Monday, February 29, 2016

a hand-printed skirt




A while ago, I found a second hand grey skirt that was still in awesome condition. By the look of it, it probably had once belonged to a secretary. A quite boring secretary, that is. But since I have a bit of a soft spot for boring skirts (upcycling is so much easier when something is ugly in the first place!), I took it home with me.

There I decided to give it a little print. There are many techniques of doing so. You can buy stamps, or cut them out of some vinyl or a potato ( yes you've done that in pre-school, I guarantee it) 
Since I didn't feel like cutting stamps out of a potato, I decided to try it in another way: by cutting a form out of a chammy.
you'll need:
  • a chammy, or another sort of mircofiber towel. I used a bit of a spongy kind of it; like the kind you use for window-cleaning. 
  • sciccors
  • glue
  • a little piece of wood or anthing you want to use as a handle for your stamp
  • fabric paint.
  • a piece of paper
And of course some piece of fabric that you would like to decorate. Here is my boring skirt: 




I drew the silhouette that I wanted onto a piece of paper. (don't fret; you can also copy an image from the internet) Then, I placed the paper onto the chammy, and cut them together along the lines of my drawing, a used inky as an inspiration, and made a black cat.
This left me with a cut-out cat made of chammy-leather, and also a paper version, but that one doesn't really count in this story :)
" did someone say cat? "


I then simply glued the little cat onto a piece of wood. Which is a total lie, because in fact I glued it onto a lid of a peanut butter jar. Because it was closer. I'm lazy. But I had made a stamp! 

I brushed some fabric paint onto my stamp, and started stamping. I worked in diagonal lines, starting from the top, so I wouldn't smudge the paint. If you want to, you can check the distance between them with a ruler, which I didn't bacause I'm lazy.


cats! 

Please remember to let the front dry before doing the back panel. If you don't, your cats will end up looking like werewolves. Also, white paint doesn't really work well on grey fabric. I found that out the hard way, which is why some of my cats have a white shadow. 

Finally, I sewed an orange ribbon onto the waist, and make a little bow in front of it. Here's the finished thing!

I waited a couple of days before washing it, and gave it a good press with my iron to fixate the paint.



What do you think, cats?
"whoo! It's the Bee's knees! "
"Meh.."
Hahah, thanks guys! 
Hope you enjoyed!

3 comments:

  1. That is a great idea! And the orange ribbon was genius!

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  2. Great refashion! And yes, the orange ribbon really makes it :)
    Julie

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