop here. 
This is the link to only the fabrics from Crafting A Patterned Home. 

If you were to order any of the products, I highly suggest getting a sample piece before committing to lots of yardage. I order a sample of each design to check it before making it for sale. Each fabric or paper will print slightly different. 

Fabulous Creative Retreat - Part One

This past weekend six brave souls arrived at the farm bright and early Saturday morning. The subject of the day was Fabric Printing in the morning. The concept for the afternoon was to embellish the printed fabric with Crewel Embroidery. I taught this same class last year over two days but this year, I decided to condense it into one day.

We start each class with a Meet and Greet on our screened in porch. This gives everyone a chance to tell their Fiber Story and it breaks the ice so we all get to know each other. It is fun to hear each person's Fiber Journey and it also helps me to know where each student is compared to the subject at hand. This weekend I had three new students and three returnees - Julia calls them three-peaters. I feel so fortunate that students like the classes so much that they will travel back to the farm. I also love to see how their skills have changed over the years and feel fortunate that I can be a part of their burgeoning artistic lives. 

After the short Meet and Greet, we headed down to my studio and dove in. Each student came armed with ideas that they might like to translate into a printed fabric. This group barely needed any help deciding upon ideas and motifs. Each student made their own printing stamps. They learned about the different paints I use too. 

We got right into stamping. 

Stephanie has been here before. She came with a motif in mind and we decided that it would make a great block design if it repeated around a central axis. 

Darby was inspired by the coneflowers in her garden. She also came armed with the book How to Be a Wildflower by illustrator Katie Daisy - you can check out her website and Instagram.  

Maureen decided upon paisley and heart motifs.

Ruth is fond of the traditional pomegranate motif. She printed on a natural flax color fabric and it is interesting how the fibers showed through the paint. 

Marji chose a very bold and graphic op-art design that I unfortunately don't have an overall view of. Here is a close-up of her stitching. 

Carol is a Decorative Artist who specializes in painted furniture. She came with a sketchbook full of ideas and printed a graphic design that she is going to heavily decorate with embroidery. 

It was an awesome day and I am so proud of the work that the students accomplished. Here they are - proud as punch. 

My friend Cynthia took the photo of all of us. She kindly did most of the cooking for us and the lunches were fantastic. Too bad I didn't get a photo of the spread. Lamb koftas, chicken, tabbouleh, gazpacho, green salad, homemade hummus, frittatas, homegrown squash and veggies, brownies and bar cookies. I so appreciate her help and support. 

Stop back for more tomorrow to see Day Two - Ceramic Tile Painting! 

Loving Yellow and Some New Embroideries

I can't get enough yellow. I love it in its many shades - sunflower yellow, canary yellow, turmeric yellow, yellow squash, lemon yellow, daffodil yellow, egg yolk yellow. It is so bright and sunny and makes me happy. I've been seeing it being featured more and more in current interior design magazines. 

One of the most famous uses of yellow in interiors is at Giverny.

Love how the yellow room contrasts with Monet's blue kitchen. Heaven. 

And then there is of course Nancy Lancaster's Yellow Room. 

I know most people are rather colorphobic and don't have the nerve to paint an entire room yellow. Using yellow as an accent color is a great way to add some pops of fun color to any space. Like pillows or a bright chair.

I've been working on two new yellow embroidered pieces. They both began as plain yellow linen fabric. I printed the circle and oval designs on the linen with fabric paint and heat set them. These simple shapes are perfect for embellishing with embroidery. 

Here is the first one - Printed with ovals and circles in green, hot pink, and red. My original idea was to fill the circles and ovals with lots of different stitches. When I finished outlining the shapes, I decided that the piece would stand on its own without any more stitching. Now to sew it into something. 

For the second piece, I printed several different sizes of circles in brown. Each circle was decorated with a variety of embroidery stitches in bright colors. This was a really fun project to work on and I'm kind of sorry it is done. 

Here are some close-ups of some of the circles. I used a variety of stitches. 

I may work up another pieces similar to this one. Crewel embroidery is so easy to pick up and put down when I am at the Farmers Market. I much prefer handstitching in the summer than knitting or crochet because of the heat factor. 

These two pieces are samples for my upcoming Fabric Printing and Crewel Embroidery Creative Retreat happening July 29th. There are still a few spaces available for that retreat. More info here.