Pink Chalk Studio » Blog Archive

Auction Season

Feb 10th, 2008 by Kathy

Mr. E’s teacher quilt, posted two years ago, an excellent example of time flying!

The series of posts I did on that quilt get a fair number of Google visitors. I can tell it’s school auction season because I’m starting to get e-mails requesting help. Time for a round up post.

I did four posts about the construction of the quilt above:

Common questions I receive are:

How did you transfer the kid’s artwork onto fabric?

There are 4 choices:

The easiest approach would be to use fabric paint or permanent markers and have the children create the artwork directly on fabric. This could be drawing on the fabric or making prints on the fabric with stamps created by the kids. No post processing required!
Color copying the artwork onto transfer paper that is then ironed on to fabric. I’ve experimented with these products in the past and don’t find them acceptable. Transferring the image takes an extremely hot iron and the results can make you pull your hair out (incomplete transferring of the image). The image is actually a thin layer of plastic that is adhering to the fabric. Not very pretty when viewed closely. It also may not wear well if the quilt is used. You also must deal with mirror imaging any letters.
Bubble Jet Set. This is a wash that you soak the fabric in, let it dry and then print the image onto the fabric using an ink jet printer. The wash makes the ink jet image permanent and washable. Preparing the fabric can be a fair amount of work. I’ve had mixed results using freezer paper as a stabilizer, intermittent jams when the paper separates from the fabric. When I do treat my own fabric I use full Avery label sheets as a stabilizer, these never separate and I can keep my sanity.
Pre-treated fabric sheets. The fabric comes in pre-cut sheets ready to be fed through an ink jet printer. Printed Treasures was used for the Mr. E quilt. I’ve recently been investigating Color Textiles. Several art quilters have recommended their products, their prices are lower than Printed Treasures and they offer a wide variety of fabric types including silk. You’ll pay for the convenience. I designed the size of my images to fit four to a sheet.

How do you print the image onto fabric?

First step is to scan the artwork. Process the scanned image in a tool like Photoshop where the image can be re-sized and the colors made more vibrant. Print the image from the photo processing software. The fabric backed with a stabilizer will feed through the printer.

What type of ink jet printer do you use?

I have an Epson Stylus C88+ printer. I think more important than printer brand is the settings used for printing. For a well saturated image, set the printer options to ‘Best Photo’ and experiment with the Advanced options. Turn the Brightness, Contrast and Saturation levels up so that the image is sharp and clear.

More questions? Leave a comment and I’ll add to this post.

Inspiration Links:

Gerrie Congdon’s auction quilt for her grandchildren’s pre-school. Her eye for color always makes me smile.
Lisa Call’s quilt for her children’s school. She used textile paints with the student’s linoleum print blocks. Brilliant!
Glittergoods Flickr set shows her daughter’s preschool auction quilt in progress. Gorgeous!
Weeks Ringle put together a fabulous thank you quilt for her child’s teacher.
A wonderfully designed auction quilt by Diane of Going to Pieces.
A beautiful comfort quilt constructed by Susan of Wild Onion pattern fame. A great example of going directly to fabric with paint.
Hillary Lang wrote about this kids’ art quilt idea, what an inspiring design!
And finally, here’s a link to my Flickr set of Mr. E’s quilt images.

If you’ve done an auction quilt for your child’s school or teacher, please leave a link in the comments.

2/23/08: Wowza!!! Kathy York’s auction quilt is spectacular! Don’t we all wish we could bid on that one.

2/27/08: Charlene sent me this photo of a quilt she made with a group of 10 year olds for Project Linus. They used Tsukineko inks, the colors are so vibrant!

Posted in Quilting | 18 Comments

18 Responses to “Auction Season”

on 10 Feb 2008 at 4:37 pm1adrienne

Oh wow! Love this! Thanks fora ll the great linkage too!!!
on 10 Feb 2008 at 4:58 pm2Anina

What wonderfully inspirational ideas! We (un)fortunately have long outgrown auction season.
on 10 Feb 2008 at 6:43 pm3Kristin

I have blocks that I haven’t put together yet from our homeschool group. They were done with Fabric markers and with fabric crayons and they look really great. I much prefer to have the artwork directly on the fabric. With both these media the fabric retains the softness which I really like.

