Joie de Vivre

Joie de Vivre is both the title of this piece and the feeling I enjoyed when working with a new product, called Craft Attitude. You can read about it on the Craft Attitude website as well as on their Facebook page. I was very honoured to be asked to test it out for them and of course fabric was my chosen medium. The Craft Attitude sheets are sold under many different names all ending in Attitude such as Jewellery, Decor, Flower, Magnet, Scrapbooking, Shoe, Wood and Quilt Attitude but they are all in fact the same product. The sheets come with full instructions and are meant for use with your inkjet printer. Once it has printed you let it dry for a couple of hours, remove it from the carrier sheet and what you have is a completely transparent image that takes on the texture of the background. And for me the biggest bonus is that it can be stitched by both machine and hand. It has a very soft handle and unlike other transfer methods hand stitching through it is a pure pleasure.

I got so carried away that I made quite a few items with the product, and they will be popping up here on my blog in the coming days and weeks. This is the one they liked best and joy of joys, it is also my favourite. Love it when that happens. I have written a tutorial about how to make this for them and also for you, the readers of this blog.

 Joie de Vivre

1. Cut a piece of grey/silver fabric to size (9.1/4” square)
2. Layer with batting (wadding in UK) and background fabric and free machine quilt using silver thread and lines radiating from the centre.
3. Sew on binding made from the same fabric.
   
4. Print out a painted piece of your art (I used the piece shown above which is part of one of my drop cloths) onto Craft Attitude and add adhesive with a Xyron Creatopia machine loaded with a fabric glue cartridge to the glossy side of Craft Attitude. Cut out to 8” square and adhere to the piece made in step 2.
5. Sew around the edges
6. Adhere the fabric images (from Alphastamps The Secrets and Clown Valentine collage sheets) as shown, again using the Xyron.
7. Emphasize some of the quilted background lines with size 11 seed beads matching the background colours
8. Print out text Joie de Vivre using a Dymo writer and adhere.
9. Sew on the 3 rings following the machine quilted line from the hand of the figure upwards.
10. Sew on sequins to the figure’s costume.
11. Sew on a hanging sleeve to the back

As you can see I used a Xyron Creatopia glue machine with a fabric glue cartridge on this piece which worked very well but on other trial pieces I also used Mistyfuse and Bondaweb (WonderUnder in US speak) to attach the Craft Attitude sheet to the background,  and they worked just as well. Just don't forget that ironing sheet or baking parchment!  Craft Attitude is a plastic containing product therefore:  NO touching it with a hot iron!!!

So as you can see this girl is not just filled with joie de vivre but she also has Attitude!