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Buy the book "Cats Who Quilt." Buy your cat the "Certificate of Membership in the League of Cat Quilters." Make your cat very happy. Buy other stuff too, like some of the other cat quilt pattern books featured on this Web site. 
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World's Biggest Cat Quilt Pattern Database. Find cat quilting patterns in this "shareware" directory of cat patterns around the world. 
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Proof that all our needlework projects come from a higher source. 
Is there a special guy in your life who helps run your quilting Web site, who drives you to fabric stores, who humors you with "Honey, but that quilt looks lovely!" when you're too embarrassed to pull it out of the closet? Honor your special guy here in our special feature Quilt Guy of the Month! 
Looking for information on how to use a sewing machine with a blow stick or help for quilting if your eyesight is failing? Here's some help. 
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How to Print Photos on Silk in Your Inkjet Printer
It's the Piece d' Resistance! It's the Ultimate! You Gotta Try This! Bubble Jet Set works great for printing photos on muslin. June Taylor fabric sheets are also swell for printing on cotton. But the ultimate, the absolute grandest way in which to print photos on fabric is to print them on silk. Yes, silk! Oooh, silk! For years I yearned to print on silk. I can't tell you how much silk I wasted trying to feed it through various printers. The results were not just horrible, they were agonizing. Smeared pictures. Dripping ink. Freezer paper and silk that refused to get it on together. What a mess. 
I was skeptical when I finally spotted the "inkjet silk printing kits" available through the Dharma Trading Co. catalog (www.dharmatrading.com) and at Jacquard Products (www.jacquardproducts.com). They can't work! I scoffed.
But they do. And photos, when printed on silk, are beautiful, extraordinary. They are as vivid as the original picture. This is the best--the very classiest way to print photos on fabric for use in a memory quilt. This is also the best way for printing any sort of art on fabric for use in embroidery. It's a Craft Project That Might Intimidate Martha... You should be warned. Printing on silk demands a few steps that might give you pause. You need to assemble a make-shift silk steamer, if you don't happen to have a silk steamer laying around. The silk printing kits available from Dharma include directions (with pictures!) for assembling a home-made steamer from coffee cups, a big stew kettle, and a pile of beach towels. In brief, and I don't want to get into too much detail because the book that Dharma sends you is excellent and it does include--pictures!--but once you print on the specially-treated silk, you peel off it's paper backing, and then you steam it for an hour. In order to steam the silk you must first roll it up in a special way in colorless butcher or art paper and tie it with a rubber band (not tape which will attract water). To create your steamer you place mugs upside down on the bottle of a big canning kettle, pour water into the kettle and place a disk cut out of foil on top the mugs so that the silk won't get wet. On top of the foil you place your paper-rolled silk. You place on top of that more foil and the beachtowels. Finally you put the lid on the kettle and turn the heat up high so that the water boils hard for at least an hour. After this you unroll the silk from the paper and dunk it in a special fixitiv, usually Synthropol. Synthropol comes with warnings--enough to make you reluctant to use it (gloves, goggles, fresh air needed during use). But I guarantee you that you'll have no qualm about using it because by the time you get past the part in which you assemble your own silk steamer you'll already feel like a survivor. But It's Worth It! Too say that I was skeptical all the while I listened to the kettle on my stove rumble and hiss as I steamed my first piece of silk would be an understatement. But when I finally unrolled the fabric from the paper I couldn't believe my eyes. It was beautiful. Exquisite. I don't think I'll ever print on fabric any other way again. And one of these days I may just buy a silk steamer too. Dharma Trading Company P.O. Box 150916 San Rafael, California 94915 800/542-5227 www.dharmatrading.com Jacquard Products Rupert, Gibbon & Spider P.O. Box 425 Healdsburg, California 95448 800/442-0455 www.jacquardproducts.com 
Tip! Say you want to scan someone's wedding invitation or certificate and print it on fabric, just like in the wedding quilt pictured, the best way to do that would be to print it on silk. Only silk will let you print the fine lines and vivid details found in things like invitations. Where can you buy these wedding certificates? you may be asking. (Lots of folks e-mail me with this question.) You can buy them at Valerie's. Photos by Joni Prittie  Cats Who Quilt is a trademark of Fruitful Plains. Text on this Web site Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Judy Heim. May not be reproduced in any form--in either e-mail messages or on Web sites without written permission. All illustrations are copyright 2000, 2001, and 2002 Irina Borisova. They may not be reproduced without permission. Photos and quilts are copyrighted by their respective artists, and may not be reproduced without their permission. |