Duetica & House Warming Gift

Finished Design

I recently acquired the membership to the Duetica Lettering Arts Studio which was recommended to me by my good friend, Eileen Hull. After talking with Mark and Adrienne at Duetica I was sold on the concept and will become one of their guest bloggers as I like the system enough to recommend it on my own. The Duetica Lettering Arts Studio provides for a very low cost access to numerous custom designed fonts and the ability to work between not only different fonts and sizes but each font comes in a variety of combinations that all seamless fit together.
This is the first project I created using the system the first time out of the gate so to speak. Here is how I created this fun pillow which I intend to give a housewarming gift to my daughter .

Tracing the Design onto your fabric.

I started by choosing what I wanted to transfer onto the pillow front. I chose to use their initials as the kMn & kNm were kind of unusual. I selected the Woodwinds font and quickly tabbed through multiple versions of lettering styles within the system. I enlarged the font to 230 and printed out the 3 sheets of paper. I then used a light table to trace the lettering onto my fabric using a pencil.

Adding weight to the Linework

 The next step was to use a Sharpie fine marker and trace around the lettering filling in the lines here and there and varying the width of the stroke. I used a piece of copy paper which I laid over the ink and pressed using a hot iron with no steam. The ink is now set.

Painting in Designs

The next step is to paint in the center of the letters. I used Tumble Dye by S.E.I to paint in the letters. I combined fuchsia, pink and yellow to achieve the coloring you see on the pillow front. While the ink does not act as a full resist, I found that I could carefully brush in the paint right next to the ink allowing only a small space for the ink to flow and had no problems. S.E.I. has a great tutorial on their website, check it out.

Once you have completed your line work, painting and have heat set the inks and dyes it is time to create your pillow. There are many ways to make a pillow and sometimes simple is the way to go. For a detailed explanation of making your own pillow I suggest to go over to the Fairfield site as I have instructions along with some other great designers on exactly where to start and how to finish your own pillow.
Thanks for dropping by and be sure to check out Duetica, Fairfield and S.E.I to see what you can do.