Taping foot

I was all, "You had me at hello!" when I was shown this taping foot. It even fits onto my 1948 Singer. I tested binding vinyl with webbing, grosgrain ribbon, vinyl, and twill tape. The twill tape works best for cornering, which is why I see it used on other recycled vinyl goods. The foot is adjustable for just about any size binding you want to use, and you can also adjust the binding relative to the needle position.

When using a taping foot, lead off with a segment of binding and then drive onto the material you are binding. It works better if you hold the tape up at an angle in the air, instead of holding it down as you sew. Holding it up slightly keeps the binding material oriented just the right angle for entry into the folding mechanism on the foot.

Whipstitch Coil Notebook Cover

A dollar-store notebook looks much improved with a recycled-vinyl jacket. The edges have been whipstitched with 2 mm lacing. Since the lacing was white on the underside I had to take care not to get it twisted while sewing. The length of the lacing is limited by the cutting surface on the Cricut Expressions, so periodically throughout the project I had to bury the old lacing within the seam and start a new length. I had a couple of lengths at the very end of the project that were not long enough to bury under the seam, so I glued them down with LePage flexible plastic adhesive. This project is sized to fit a 400-page coil notebook , 4X5.5 in or 10.2 X13.9 cm. The svg files for the whipstitch holes is here. The outline cuts file for the project pieces is here. (Note on the svg files; I put a square inch sizing reference to line up to the background grid area in Sure Cuts a Lot. The svg files are also available on Craftedge.)

I like how it turned out, the vinyl feels good on the hand, and the whipstitch looks western, like a summer-camp craft project.

Update: I've attached a decoration idea which could be created in adhesive-backed vinyl The font shown is Rustler.

Art Piece, painted vinyl decals over printed tarp.

I haven't attempted a painting since my Acrylic painting course a few years ago. I love the look of cherry blossoms against a turquoise background. I saw such a painting at a Twisted Goods store. I had a tarp with a turquoise color that might work as a suitable background. I'm planning to paint the details on the flower decals with WR-LPU before affixing them to the tarp. This is the color blocking for the project, not the finished piece.

Now to find staples for my staplegun so I can staple the tarp over my 22"x28" canvas frame.

Thanks to EcoLogicalArt for the idea of painting on tarps.

Notebook cover

My first attempt at making a notebook cover. It is removable and covers a coil-ring notebook. I think I'll run around the twill-tape binding one more time with my sewing machine. An industrial binding machine would be nice to have. I love the smooth feel of this particular vinyl, and I have a bunch of surface decoration ideas to try.

Update: I didn't need an industrial binding machine, I found a taping foot that works and corners well. See my March 30 blog post. I need some more practice to perfect the technique. I removed this binding and redid it with the taping foot, with near-professional results.

My Warehouse

Gorm shelving from IKEA helps me keep my tarp collection somewhat organized and easily accessible.

Ball Glove Repair

Repairing is the new New. I had some recycled vinyl tarp lacing left over from another project. Perfect for repairing this old ball glove. The vinyl lacing was created on the Cricut expressions.

Custom Bicycle Panniers

A client emailed me asking if I'd do custom panniers. I jumped at the chance because I wanted to get data on a number of things, like using marine paint on adhesive-backed vinyl, and designing and working with decals. It's given me a lot of information on how to estimate for future custom jobs.

My client liked Art Nouveau, and Mid Century Modern. So I did up some drawings of various possibilities for those styles in Adobe Illustrator and we went back and forth on the designs. The next step was the backgrounds for the tarps, so I pulled out many of my tarps, photographed them and emailed so she could pick from that, Photoshopping the decals over the tarps. She went with the mostly-tan color you see here.

It was a bit challenging getting the decal colors right. I'm going to make up a palette of the colors I can create with the System Three WR-LPU topcoat I have, for future work.

I'll make a page on my website for custom work as a happy result of this project.

Painting on adhesive-backed vinyl

I had to answer the question of whether adhesive-backed vinyl could be painted successfully before cutting. I'm using WR-LPU topcoat, a marine coating. The surface of the vinyl was sanded first and cleaned with a damp rag before painting. I mixed primary colors to make the desired colour. I was attempting fuscia but ended up close, but not quite there.

This picture shows the result after I stuck the letters onto some clear vinyl.

So, the home crafter can now attain just about any color of adhesive backed vinyl with a little bit of paint mixing. It would be great if System Three made "cool" primaries like light lemon yellow and a lighter blue, or CMYK primaries so home paint mixing would yield a greater range of colors. In my acrylic painting course we had three "cool" primaries and three "warm" primaries, and along with black and white, were all the colours needed to mix any desired colour.

Inspiration from Rob Ryan

I really dig Rob Ryan's work and I would like to try making my own version of this kind of artwork with recycled vinyl and the Cricut Expressions. http://rob-ryan.blogspot.com/