Our precious evil gassy kitty turned 16 on Valentine’s Day! Now she wants her driver’s license.
She had her old-lady visit to the vet just before her birthday, and she’s hyperthyroid. Fortunately, her kidneys still seem fine for now, and she’s quite crabbily taking her new medication and quite happily eating everything in sight to gain back the weight she’d lost.
Ever the entertainer, Sorcha recently learned a new trick. Well, maybe it’s her only “trick,” unless you count impersonating a lunch lady. She generally does this from her spot at the dinner table, in exchange for cheese.
Sorcha sez: THE STUPID HUMANS FINALLY LEARNED THEIR FIRST TRICK. I CAN NOW GET THEM TO GIVE ME CHEESE WHENEVER I SIGNAL THEM WITH A HIGH 5. ACTUALLY? IT’S A HIGH FOUR? BECAUSE THEY SURGICALLY REMOVED MY THUMBS BECAUSE THEY FOUND ME THREATENING. THEY’RE SO STUPID… LIKE THE LACK OF THUMBS IS GOING TO STOP ME!
Now that I need to go into full production mode for the Craft-o-rama, I’ve been researching good ways to do image transfers onto fabric. I’ve got some great 1937 Liberty magazines (some of the covers can be seen here) and I would love to use the graphics on purses or totes.
I’ve been looking for a method that is fairly inexpensive, fairly non-toxic, and will look and feel as though it is part of the final fabric (as opposed to looking like a rubbery iron-on). Washability would be a plus, though it’s of a lower priority since the final product will probably have plenty of other elements that are not washable. I want to do color images, and I have an inkjet printer.
Thimble discusses some techniques here and here, and also linked to this page of tutorials. So, after reading through it all, and with my brain spinning and fizzing, off I went to shop. At my local Joann I found yet another method to try in addition to the ones listed. So… here is my attempt to compare, contrast, and document the various methods.
Step 1: Ready the materials. I got some plain white cotton fabric and laundered it. Also choose an image. For me, this was pretty easy — I had the Liberty magazine cover I wanted to use.
The not-so-easy part was cropping it down using Photoshop, so Step 1 also includes swearing at the computer, swearing at Sorcha when she tries to help, and then swearing at the color printer when it refuses to print nicely. Step 1h involves removing the ink jet cartridge a few times and cleaning it. 1q is to very nearly give up, weigh the options of a good stiff drink vs. driving to local copy center, then ultimately doing neither and switching from the big fancy printer/copier to a smaller cheesier printer and finally getting decent results. When printed, the image is about 3″ across:
The Methods: (drumroll, please)
1) Blender pen. Despite knowing my way around an art store fairly well, I had no idea what one of these was. I asked the nice person at my local art place, and she pointed me toward a Prismacolor blender pen in with the fancy markers. I purchased it for $1.98. Thimble’s tutorial mentioned copies or laser printouts of the image, and this tutorial mentions photocopies, so part of this experiment was to find out whether a color inkjet printout would work.
Results: Not even enough of an image to be able to photograph. I felt like I was burnishing the hell out of the thing, but only got some faint streaks. I tried with text printed in black ink, with the same results. Then I fished various photocopies and other papers out of recycling and tried that. Nothin’. Maybe it’s my blender pen brand?
Verdict: Well, a tiny investment anyhow, and I’ll experiment with using the blender pen for its intended purpose instead. If anyone ever enlightens me as to its intended purpose, that is. Oh, and the smell is chemical-y but not so bad. Then again, the cat took a while before she regained consciousness (not entirely a bad thing).
2) PrintWorks brand t-shirt transfers. I purchased these at Target for $7.99 for 6 sheets. According to the package, there’s a “premium” version for best photo reproduction, but I didn’t see those at the store. Also according to the package, the “new transfer technology” gives a “softer, natural feel”. We shall find out….
Results: This was a fairly lengthy & involved process as the ink had to dry for half an hour before ironing the image to the fabric. Then the ironing had to be done for two minutes on a hard surface — I felt as though I was burnishing with the iron.
Verdict: Results were vivid, but I wouldn’t exactly call it “soft” or “natural” — definitely rubbery.
3) Pellon Wonder Under Regular Weight Paper-backed Fusible Web. I found this at Joann for $4.99 for 2 yards (17″ wide). The package says the resulting fabric maintains a soft hand after fusing. The intended use is to bond two fabrics together, as an applique. However, this tutorial says you can just feed it through your inkjet printer and print directly on to it, and that the resulting fabric feels like suede. (It amazes me what people are willing to feed through their printers!)
Note: I also found another brand of what appears to be similar stuff — HTCW Trans-Web, “The Easiest Way to Transform Ordinary Fabrics into Iron-On Fabrics.” It was $4.99 for less than half the size of the Wonder Under — 16″ by 36″. According to the labels, both are 100% polyamide on a paper backing. Since they appear to be pretty much the same, I didn’t test the HTCW in the Great Image Transfer Experiment.
