NIKE AIR's a pro

Too much time on my hands while waiting to leave for the airport so I thought I would post the moon (NIKE-AIR) jacket I'm working on to take with me that some of you might not have seen yet. I posted it on CWB workshop when it wasn't stitched. Now it has only two more patches to stitch I will be doing that in Japan. Below is a brief history of the jacket....Enjoy

My son found this designer jacket at a thrift shop. Yes my children shop there too! My son is a designer label freak even in the thrift shops. He said "Mom I got you a really good NIKE AIR jacket". It's shower proof and it's my size uh! It's a really good jacket, but I've never once warn it. It has 3 NIKE AIR logos starring at me on the face, but I do need a light weight jacket to take to Japan and this would be perfect for it. As you can see I covered the logos up with some boro cloths. What I have to do now is to stitch them all down. I'm more than happy with the jacket now and will proudly wear it on my trip. Thanks son, you do have good taste!

 I'm off now. Have a great Spring everyone....Nat

Boro Cloth and Family Time

We had DGD and DIL with us this last week so not much blog visiting lately. Our DS and his family lives 8 hours drive away from us so we don't get to see them too often except on Skype. It was lovely to spend time with them. We went to the beach on Saturday which was a very nice day out together. Too cold for a swim but not too cold to dip your toes in the water. One day I took them to my favorite place, yes you guess right, Ziguzagu! It's never too early to introduce DGD to fabric!

I have finally completed the Sashiko motive on my BORO cloth. It looks great on the worn piece of indigo fabric. It's so satisfying giving a new life to an old cloth.  

An indigo piece I got from Glennis D0lce  is now stitched. A lot of stitching for a small piece but I really enjoyed it and it lifted the whole cloth so much with those tiny stitches. 

The moon is shining on BORO cloth! I decided to use blue and white threads on this piece. It's a lopsided moon because that was how it turned out in the dye bath.  

This is how my BORO cloth looks with more stitching on it. I just love working on this cloth. There is no quarter inch to worry about! What I love best is the freedom of stitches I can create as I move from one patch to the next. The true BORO cloth only has straight stitching, but that is no fun when you can just do curves and circles so I decided to do the latter. 

DIL and I had a few stitching sessions together in the evening after DGD went to bed. DIL got herself  some vintage kimono pieces at Ziguzagu to make her very own BORO cloth. She only found the green, red and white and the gray piece. The rest of her pieces were from my box and the indigo piece was from the indigo dyeing we did together one day. She wants this piece for her bedroom wall.

I have been dyeing using Procion dye powder in indigo shade. The purple/blue ones had been over dyed. It is silk thread and I wasn't happy with the dyeing the first time so I dipped it in indigo dye and I'm now happy with it. The white ball on the right is linen that I got from Camberwell market on Sunday and the dark tan spool is also linen. All of them are best for hand stitching on BORO cloth. 

Original BORO cloth hanging at Ziguzagu. It was a duvet cover. Very well used and loved. Lots of torn pieces and stitching. I forgot to see how old it is, but it cost $285. I didn't get it, but from what I have seen on the internet, $285 is a bargain.  

Some photos to share. DGD at Ziguzagu and the beach. She might be too small for some displays, but she had a ball getting into remnants tubs. She checked out indigo fabric and I think she likes them best, surprise surprise. The day at the beach was a treasure. Mr NJN takes the opportunity to have a cat nap!

boro cloth

Everyone in the CWB workshop has inspired me so much with their work that I've dug out my blocks that I did in cloth to cloth workshop last year. I've pieced 4 blocks with a similar color and method, but when the class ended the 4 blocks remained untouched. After seeing everyone putting their work together, I really wanted to put these into a quilt, table top or something.

I just lay the blocks down without stitching together. Hope idea comes to me after a couple of days! Does it do that to you too?

These are the individual blocks. The green and orange pieces are there as fillers. The circles were the cut-outs pieces from the blocks. How do I put these blocks together! 

Enjoy

Nat

boro ball tutorial takes I

After I posted about BORO ball here. Hermila (no blog) from my online workshop asked me if I have a tutorial on how to cover Styrofoam balls.  I don't have instructions for them. Even though I made hundreds of them for school fates many years ago. I mainly made them in Christmas colours then. So here goes my version of the tutorial. It was fun thinking of step by step instructions and taking some photos for each step. Of course if you don't understand anything just leave your questions in your comments. 

Styrofoam balls come in many sizes, but today I will use the 3" diameter ball. It's an easy size to work with. You will need a few pieces of your scrap fabric. I'm using six different pieces of vintage BORO fabric here. You will need a Stanley knife, pen and ruler.

On every Styrofoam ball there will be a line around it. It's a manufacturers line. From that line use the pen and draw over it as you can see above.

You can divide the ball into six or eight segments. Today I will only do six because I want to use the indigo moon fabric I dyed as one of the segments. Divide the ball into six sections by eyeballing it. It's okay if you make mistakes, just start practicing until you get it.  The ball will be covered with fabric afterward. Using the knife cut along the draw lines about 1/3" deep. Be careful not to cut yourself doing this.

This is the template for the fabric. Using the template cut one piece from each piece of your fabric. You can use three pieces of fabric and alternate them, but I'm using six today. The template is about 1/4" bigger than the segment all around. 

Place the first piece of fabric over the section. Pin on the top and bottom of the ball. Using the back of the knife push the fabric into the slit you made on the ball. Start a little section at the time. You would be surprised how easy it is. 

The first section is now covered. Do the same to the rest of the segments. You can be creative with the placing of the fabric. 

All the six sections are now covered. Not too hard right. 

Using any braid or cord to cover the joints. I used handmade cord to match the fabric. You will need about 1/2 meter of cord to go around the ball. To start off with, pin the end of the cord and just follow the lines. You might need another pin at the bottom of the ball to keep the cord in place. 

You can use the left over cord to make a hanging for the ball. You can see that there is no sewing, no glue and no mess. For decoration you can go back and add more fabric or stitches on top. See below. 

This ball was done with eight segments. I added another diagonal piece over the plain fabric. You can try more contrasting colour or use ribbon. 

I hope to see some of these balls pop on your blogs in the near future. 

boro purse

Another project I worked on was this long neglected netting bag I started when I was more into basket weaving years ago. The technique is not weaving but it's netting, like fishing net. The first couple of inches on the top was made using cordyline leaf striped thinly and twined into string.

When I finally found it again for the life of me I couldn't face doing that no more. It was a lot of twining! I found a ready made twine to use for the rest of the bag. The original design had changed by this time. I couldn't remember what I was making then, just one of those things you like to learn how to do. I thought I could attach some weaving to the base to give it a boro looks.  I really like it now. It's an original design. It has a long handle to go across my shoulders while I'm traveling. 

My next project is weaving a beast. On my lunch break today I picked up an adorable teddy bear made from hessian sack at my local thrift shop. It's a perfect beast to weave over.


Enjoy
Nat