So, you know that saying that, "behind every good man is a great woman..." blah, blah, blah? Well, I'd like to think that I am an adequate mate and a whole-hearted mom. But really, this guy. He's the real brains of this operation. It was he who gently urged me, one step at a time, back to school, he who lead the home and rural deliveries of our two children and he who bought me a sewing machine that was way out of our price range a couple of years ago to help me to do what I loved. It is he who now sits reading Teach Your Own while the littles squirm through their bedtime Sparkle Stories. And he who skates into the kitchen to give me a thumbs up, meaning: "let's do this homeschool thing!" while I lazily slurp a glass of wine and browse cookbooks.
It is he who has been the brawn behind some of my favorite sewn items. And when I say he has been the "brawn," I mean he designed and printed things like this piliated woodpecker tee and tote and this Valentines Day tee.
But, you know, the guy works more than full time designing and building stuff and so, I can't always lean on him. And I wanted to start printing on fabric myself!!! It is my secret dream to get to print on fabric for real, like in large scale someday. So, in June, when he was exhausted after a big bike race and my daughter brought in the sweetest little mushroom from outside, the learning could wait no longer.
Armed with the new experience of having made a stamp for the very first time in Maya Made's class at Squam, I set to work sketching the the mushroom and transferring it to the stamp surface. Once you have the drawing complete, you just flip it over onto the stamp surface and then rub the back of the drawing with a pencil to transfer it - it's super slick and easy! I had never before seen this pink eraser type stampy stuff but it is great because you can easily cut away the excess so that the print doesn't show the carving lines around the drawing.
Naturally, I made a Flashback Tee with Geranium-style flutter sleeves first.
It was a little too much flutter for me and the stamp washed away in the wash even after heat setting:(
So, next, I worked at trying to use fabric paint to stamp with but with the delicate little gills - it just wasn't working. The grooves were getting clogged with paint. So, I went for a freezer paper stencil and I'm totally in love! Another School Bus Tee for my boy .
Plus a high low swing tee for her using more of this dreamy fabric that I used to make his pocket tee. Okay, gratuitous photos of the mushroom print, since I guess that you can't really tell the difference between the brown tee above and the grey one below...
Don't you think that Mr. Moody should get a mushroom tee of his own? I just purchased the yarn to make him this epic sweater (the guy in the yarn shop told me that he's never actually seen one finished) so, perhaps if I'm able to accomplish that I'll have evened our scores?
Photo by Brooklyn Tweed. Source
