Yesterday the FedEx truck came and the Carlyle House floorcloth started its journey to Alexandria, Virginia. Before I packed it up I took a photo of it stretched out on my lawn:

It took over 100 hours of studio time to complete this piece. The layout was very difficult. Notice that the pattern is not “broken” on any of the sides- a tricky math problem which I think most of my college math professors would be happy to see I was able to solve! Then, except for the marbling, every line is straight, and every line is freehand painted- no taping AT ALL. The black and the gold colors all had two coats- so that’s two sets of straight lines!

So, with that one behind me, it’s onward and upward to new summer projects- finishing up some Checks with Artichokes, starting on a large dining room floorcloth for a house in New Hampshire, and starting on a commission from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts for its permanent collection (more about that later…).

But first, I am painting a mural on canvas for a wonderful house in Vermont:

If you want to hear a little about how I am doing this, there’s a video. Click on the photo below to go there.

Next week I am off to Bridgton, Maine to teach a floorcloth class at the Rufus Porter Museum. Should be a lot of fun! I’m looking forward to meeting a new group of students and getting back into the museum for some mural-inspirations!

The Flowers and Fans Floorcloth has settled into its new home and the owner sent this along: “As you can see the floorcloth looks perfect! We love it.”

Thanks, Margaret, for the great pictures.

It’s hard to send my floorcloths off. No matter how carefully they’re packed and even though I know they will be well taken care of in their new homes, after all the time and meticulous work, I always feel more than a little anxious as the FedEx guy pulls out of my driveway.

I’ve enjoyed sharing this project with my readers. It actually made me realize how many steps are involved!

Today my husband helped me set this one up in our kitchen so I can have one more shot for my records.

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Since Friday we’ve been laying out and painting the background elements of the Flowers and Fans floorcloth. The deep red color, (Benjamin Moore’s “Pottery Red”) is looking really nice with the rose and gold colors. When we add the green for leaves and stems and stamp the fans it’s going to really pop. Read the rest of this entry »

Today was stamping day for the flowers and fans floorcloth. Theresa drew 2 lines 1/2 an inch apart and 16″ in from the edge of the hemmed, painted canvas to form the border. I then drew light guidelines at 5″ intervals which I later used to know where to place the stamp. I made a little video for you to see how we do the actual stamping part:

OK, Holiday festivities are over. It’s time to get to work! The Artichoke floorcloth (see previous post in News) has moved to the upstairs studio and is receiving 5 coats of polyurethane. The Flowers and Fans floorcloth came downstairs and will be residing on the big studio table for awhile now.

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In answer to John’s question about where to buy canvas and what type of canvas to buy let me discuss the possibilities.

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Thanks, everyone, for subscribing to my blog. The response has been fantastic! So let’s get started…

In my first post I showed you a bit about how the design was developed. Having figured that part out, now I have a template for the piece. I printed it out to scale so that I can measure directly off the printout to know all the needed dimensions.

Theresa, my assistant, pulled 9 feet of 10-foot-wide canvas off the bolt of #4 (the heaviest weight canvas I have) and laid it out on the table. Then she took hot tap water and soaked the top side, rolled it up, flipped it over and soaked the back side. What this does is to remove the size which is applied during the weaving process. Size will repel paint, so removing it is a necessary step if you want the paint to stay on the floorcloth! Soaking the canvas also causes the fabric to shrink. A piece this size will shrink up to 8″ with this first application of water. We let it air dry on plastic so that it can shrink as much as it wants.

When the canvas was all dry (about 24 hours), Theresa applied a coat of latex primer to one side. This causes a little more shrinkage and locks the weave of the canvas so that it becomes stiffer and more stable. That was allowed to dry another 24 hours.

OK, so we’re ready to lay this thing out and cut it down to size.

This is the shrunk, primed canvas ready to be measured. he primed side is down, against the table.
The final floorcloth will be 7 feet by 9 feet and we add a 1 and a 1/2 inch hem all the way around, so we need to cut a 7′3″ X 9′3″ rectangle.

We check for squareness using the old carpenter’s rule of 3, 4, 5. That is, two sides perpendicular to each other, one of 3′ and the second of 4′ will give you a 5′ diagonal joining the ends of the perpendicular lines. Whew! Good thing I was a math major!

So, it’s square.

Now we measure out the 7′3″ X 9′3″ rectangle. When that’s all laid out, Theresa goes back and double checks all the corners for squareness. if anything is of, it can mess up a design really bad. Another carpenter’s Golden Rule: measure twice, cut once. I like to expand that to measure 3 or 4 times, cut once! I’ve only regretted it when I didn’t do it!

One last thing before we cut this down: the finished floorcloth is an oblong octagon, not a rectangle. I go back to my drawing and see that the corners are cut off at 18″ in from each corner. So we measure in, and draw a diagonal line which cuts the corners. Now we go around and mark a line 1.5″ in from the entire edge. This will be the hem line and the canvas will be folded and pressed along this line.

We use very sharp scissors (and strong hands!) to cut the canvas. Then we use a flat iron to go around the entire edge, turning the hem. The floorcloth is ready now to be sewn.

My next post will show you how we do the sewing.

if you have any questions about this step go ahead and post a response or email me directly. I’ll try to answer as soon as I can. If you know anyone who might be interested in this process please pass this along and tell them to subscribe!

This is the first post in what I hope will be many showing all the steps involved in making a custom floorcloth.

First, a little history. Back in October Margaret and Les drove up from Connecticut to meet me and talk about a floorcloth for their kitchen. I showed them floorcloths in progress in the studio and several in use in our house. Then we went to work trying to find designs which appealed to them most. They looked through photos, swatches and my doodle-ideas and we came to a few conclusions.

The floorcloth would be 7′ X 9′ and an oblong octagon would work best, given their kitchen set up. When they got home they sent me some photos so I could get a better idea of the room.

They had chosen a few designs that appealed to them most. Like these:

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We still weren’t sure about colors, but blue was not one of their favorites, so I had to steer away from that.

So I sat down and came up with an idea and emailed it off to them:

1122 Their initial reaction was that they loved the design, but they wondered about the scale and the shape of the flowers in the border. So I tried a couple of other ideas:

11331136

Something just wasn’t quite working, so I suggested a different type of border:

1139 This was better, but the black was too heavy. Notice that the center changed from a lattice design to a stamped design.

Finally, we settled on this one: 1157 and Margaret sent me color chips she liked best.

So the next step is to shrink the canvas, prime one side , measure, cut and hem it. Check in tomorrow for some more pictures.

I’d love to hear your comments about these designs. Let’s get a conversation going!