Results: Since it comes in a very big sheet, I had to verrry carefully trim a piece to 8.5 x 11. Despite some threatening noises from my printer, it pulled through just fine. The image original looked a lot more faded than the PrintWorks transfer. I managed to smudge it a little despite my efforts not to touch it until it had a chance to dry. Of course, a certain someone couldn’t resist the temptation to see if it was dry yet…
Since the tutorial didn’t give much information in the way of the actual ironing-on process, I followed the package directions and winged it when they didn’t apply (i.e., the package directions were to adhere 2 fabric layers). First I put the image side down on the fabric, then covered it all with another cloth, misted that with water, and ironed. Once I tried to remove the paper backing, it stuck fairly firmly to the image and a lot of the color seemed to peel away with the paper.
So I also tried an experiment — since the sticky stuff was easy to separate from the backing prior to ironing, I did another try where I did one layer as above and then added a second layer by peeling off the paper, carefully lining up the 2nd image over the first, covering the whole thing with a layer of parchment paper, and then ironing. This resulted in softer edges but more vivid colors. In the next photo, you can see the doubled-up image on the left, the single image in the middle, and the PrintWorks iron-on on the right.
Verdict: With the resulting image being semi-transparent and ethereal-looking, I can see using this technique for layering or fabric collage, or maybe for other uses where a faded image is desired. Also, rather than feeling like leather, I think the final product just feels like there’s old glue stuck to the fabric, and it’s got a bit of a shine too.
4) Blumenthal Craft Crafter’s Images PhotoFabric: Paper-backed fabric for use with inkjet printers. Yes, this is actually fabric you feed right through your printer, much like in this freezer paper technique. I bought it at Joann for $12.99 for a package of 6 sheets. Joann carried 3 different weights/fabrics: cotton poplin, canvas, or silk. After much debate, I chose the poplin and canvas but not the silk, due to the high price and my intended use in totes/purses.
Results: This fed through my printer just fine, and the colors were vivid. After printing, you let the image dry, iron it, and then peel off the paper backing. The paper came off easily from the canvas, but was pretty stubborn on the poplin and I had to peel little bits of it off. The directions then say to rinse the fabric “until the water runs clear”. The rinse helped get the last bits of paper off the poplin, but the water was clear from the start. I thought I might see some inks running, and it did look as though my fingers got a little ink on them, but the image on the fabric seemed fine. Finally I ironed the damp fabrics until they were dry. As an experiment, I put some white cotton over the damp image and ironed it to see if any ink came off, but none did.
The fabrics are unhemmed, of course, so there were some stray threads even when I first pulled the fabric out of the package. I pulled these off so they wouldn’t wind up in the printer.
Verdict: This is the clear winner — the only method I tried where the fabric surface wasn’t altered by the technique. The canvas (pictured below on the left) was a little too coarse for this size image, but the poplin (right) is perfect. And it required less fussing around than the iron-on transfer.
It’s essentially the same process as the freezer paper tutorial, but without messing around with fusing the freezer paper to the fabric. On the other hand, using freezer paper would be much less expensive and would allow you to use whatever fabric you wanted, instead of being limited to the kinds offered. I did happen to pick up some freezer paper on my shopping trip today… but that will have to wait for the Great Image Transfer Experiment Part Deux!
If you’re interested, more photos of the results can be seen here.
Sorcha sez: THAT STINKIN’ BOY SCOUT GETS NATIONAL COVERAGE AND HE WAS ONLY MISSING FOR FOUR DAYS! I WAS GONE FOR 3 WEEKS AND I GET NOTHING! AND HE’S NOT EVEN CUTE LIKE ME!
Now that Sorcha’s back, I suddenly feel creative again. I did absolutely no knitting or anything else creative for the three weeks she was gone. The day after we found her, I had an urge to knit. A return to normalcy, perhaps, or she really is my muse. I don’t know about difficult times being fodder for creativity — I think that’s a load of crap. My brain shuts down when I’m depressed.
My colleague and I want to have a table at the No Coast Craft-o-Rama this winter. I have sooo many ideas for things to make. It’s always been strange to me that the typical self-help-type book or article has been about how to enhance your creativity or spark new ideas. That’s never been a problem for me — instead it’s finding the time and/or money to make all the things that are just ideas in my head. Here are a few:
-Aprons
-Totes/carriers/pouches/knitting needle holders featuring some of the images from my vintage knitting magazine collection
-bracelets featuring the above
-flowers in vintage kimono fabrics with vintage button centers
-felted coin purses or luggage tags
-wrist warmers
When I’m thinking about producing something to sell, there’s an interesting tension between making things that I really enjoy but are time-intensive (beaded items, knitted/felted items) and making things for the sake of getting enough stuff together so that the table doesn’t look empty, while balancing appeal and expense… I know this is the classic struggle for someone trying to make a living from their art, and now I get to experience it myself. Lucky me, I’m an artist!
Spitfire Sorcha, the miracle kitty. That’s how I’m thinking of her these days. The vet says she’s fine, and couldn’t believe she’s 14.
She’s been telling all sorts of stories about where she was and what she did:
ME AND JIP-JIP? JIP-JIP THE PERVERT CLOWN? WE WENT TO SEE CONDI. WE HEARD SHE WAS IN A PING-PONG TOURNAMENT.
