Stenciled Painted Jacket

I had to try it!

Well my very very creative comrade IndigoTiger from Stitcher's Guild Forum does stenciling on her fabrics, check out her Star Stamp Stencil she made for SCA - see the post Indigo's Stenciled Outfit, along with her latest creation: Cave Horse Stencil.... (just scroll down that post a few lines)  So she was so inspirational to me, I had to give this a try - I used to love painting (acrylics & a little watercolor)  So I felt a pull to give it a go... - Thanks IndigoT...

So here it is Saturday... I've been racking my brain what to do for another piece of my SWAP, and how to incorporate a stencil into it... not coming up with anything the past couple of days.  In any event I need to try this out first anyway, to see how the technique works...  So I found a great jacket at the store this morning that I thought would be great for my experimentation.  So that's off to the washer and I'm off to JA for fabric paint.

They didn't have jacquard brand, so i had to go with the only one they had - hope it isn't too lacking... I chose the "soft matte" version of the paint, and off we went to check out in the lo-o-o-o-o-ng Saturday line :-) but all was well, because on my way out were the Girl Scout Cookies! snagged a handful of boxes of those to share at the office and DH's favorite for him.

So here we go on our adventure.  Here is the planned design:

 

I decided to go with a sewing theme because I do not have any sewing dedicated clothes - they are mostly Ravens, but other than that the embroidery is animals, or floral, or, well, things other than sewing - time to honor my newest craft! It's been almost 2 years this summer!  Thought this would be fun for my jacket.

 

Here are my supplies....

 

 

I decided to use my iron on tear-away stabilizer for my templates.  With the iron-on feature, my thoughts were that the paint wouldn't "bleed" under the template... we shall see if that theory works.... next the stabilizer is translucent and therefore easy to trace the layers of color change templates on top of each other.    So I drew onto the template paper layer 1 - the white paint layer, and cut it out...

 

 

The drew on the second layer - the wooden spools.

 

So, here are the 3 templates cut...

 

 

I plan to do some hand painting of threads ravelling off the spools, after the stencils are complete tomorrow.  I would probably only get 2 layers done tonight.  Supposed to dry 4 hours in between. And some black outlining, detailing, too.

 

 

I know this looks gray in the pic, but it's a gorgeous heather purple...

 

Template one affixed to the jacket...

 

Okay - painting done for white.....

 

Now wait 4 Hours... later will snap shots of layer 2....

 

Now it's 90 minutes later and I'm thinking I'd like to spruce up the text instead of plain white.  However I'm thinking how the template is not re-usable; just keep in mind what you use for the stencil b/c if you want to use it again, freezer paper or stabilizer is not the way to go - especially with the effort to cut those out....  Anyway, I think I'll just go over and pop some color onto the text while the template is still on...

 

So here is with the color highlights:

 

 

Now to unveil Layer 1.....

 

So my theory on "bleeding" was not foolproof, as the paint was sort of thick around the outside of all of the cut spaces.  The tear-away stabilizer worked nicely as afar as coming off - that J you can see was the worst of the bleeding...  Now I think I'm supposed to Iron this paint to set it, but I'm not sure when, or if the when matters.... I already moved on to layer 2, so we'll have to iron later at the least, but I'm figuring I'll just iron later this afternoon when all is done.  Here is the second layer...  I am using the sponge applicators for this, seeing if it makes a difference or not...  It also looked as I was applying the paint on the right side that the stabilizer was not quite ironed on perfectly... Hmmmm.... hope those spools come out okay...

 

This is fun!  This may be a simplistic design & concept, but I think I'll have a fun jacket from it...  I am going to paint some black lines on it for delineations and then there will be some color lines for the threads coming off of the spools... This should be fun looking, for a first timer, anyway  :-)  I also want to put "sewing" on the sleeves on at least one side, and something on the other.  (maybe "notions"?)  That's the advantage of the painting - being able to put things on the sleeves...can't embroider on sleeves (per say) unless you are able to undo the seams on the sleeves and what not...

 

 

Well, unless you want to sit for 4 hours and watch paint dry... I'm off........ Back later...

 

Later...

 

Spools Done..  It did seem that using the sponge applicators worked better, at least they did on here... is that because the spaces were smaller?  Here are the spool bodies worked well with these applicators - I don't think there was any overage...

 

 

Thread Bodies Applications...

 

All Templates Done....

 

Now for the freehand... I must admit I had the most fun here... shading the machine, it looks good in person, the threads, well they were basic... then had to fill in the spots in the text - not particularly my best work there... and then there was a spot left over, empty/negative space, so I entered my beginning year of my craft - 2011.

 

All in all I am satisfied with my first ever painting/stencil project.

 

Once this dries, I'll keep thinking about doing the sleeves.  If I do them, they might be freehand...Or I can take a look at stencils at JA of letters.  Those I can use over and over.....it was good to make the stencil of the sewing machine & then hand paint the details on it... but the little text I think I might like better hand drawn.  I don't know for sure, I have to experiment...

Last pic of the jacket "in action"... I notice I have the design low like when i made my faux leather halter, and the results are that the design bunches in that curvature of the small of my back.  So this is twice now, I will be more conscious of this moving forward... for this pic I pulled the waist of the jacket down, but probably won't wear it that way all the time, so the text will be bunched up a bit.

 

 

Oh yeah - the jacket is Purple Heather Jersey Knit (maybe doubleknit?) lined with Black Sherpa - kewl huh?  It's so cuddly and warm.... MMMmmmmmm

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SWAP Faux Leather Halter

Now it's a Halter....

