Encouraged by all the positive comments I’ve received recently about the bow ties I’ve been designing and making (and wearing), and my Spoonflower fabrics, I’ve been diligently working on some new designs these past few days. The first two shown are available for sale now, and the others will follow later this spring.
These are the detailed instructions for sewing any of my Adjustable Bow Ties cut-n-sew fabric designs, available only from Spoonflower. For less than the cost of just one name-brand bow tie at a department store, you can get five ties printed on cotton silk from Spoonflower, designed by me.
Simple sewing instructions are included when you purchase the fabric from Spoonflower (they’re printed right on the fabric), but here you’ll find detailed step-by-step instructions, pictures, and links to suppliers and other helpful information. There’s a link and a QR Code right on the fabric that will bring you to this page.
This is an easy, beginner-level project… I swear you can do it even if you’ve never sewed before!
Each yard of fabric will have five bow ties (as seen here) or more on it. This is my "Five Baroque Ties" pattern. Scroll down for a closeup view of these designs.
I designed these ties a few weeks ago as a cut & sew pattern (ie, all 9 ties appear on one yard of cotton sateen fabric). I’ve received the fabric and made all nine of the bow ties. Here’s what they look like finished:
The polling place is NOW OPEN! Spoonflower’s weekly contest is up, and I am one of 82 artists competing in this week’s “Your Town Toile” contest. (By comparison, last week’s bicycle design contest yielded over 200 entries).
Polls close on March 7th. You can vote for as many entries as you like (but please vote for mine, pictured below). VOTE NOW.
Trailer Trash Toile fabric by the yard, by J. Thomson © 2012 All rights reserved. Available from: http://www.spoonflower.com/collections/14219
Trailer Trash Toile fabric by the yard, by J. Thomson © 2012 All rights reserved. Available from: http://www.spoonflower.com/collections/14219
BANKRUPT is a biting commentary on the state of the world today: “mom and pop shops” are being forced out of business by heartless conglomerates, while American jobs are being sent overseas. Quality of goods and customer service decline as consumers demand ever-lower prices.
Set in a Manhattan Men’s Fine Clothing store, four generations of the Pasquale family and the employees who have depended on them for years prepare to close up shop for good. Read the rest of this entry
New BACON! fabric by J. Thomson now available for sale on Spoonflower
Here are a couple of bow ties I made for myself today (my first ones). They’re insanely easy to make… well, except for turning them inside out. These were made out of some cotton print fabric I had lying around, but I intend to design my own unique prints (from my drawings and artwork) and print them on Spoonflower.com in the future.
Last Friday, at approximately 4:27 am, my water heater decided to commit suicide. As luck would have it, I suffer from occasional insomnia and I happened to be wide awake at my desk which is next to the water heater in my loft. So I heard the telltale dripping and investigated before the deluge got to biblical proportions.
So, instead of spending a relaxing day immersed in artwork and a visit to the Philadelphia Art Museum to see the new Zoe Strauss exhibit, I toiled away at plumbing. This of course is much harder than it sounds… I had to make room to do the work by removing a huge metal legal-size filing cabinet that weighs about the same as a small Volkswagen even when it is emptied of all the files and drawers. Of course, I had help too. I hired some friends of a neighbor to make the connections, but I had to go and buy the replacement water heater, and somehow get it up to my loft by myself. You should’ve seen me trying to wrestle a 40-gallon water heater up the spiral stairs to my loft. But I did it. Never underestimate the will of a poor artist who really likes a long soak in a hot tub.
And now, the weekend is over and I can finally take a hot shower again. I still have to dispose of the body, by which I mean the now superfluous old water heater tank. Which again, is much easier said than done. First, there’s the task of lowering the hulking beast to the ground level. The old one is much too big to go down the spiral stairs. I’ve bought some rope and pulleys and I’m going to construct some sort of rudimentary dumb-waiter for the task. But for now, the carcass is sitting between my desk and the new water heater, in place of my filing cabinet. Like a warning to the new recruit: the proverbial head on a spike. Or like the carcass of a giant dead whale…
But that’s not what this post is about… Read the rest of this entry
Jan 18
This gallery contains 38 photos.
If you browse around the web today, you’re likely to notice something different… blackouts and censored photos in protest of two bills circulating in Congress right now (SOPA and PIPA) that threaten the Internet as we know it. I won’t write about these issues here now (but you can click my “stop censorship” ribbon in [...]
