Booth

Thanks to those that stopped by this weekend to the Uptown Market. I plan to be there again this Sunday, the 29th. I hope to see you. I'm also really hoping it isn't so hot. But the forecast doesn't sound like that. I don't know the booth location, they sometimes rearrange them. But the above is a picture. I figured since I took one to send to my Mom, I could post it here also.

Arrr

Talk Like a Pirate Day is next month, Sept 19th. So, of course, I had to do a tshirt with a pirate on it. And of course, Pirate vs Ninja.

Shapes

I know it is hard to take pictures of plastic, but I tried anyway.

I found these nice stencils on clearance at the local craft store. They're actually intended to be used for embossing paper, but can be used like a normal stencil also.

So the other picture is a waxed design on a shirt using a small portion of the stencil for the scroll shape at the bottom. I think I'm going to repeat the pattern on the back. I like to decorate the back of the shirts also. I think it makes it more interesting. As you can see, it works even better to take pictures of wax on white shirts. It helps to cover the flash a little bit. It keeps it from looking completely white, but isn't too dull either.

Textures

The leaf on the left was stitched like the Mokume shirts. Several rows of stitching to control the texture.

The one on the right was stitched only along the outside edge. Then gathered up and the thread wrapped around the part sticking up.

The straight line along the edge was just a single, straight row of stitching.

Canvas

Another example of when wax doesn't soak all the way through the fabric and the differences between different kinds of fabric. It wasn't a problem since this was a practice piece. But still, you want your project to turn out well.

It's pretty obvious from the back side that I needed to wax the back also. It's kind of interesting how the back of the fabric dyed but the front didn't. Normally, the dye will get a lot more even front and back, but perhaps not so solid on the fabric where I didn't wax well enough. But since this was a heavier canvas fabric it is quite different on both sides.

The splotchiness of the dye is because I didn't stir it much while it sat. Some of it was above the dye bath. And the green marks from a previous practice/test session of trying out painting with thickened dye. I still need to remember to do something with my sodium alginate solution. Last I looked at it, it wasn't too bad.

Leaves

This is a picture of the shirt from the last post. One of the differences with soy wax over traditional wax is you don't get the crackle look as much. But it does cover nicely, when you remember to check the back.

Scraping off a bit more wax for the veins of the leaves worked well. It's more noticable on this shirt.

This one goes to Mom. I found some nice white tshirts at Land's End that will fit her and worked well for experimenting. My husband has only a couple plain white shirts left. Those computer ones he got work really well for practicing on also. Check out the thrift store and use what you can find. You can also dye colored shirts, it just won't be quite so dramatic. The tablecloth I used for the craft show yesterday was gray and I overdyed it with blue.