Yee Haw!

Look what arrived yesterday:

The replicated fabrics I designed through Spoonflower, in order to repair the Horsie quilt that I bought at Lorah's auction!

I altered several of the files before ordering full yard pieces- all of the above were reduced (some drastically) from the sample swatch size. I did try to *dirty* up the horse pattern but that didn't work so well. I'll have to stain the fabric manually.

The new print is just a tad bigger than the original, but still a good enough match.

This one is closer to the proper size, though still a bit large.

In case you're adding up a mental total- that's $7.50 for the quilt, $5 @ for 5 sample swatches, and $16.50 @ for 1 yard each of the 5 fabrics...I'm thinking of it in the nature of an experiment, not a cost effective way to deal with an auction bargain...

I won't get to any of the repair work until we get back from SoCal, but I'm looking forward to tackling this project.

Ride 'em Cowboy!

My sample replicated fabric swatches for the damaged Horsie quilt arrived from Spoonflower! Most of the files need some tweaking, which is why it's a good idea to order the $5 swatch before you get an $18 yard...

The Horse fabric looks great, but it's too large. I'll shrink the file before ordering more (though actually, I don't really need more of this fabric- the original horsies are in pretty good shape). I knew I'd have to age the fabric. It would have been hard to design age spots printed directly on the fabric.

This print is the right scale but the wrong brown, though it looks okay with most of the quilt (there's lots of that shade in the other fabrics).

The black and red flower print is just about perfect. I will need at least a yard of it because the quilt's creator used this fabric all over on the border, and all of those triangles are deteriorating.

The colors are fine on this print, but YIKES! How did I get it so big? I'll have to shrink it 75% to get it to the proper scale.

For some reason, this print is scaled much better, but it's still too big, by about half.

All of the fabrics (except the black and red) need "stains" and "ageing". I tried tea-dyeing but the not enough of the color absorbed (of course, I want it to stain, so it won't). So I'm going to try coffee next, and maybe a little judicious spillage, just to get that antique look going.

It'll still be awhile before I start repair work in earnest, but Spoonflower has speeded up their turn-around, so I don't think it'll be all that long before I can dig in.

Vintage Horse Quilt Repair- Part 1

Yesterday I posted a picture of the vintage Horse Quilt that I bought at an auction over the weekend. The main area of the quilt is in pretty good shape, considering it's old (I'd say from the 40's at least), and stained a bit. But the Flying Geese outer border has some triangles that have deteriorated, so I announced an intention to scan the fabrics, and replicate them through Spoonflower in order to repair the quilt.

Blog Poster Lisa pointed out that fabric scans not only pick up the color and the print, but the warp and weft, the wrinkles and any quilting stitches, and anything else on or in the fabric. She was absolutely correct, so I started with scans, and then took them to Adobe Illustrator and fooled with the scans in order to eliminate as much of the *background noise* as possible.

This is a scan from the quilt

I used the Brush Strokes Effect in AI, and simplified the design

and then eliminated the stained background

And here's the comparison. I'll have to *distress* the new fabric (the file that Spoonflower will use to print the fabric is on the right), and maybe even tea-dye it to get it to blend in better, but I'm pleased with the replication.

I didn't bother trying to take out the quilting stitches for this fabric- they look okay on the sample to the right. The new fabric won't match the old one exactly (in design or color), but I think it'll match closely enough.

This one came out okay without much fiddling at all.

This fabric was so damaged that I started from scratch with the file, and redrew it rather than working from a scan.

Same with this one (the original fabric is on the lower triangle). Again, I'm sure I'll have to tea-dye and distress the new fabrics.

I've ordered sample swatches of all of these from Spoonflower. Sometimes the colors on the screen don't match the colors on the fabric, so I may have to do some tinkering with the files before ordering larger pieces. It'll take a few weeks for the samples to arrive, so Part 2 is going to be delayed for a bit. Given that I'm supposed to be working on a YA Fantasy, I think I have enough to do in the interim.