It gets a little muddled here, but so far we’ve determined that Sorcha won the ping-pong tournament, that she got to wear a little pair of specially-tailored pants as a result, that her trophy is being shipped, that she and Jip-Jip had a falling out, and that she had to work on cars to earn money to find her way home again (and that’s why she was under a car when we found her).
I couldn’t bring myself to write about it because it was just too sad. But it has a happy ending, so now I can. Sorry if this spoils the ending for you, but hopefully that’s true only for fiction or movies. Things that really happened to real people with real emotions can be too painful to bear if you don’t know ahead of time how it ends. This one ends happily, miraculously.
Sorcha disappeared. Our little beloved monster-kitty, my muse, our little Nurse Ratchit, escaped from the house unnoticed on Sunday, May 22nd, when we weren’t home and The Boy was. We apparently had not yet managed to instill the requisite level of paranoia in him when it comes to being around a tiny old kitty who likes to sneak outdoors.
At the time, we were driving home from California. While this sounds like a fun road trip, and we tried to make it one, the reason for it was that SweetyBabe had been out there taking care of her sick mom. Her mom had stabilized enough so that SweetyBabe was finally able to come home, pretend that life was normal, and see Sorcha.
We were somewhere around the Nebraska/Iowa border on Monday the 23rd when the cell phone rang. It was The Boy. He hadn’t seen her since the previous morning.
The rest of the trip and that day was a blur. I think we averaged about 90 mph through the rest of Iowa and Minnesota to home. Meanwhile we sent The Boy out door-to-door with fliers advertising a lost kitty. We got home and started trekking up and down the streets, posting more fliers. We dragged a mattress onto the sun porch so we could sleep out there, and left the door opened a crack so she could come in during the night.
Over the next few days, we kept replacing posters that had blown down. We had some bad thunderstorms and couldn’t help wondering where she was and whether she was scared. We’d go out with our flashlights at night and hope to see eyes reflecting back at us from under a bush somewhere. We’d stop near garages and listen for her meow. We kept trying not to imagine the worst. As more days went by, it was harder not to.
We grieved. We had episodes of all-out gut-wrenching sobbing.
We still would take an extra drive around the block on the way home, looking in windows and back yards. We kept checking the local shelters. We looked at lists of descriptions of animals who were dead on arrival. We looked through cages of other kitties who were homeless or lost, none of them Sorcha.
It felt like one long day. It was actually three weeks. It became harder to convince each other that there was still any hope. I would cling to little superstitions. One morning I found a 4-leaf clover. I let myself believe that maybe it really was luck, that maybe she’d find her way home that day. When she didn’t, I bawled.
One night we came home and there was a phone message. Someone said they thought they might have spotted our lost kitty, and left a phone number. It was 12:30 in the morning, so I thought I’d better not call her back just then. But I couldn’t just go to sleep, so I did a reverse lookup for her phone number on the Internet. She lived a few blocks west of us. That didn’t mean she’d necessarily seen this kitty, if it was even Sorcha, near her home. But we couldn’t sleep after that, so we got up and got out the flashlights and started walking again in that area. We went up one street and down the next, calling. We stopped to regroup and decide which alleys to look in. We shone our flashlights under a nearby car. Something was under there. Something small with glowing eyes.
I approached cautiously. It was frightened. But it came out meowing when I called the name “Sorcha.”
It was her. She was a little crunchy feather, skin and bones and dirt. But it was her. It had been three weeks to the day since she disappeared. Our crunchy little monster is home again.
Okay, so I let things go for a while. Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging about life, not to mention learning how to upgrade to WordPress 1.5 and how to make one’s blog look like all those other cool blogs. But have no fear, future readers of Sassygoat! The bleat goes on, and the knitting content has been building up in my head if not on my blog. And of course, Sorcha has been providing ideas for content all along –NO, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG! YOU SHOULD BE WRITING ABOUT THE HUMBOLDT FROG WE ATE LAST NIGHT! — Sorry, Sorcha, that was Humboldt Fog, and it was chevre, not an amphibian. That would be goat cheese.
And oohhhmygosh, SweetyBabe and I did some fantastic estate sale shopping this weekend! Fock! (We also watched “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster” and loved the way their drummer Lars Ulrich sounded when he swore.) After Saturday’s estate sale purchases, I got her to make the ultimate pronouncement: “You’re right; you’re always right.” That was in response to my purchase of some vintage knitting patterns, once she saw how highly they were valued on eBay. For all of SweetyBabe’s luscious scrumptious intelligence, she cannot comprehend the obsession that is knitting. I did my best to try to explain it to her, but I think she still remains skeptical. In doing further research today, though, I found some very interesting numbers:
Fock!
This morning, while lazing about avoiding getting out of bed, I heard a new Tori Amos song from a soon-to-be-released album, Beekeeper. The single is “Sleeps with Butterflies.” SweetyBabe was still fast asleep, but Sorcha, who was wedged between us as usual, said “THAT SOUNDS DELICIOUS.” I took a closer listen and heard:
flies… with butter
flies… with butter