Okay, so the last top was originally conceived as a halter, but morphed into a vest/top...Now I'm going to make a true Halter.  Lined and everything.  So, let me start with a picture of what I want to make: 

 

This is a Harley Davidson Halter.  It is a basic concept I can draft a pattern from.  Now I do not know if I am drafting patterns properly, so I wouldn't go by what I do, because it's not necessarily easy to put my curves together, but I make do.  I will definitely have to take a patten drafting class, or look harder at the patterns that I have to get an idea how they are doing it...  Anyway, so far it's working out OK... Like I said maybe not the easiest way, but it's A way in any case...

 

 

Did a lot of figuring on this one, based on the photo in the sheet above.  Basically, my Halter would be 3.5 times the size of the photo measurements.  I figured that out by taking a measurement from the front of my chest to the bottom of where I hoped to have it land.

 

Okay 4 pieces, but I wasn't going to rush this just because there were only 4 pieces.  This time I was going to do a Muslin to make sure of the fit

 

Front looks good,,,

 

 

Back too...  This seemed to be okay, and I would allow for last minute adjustments on the fly...

 

So I decided I wanted to embroider a design on this halter... a Wolf.... so off to Embroidery Library to choose a nice design... I have never been disappointed with a design purchased from them as I have from elsewhere...  Found one, so here we go...  A fun part - choosing the colors. One of the reasons I could handle this design is that there were only 14 color changes.. that is manageable... however there were 29,900 some odd stitches! so that would take a while, but I'll survive... This was such a nice design... So the colors on the bottom are my selections...

 

 

Okay...124 minutes - That's just stitching time, i knew there would be some jumps toward the end because of the leaves and the face/eyes, nose, etc., and then the color changes, etc.  so let's see, it's....

 

just before 6.  Thank goodness I'm off tomorrow! I can stay up a few extra minutes to finish this tonight!  Ladies...Start your needles!...vroom  vrooom!

 

 

Now you know we are excited - down to 3 minutes!!!!!!

 

2 minutes!!!!!!

 

1 minute!!!!!

 

DONE!!!!

 

 

Took a little while, huh?  But look below!

 

 

Boy, that sure looks grand....  I love it....

 

So next I wanted to add flair to the front as well.  I've seen beading before and was actually going to make a shirt that had this on it, so now I decided to put it on my Halter.  I went to My Favorite Forum and some of the the gals mentioned I could weave my own. (this was in response to me asking where can I buy them)  so I looked into that... Hey sounds good, right?  Got a mini loom for like 6 bucks

 

 

 

And off to JoAnn's for some beads.  JA didn't have a great assortment of colors for sure, but I  bought some and actually made something work.  I designed my own design (what else, right?)

 

 

 

Watched some YouTube videos to see how to do this... Once you get it it's relatively easy. There are some skips and I don't know how to 'properly' fix them, so I make up a way, looks okay... 

 

Then there are some beads that are too small that you some across that won't fit through the needle, so you have to dump those...  I don't know if that's the nature of the craft, or if the beads are cheap?  I know in the videos they were talking about picking up several beads at a time, but each time I tried that, like say if I had a row of white, I inevitably had a bead that was too small, so that wasn't working out.  So I just did them one at a time...

 

 

 

Here's one finished...

 

 

Both... Then I had to create the Braided border that I see on leather garments with beads..

 

I tested out a few different widths on the braid pieces and found a thin one that worked well, so cut two of those and braided them..

 

 

 

 

Okay, so I made two slits in the fabric (very small) to feed the threads through at the top and bottom of the bead strips, then gave a little glue to the beads and glued them to the halter.  Then glued the braid around the beading...

 

 

A little Southwestern flair to this halter.  Now we can put the liner in, we are done with embellishments...

 

Okay, So.... much has been accomplished all without many snapshots, sad to say.  I installed the zipper next, and wouldn't you know I was tired and I installed the zip on the Side Seam! HA! so i had to take that out - AND when I took that out, I ripped it, thinking the seam ripper was just gliding along nicely - but no! it was just ripping my zipper tape along not-so-nicely....  So  basically with no more separating zippers, I was forced to call it a night.  Gee ya think I would've stopped earlier eh?

 

So stopped at JA on the way home from work and picked up another few zippers... for stash and what not... so needed to get the fit right.  the side panels were installed last night before the zipper fiasco, so I wanted to get right in to install the zip and get the fit right, because the preliminary looks made the back seem all bunchy.  Hmmmm.

 

So, installed zipper, got fitting as best as possible and realized that the embroidery on the back was causing the bunching (the first issue was the loose fit)  the design was solid stitching so it was like having a hard disc right there with no movability.  so it bunches right underneath, due to the fact that I wanted a longer length than a typical "Biker Halter".  I wanted it to cover my back while I was sitting position on the bike.  Next time I will stitch out the design higher - that is the learning point here.  Placing the solid stitch design right at the curvature of the small of my back is not optimal.  Good lesson learned.

 

Well glued all the top seams and clipped them. all that is left now is to top stitch all seams next chance I get, install the grommets at the top of the neck straps for rope closure, and take beautiful pictures! - then, of course,  add the pic to my SWAP wall board.

 

 

More when I'm finished....

 

Okay, worked late today, but i was excited to get all the top stitching done and finish up my halter, so did normal stitching along the faux leather and an overlock stitch over the knit side panels.  Then I installed the grommets in the top halter straps, and made fabric tie strap, which was made by merely folding the leather and sewing a topstitch about 3/8" from the folded edge, and then a close trim of the excess.  I used scrap for this :-)... looped the tie and now we are complete!!!!!

 

 

Try on and picture time... I'm just waiting for a semi warm and sunny day so I can take some pix of my two new outfits on my bike!

 

 

 

Cheers!