Moonpi

Is this for a wall or a bed? I've had luck with the permanent fabric markers. Depending on your fabric, paints and dyes spread in unexpected ways. I'm wondering if using a sea-colored fabric, and bleach applied with a nib pen (use Chlor Stop to neutralize) would give you a good clean outline to overdye, paint, or mark. I've used a brand of fabric dye/paint called Luminiere for gold accents that gives beautiful gilded effects. Dharma Trading has kits for under $12 with lots of colors. Dye-na-flow is good, too, for regular colors, and blends well. Kits with a batch of small bottles run the same price.

http://www.dharmatrading.com/html/en...ints_kits.html
While you're there, sign up for their free catalog and look through the tutorials. They have dyes and batik supplies, prepared for dye cloth, all sorts of fun things.

Flying_V_Goddess

Supposed to be for a wall. And with the way things are going...a pretty big wall. lol.

Well, besides the sea colored fabric part (I plan on using a more "antique" look to this map---different colors of browns), it sounds do-able. The only thing I could think of that would be a problem would be the islands with very sharp or rounded edges (like Six Eye Reef or Pawprint Isle) or that have very small details. I'll keep it in mind. In the meantime, I'll look more into this Dharma Trading Company.

Sue sent me a copy of the blank sea map cnolan made up for me so I should have a colored in version pretty soon.

Flying_V_Goddess

This is kind of what I want it to look like. I haven't decided on a border design so just threw one in there, but it'll be in that color and about that size. No islands yet 'cause---well, I'm not going to draw them in Paint, but I'm still working on the sizing of my islands. This would be so much easier to figure out if I still had the game.

Barb M

I guess i'm not very computer literate, and don't know about these programmes, i find it easy to just make my patterns up on graph paper. Maybe i'm in the stone age lol

Flying_V_Goddess

I figured out some price related things for various techniques to get this done (screen printing, stamping, batik)...haven't gotten all of it done because Dharma Trading didn't have everything I need. Batik is the cheapest so far. Screen printing the most expensive ($60+!!!)

Pam Pollock

Nice design!!! Are you planning on having the thin white outline in your design? I think you could do this using Batik method. You could start out with white material & pencil your designs onto individual squares (or rectangles) of material to be sewn together later. That way if one turns out good & maybe one doesn't, you wouldn't have to redo as many. You would start with waxing your thin white line & then dip in the salmon dye & air dry or cool setting on hair dryer & then wax the salmon color background & then dip in a brown dye for the final color. Then dry & iron out the wax. Voila!

Flying_V_Goddess

What do you mean by a thin white outline?

My original idea for doing this was to take the outlines of the blocks with the seam allowances and the island design and screen print it onto the background fabric color. Then I could just cut out the outlines of the blocks and their islands would already be on so I could get right to sewing. I had thought about doing it all on one big piece of fabric (no cutting...almost like a panel), but its too big to do. But it'll cost me $60 if I screen print it...and that's if I use one screen that's big enough for two or three blocks, screen print, clean off the photo emulsion, put on new photo emulsion, put on two or three more blocks, screen print, repeat.

So I gotta come up with something else. Batik I'm kind of skeptical about...I just think with me it'll turn into one HUGE mess (me + hot wax = disater). Fabric stamping might work, but the Dharma Trading company didn't have permanent fabric ink in the color I need for stamping (which I'm wondering if you could just use screen printing ink for stamping) and they didn't have linolium blocks big enough for the stamps...plus I have to make 49 of them, which will get expensive unless I can come up with a cheap alternative.

Eh, I'll figure something out.

Pam Pollock

Ok...I had to do a double take. I guess what I thought was a thin white line was around the brown design. Maybe it's just the salmon color but my computer screen or my eyes just registered it as white.

Batiking is not that scary unless your not good around stoves? I did batiking back when I was in high school & I was self taught. I had some that were better than others & the good ones just come with practice. I still have some linoleum blocks that I finished carving but never printed -LOL. 49 blocks?? That would be a lot of carving & very time consuming to do as many as you need to do. I honestly think it would be worth a try to try batik but I will be interested in seeing your finished project no matter what method you decide to use. Neat design! :D :D

Paulette

V - you can make your own photo transfer fabric....you'll need the specific chemical and just treat your fabric. It is extremely cost effective if you plan to use a lot of fabric. If you don't want to take that route, try just cutting out the shapes and appliqueing to the background fabric. I can see what you are trying to accomplish so hate to see you so frustrated that you set it aside and never go back to it. Dharma Trading might have the chemicals you need to make your own photo transfer fabric - I don't recall as have not been on that site in a while.

Another option instead of applique is to layer under another color and cut out the pieces. For example, have your background fabric the sea color and underneath place a piece of brown for the island(s). Just cut out the sea color to show the brown for the islands. This could tend to waste fabric but then you have the potential to build your scrap pile!

And if nothing else...have more chocolate and maybe switch to Godsmack and play it loud! :D

Flying_V_Goddess

Well, there are 49 islands, but some islands are the same (like the fairy islands and the triangle isles), just in different locations in the block area. I'd have to check, but it may be possible that I can turn the block for one island 90 degrees and get the layout for another island. But there would still be at least 30 different island designs. I wish the screen printing supplies were cheaper. I think I'd like the results and I could possibly use screen printing in another project.

I think with the amount of work I need to do, the batik would probably be overly time consuming to do all those islands.

How exactly is this photo transfer thing done?

I get what you're talking about with the alternative option to applique. I've seen it done in a magazine (with cute batik turtles) and on the HGTV website for stained glass quilting.

If all else fails, I'll hit the chocolate frosting (right out of the jar!) and watch some Gundam Wing.