Josh’s screen printing has really piqued my interest. So much so that since he made his first screen, I had this vision in my head of a tree. I couldn’t quite get my head around what that tree would look like, but I had been messing around with a bunch of different ideas of trees and being slightly obsessed with looking at tree silhouettes online. Weird, I know. Anyway, I finally found the image that I was looking for—in the wonderful book Neubau Welt. This is the description of the book/CD:
My house, my pool, my horse, my Learjet, my Mercedes, my wife, my toys, my trees, my garden, my cockroach. Now it’s really all yours.
It’s an eclectic assortment of royalty-free vector images that are manipulatable using Adobe Illustrator. Pretty sweet!
Anyway, I printed “my tree” on several items, including a raglan sleeved T-shirt that I’m going to reconstruct into a cardigan inspired by The Alabama Stitch Book (I will write a review soon, I promise!). I also got the idea that it would be interesting to “make” my own fabric. And by make my own fabric, I mean printing on some black cotton from our local Ikea. (Oh Ikea, how I love you, even though that love makes me feel really unoriginal.) Using the same deep burgundy I used on my T-shirt, I screen printed my tree at more or less regular intervals over a yard and a half or so of fabric.
Flat fabric is kind of hard to photograph, so this isn’t quite what it looks like in reality. The tree is a much deeper color, and it’s actually quite subtle. It turned out really lovely—I’m not really looking forward to cutting into it. But I am looking forward to telling people I printed the fabric myself. I’m thinking about either this skirt or this skirt—both from Burda World of Fashion.
Not really sewing related, but I’m also pretty proud of some printing on paper that I did with the same screen.
I messed around with blending several iridescent colors, trying to mimic (albeit in an abstract sort of way) the way that the leaves on some of the Japanese maples in our yard almost glow in the fall evenings.
I’m warning you: I’m going to sound like a tremendous dork here—don’t say I didn’t warn you! I’ve never really thought of myself as a creative person. I had some really bad experiences in art class in elementary school (91 Grade School in Hubbard, Oregon!) and actually got a really bad grade in art on several occasions. Perspective gave me all kinds of trouble. I also had a lot of problems with the whole complementary colors thing. I distinctly remember having a fairly heated disagreement with my fourth grade teacher over whether or not green and purple are complementary or not. (I thought they were, but I guess our art curriculum didn’t agree.) I sort of realize now that a lot of my problems in art class actually were because I was kind of creative, and wasn’t huge on the rules of art (really, rules have never been my strong point in any context). Anyway, my point is, I’m always reluctant to do “arty” stuff because I have it in the back of my head that I suck at it. Anyway, screenprinting’s been really fun, and the stuff I’ve made with “my tree” doesn’t look half bad! That’s pretty exciting for me.
~Sarah
P.S. Lots of sewing projects we’ve got going on… We’ll update you soon—promise.
