Ghana Batiks

I've been working with my daughter Jenny to design a Ghana batik artisan collection for Taylor Joelle Designs. Our first collection goes on sale tomorrow!

Reid and I photographed the process and here's a step by step description on creating batik fabrics. The artistry and effort are unbelievable.

Everything is made by hand by the batik artist Prosper, his wife Evelyn, and a few helpers. Propser prays every day for the success of this collection because it supports his family. The older girl in the picture above is Prosper's daughter.

FIRST

Diane works with Jenny to design the motif. She sketches it to scale and then one of Prosper's helpers carves the motif, in reverse, into a foam block. 

SECOND

Dye the fabric red. Prosper buys imported 100% cotton white fabric. It has to be just the right kind so the dye will absorb well. He works with 12 yard lengths of the white cotton fabric.

Then it is time for the first dye. Prosper hand mixes the colors - just like an artist mixes paints. The cloth is soaked in the red dye and laid out to dry.

THIRD

Stamp the watermelons. The watermelon print has two stamps - one for the pink part and one for the green rind. So the first stamping with hot wax is on the red dyed fabric to protect that motif (resist the next dye). 

FOURTH

Dye the cloth green. This is tricky because Prosper has to find a green dye that covers the red without looking muddy. He did it after lots of experimenting.


FIFTH

Stamp the rind shape in hot wax to protect the green. 

SIXTH

Dye the fabric black. The wax on the red and green shapes resists the black. But it cracks a bit so you get interesting crackles that are part of the batik look.

SEVENTH

Boil the fabric over a wood fire to remove the wax. 

EIGHTH

Sew! The sewing is done by very small family businesses. The sewers (moms) don't use patterns. They can sew anything from a picture. African dresses are almost always custom made. Our sewers used very high quality techniques on our items including French seaming.

Mom has her little helper - every step of the way. Isn't she darling?

Finally

These beautiful products are sent to Taylor Joelle Designs in the USA as our Taylor Joelle Artisan Collection. We are honored to work with such beautiful entrepreneurs.

Karen's Girly Quilt

I think this is the cutest quilt ever made!

I guess you'd call this a friendship quilt - a group of us got together and each made (or got help making) a block to represent herself.

I have to say, as we got going, the blocks got more and more elaborate. We just kept coming up with ideas to dress our girls. It was so fun!

Instructions are on a blog I made documenting the process - Karen's Girly Quilt

Here are some of our blocks:

me :)

24 hour extreme nursery makeover

My daughter Jenny is about to have her 5th baby (a boy) - and little baby Cohen has decided he likes sitting breech. Jenny is little and Cohen is big so she's been terribly uncomfortable. To cheer her up, I decided to organize an extreme nursery makeover/baby shower. So family members gathered at her house last week and we had fun!

The baby's room was in pretty rough shape with layers and layers of wallpaper. Months ago, Jenny and her boys stripped the wall paper. The room needed a makeover!

Earlier, Jenny had pinned some of her favorite nurseries. She likes a kind of woodland style. I used these pictures as inspiration:

First thing - I went shopping and found this scary rocking chair at a thrift shop ($30)

Everyone that saw it wondered what I was thinking - but I could just see it as the focal point of the nursery. So - off to Ikea to find fabric to recover the cushions - and to pick up odds and ends for the nursery.

I have a collection of Annie Sloan's Chalk paint  colors so I used them to paint the old chair Emerald Green (just happens to be the Pantone 2013 color of the year). I mixed equal parts Antibes Green and Provence to create the color.

Ta da!

I found the little deer in the Christmas department at Ikea.

And Ikea had the perfect fabric to recover the cushions - a nice black and white stripe.

Looks a little better, doesn't it?

Lisa had the brilliant idea to accent the woodland nursery with branches - to hang the curtains and to create a mobile. She found and cut the sticks, and made little clouds out of cut paper.

Last Thursday night, we loaded up the truck and drove to Jenny's for the big makeover surprise. She couldn't believe the funny/cute green chair.

We divided up and set to work painting the room and furniture.

Lisa and Jenny painted three walls light gray (Valspar Sea Salt Blue CI 191) and the accent wall behind the crib a soft blue (Eddie Bauer Wave EB7-3).

I painted an old crib white using Annie Sloan Pure White chalk paint. I love most of the chalk paint colors but I find the whites difficult to use. They don't seem to cover very well. I did three coats on the dark wood crib and it still looked streaky.

I ended up running out of paint before it looked good - what to do? I decided to embrace the streakiness and dry brush it with gray. It gave the finish a kind of woodsy feel.

 (silly) Jamie and Karenin assembled the cloud mobile - it's perfect! Lisa used this YouTube tutorial to make the clouds.

Reid and Jenny painted an old Ikea dresser white with gray drawer fronts

Jason hung Ikea curtains on our tree branch curtain rod   (brackets from Lowes)

Jenny had this cute teepee from a Taylor Joelle photo-shoot (her clothing company) - a perfect little accent. The mommy and baby foxes are from Ikea.

The shelf and changing pad are from Ikea. Jenny already had the perfect black and white houndstooth rug and the fun arrow and teepee artwork - made from purchased Shutterstock photos and printed on canvas.

That ugly old chair just made the nursery! The side table and floor lamp are Ikea

And I made this little print on my iPad - it looks good in a black Ikea frame.

 Here is Cohen's room - all put together (except for the crib which still needs a few repairs).

We can't wait to meet you - baby Cohen!