I just used the Printed Treasures fabric to print some photos for a mini quilt that I made for Chloe. I thought they came out nice, but a little stiff. I don’t know if photos can ever come out softer, but they do look nice. I need to post some photos of that quilt.
on 10 Feb 2008 at 7:21 pm4Donna

Hi Kathy,
Thank you for the inspiration for me to finally get up and do this sort of quilt for my childrens’ school. I’be been thinking about it for a while but didnt know where to start….so a BIG thank you.

And also I’ve only just noticed you left a lovely comment for me on the pic I posted on flicker of my pencil roll. I’m still new to the whole flicker thing and didn’t realise people could actually comment on pics! I was chuffed to get a comment from you, really chuffed and yes I love the little name tag. I’ve done another one for a little girl which I will post on flicker shortly.

I love your stuff and I look forward to your posts.
Cheers
Donna
on 10 Feb 2008 at 9:31 pm5Rhea

Our second grade class quilt was completed with fabric transfer and photos of each child. We just received $1700 for it at our school auction last week!! My aide took the photos, I sewed, and the children with the help of several parents tied it while streteched on quilt frames.
http://rheahristou.googlepages.com/quilt.JPG/quilt-full;init:.JPG
on 10 Feb 2008 at 9:32 pm6Rhea

Our second grade class quilt was completed with fabric transfer and photos of each child. We just received $1700 for it at our school auction last week!! My aide took the photos, I sewed, and the children with the help of several parents tied it while stretched on quilt frames.
http://rheahristou.googlepages.com/quilt.JPG/quilt-full;init:.JPG
on 11 Feb 2008 at 5:50 am7SewDelish

This is great. I love the look of the whole quilt. A wonderful way to get a child’s family members involved in school projects!
on 11 Feb 2008 at 9:14 pm8Lisa Call

What a fun post!

This year I donated an unopened/unused tent I had lurking in my basement for the auction. It took a lot less time but wasn’t as much fun as making the quilt.
on 11 Feb 2008 at 11:07 pm9Gerrie

Tracked back here to find your link to my auction quilt. I wondered why my stats were up today!! Thanks for the compliment!!
on 12 Feb 2008 at 12:48 am10upstatelisa

Wow! that is your quilt, huh? I was one of those googlers!!! I wanted to make a quilt for my daughter’s teacher and was perusing the internet. It was pretty much the inspiration for this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/upstatelisa/1859129192/
thanks!
on 12 Feb 2008 at 4:41 am11margaret

Kathy
It must be serindipitous that you posted this. I am in the beginning stages of making said quilt for my son’s teacher. I have gone to the extent already to order fabric pens, but I am not sure that this is the easiest approach (or the neatest as they are permanent). Imagine 15 six year olds with 24 permanent pens?!… I’m wondering if you have any fabric pen experiences to share. Or if you have just ironed cotton fabric to freezer paper and printed (does this work worse than your expensive Printed Treasures stuff?
on 12 Feb 2008 at 6:10 am12Day

What inspiration! Also, thank you so much for clearing up all the image transfering options out there - I’ve been experimenting (unsuccessfully!) and thought it was just me. Your quilt is wonderful.
on 12 Feb 2008 at 8:05 am13js4415

Thanks for sharing the tips!!
on 12 Feb 2008 at 8:39 am14Mellissa - wondermommy

Thanks for all of the wonderful information. I’ve been looking for ways to incorporate my children’s artwork.
on 12 Feb 2008 at 10:35 am15Administrator

Margaret: I haven’t done a project with fabric pens. Sounds like you’re doing what I’d do though, backing the cotton fabric with freezer paper to stabilize so the kids can draw on it easily. I have printed on fabric that hasn’t been treated and run it through my ink jet printer. I’ve only done this for wall hanging small arty projects that I don’t anticipate ever washing. The treated cotton (either Printed Treasures or Cotton Textiles) just keeps the ink from running. I tested this out originally and yes the ink just washes out and bleeds all over when you print on un-treated fabric! Have fun with your project!
on 13 Feb 2008 at 12:39 pm16Reina Swan

What a cute quilt, and so creative.
on 13 Feb 2008 at 1:50 pm17Kristin

absolutely love the quilt! Thank you for sharing the instructions! I also wanted to let you know that I’m having a valentines giveaway over on my blog if you wanted to check it out
on 21 Feb 2008 at 4:35 pm18Daphne

Two years!?! Are you kidding? Sigh. Time does fly.