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This post was intended to demonstrate how to make a no-sew fabric block using digital printing for the FemEdTech Quilt of Care and Justice in Open Education. It didn’t turn out quite as expected. It is the second of two stories of two no-sew fabric blocks. The first is at http://femedtech.net/published/i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings-making-a-quilt-block-with-no-sewing/ .

The Call for Contributions (and other goodies to come) is at http://quilt.femedtech.net.

Materials

Fabric sheets for printing. Search for “photo cotton poplin fabric sheets” and you should find a range of suppliers of backed fabric sheets that can be used with deskjet printers to produce a colour image on fabric. I have used these successfully in the past, but as you will see in my story, things didn’t work out so well this time.

CCL licensed image that evokes something for you related to quilt themes.

When you tell the story of your block, you can attribute the image according to its license.

Resources

A good resource can be a friend/colleague who has done this sort of thing before – ask around 🙂

An untested alternative to home printing could be using digital printing services. The challenge is to get a print that’s 6 or 12 inches with a ¼ – ½ inch seam allowance so it can be stitched into the quilt.

Here are some (untested) possibilities (from UK):

We have a Support and Resources living document – please consult and add resources.

Process

I put out a call on Twitter for images with the message “Can anyone point me to a link of a CC licensed image that relates to Care and/or Justice in Open (Education) ? #OER20

https://twitter.com/francesbell/status/1188937296881561600

Open with Care(c) ammienoot CC-BY-SA 4.0 From the private collection of Melissa Highton link

Open with Care(c) ammienoot CC-BY-SA 4.0 From the private collection of Melissa Highton

Melissa Highton sent me this image of embroidery work by Anne Marie Scott. link

I cropped the image to reduce the black background and make a square image to fit the quilt block.

Open With Care embroidery image cropped

Open with Care(c) ammienoot CC-BY-SA 4.0 From the private collection of Melissa Highton (cropped)

Now all that remained was for me to print the image on to a fabric sheet, and tell its story. So I tried, and tried again but each time the printer jammed and I don’t know why. When I ran out of the purchased fabric sheets, I made my own fabric sheet by ironing an A4 freezer paper sheet on to the back of some yellow fabric.

Unfortunately that jammed too, as you can see.

Printed image (jammed) Open with care CC-BY-SA 4.0 adapted from image in private collection of Melissa Highton

At this point, I gave up on my original goal and decided I could make a different image, based on the partial image. I have drafted the design on to the blank fabric, and will stitch it ready for the quilt  – so not no-sew after all.

Open With Care - adapted print fail

Adapted Printed image (jammed) Open with care CC-BY-SA 4.0 adapted from image in private collection of Melissa Highton

I would be really interested to see if anyone else manages to print a fabric block using a CCL image – either using their own printer or one of the digital printing services mentioned in the Resources Section above. Good luck and do report back.

Images from albums at https://www.flickr.com/photos/francesbell/albums/72157711664732357 and https://www.flickr.com/photos/francesbell/albums/72157711686860127