SWAP Wearable Art

A JDol Creation for my SWAP Denim Motorycle Outfit...

A lot if inspiration went into this project.  First and foremost my comrade IndigoTiger from my Favorite Sewing Forum gets mega kudos for inspiring me to paint this halter.  She does stenciling on her Tee's and after seeing her latest Cave Horse Stencil Tee (Max is on that link, too) I had to give stenciling a try.  So I did on the jacket in a previous post in February.  I enjoyed it, and remembered all those years ago when I used to paint acrylics and dabbled in watercolor.  My painting artist was awakened, and now I have another way to personalize my clothing.... I found I like to mix stencil with much freehand painting. Way too much fun!

I was inspired by this Harley leather Halter

 

Already made one Halter from this inspiration picture (see below)

 

 

So since I was able to acquire more of this wine denim and wanted to make a halter for my SWAP denim motorcycle gear collection, I decided I wanted to paint it. Now, what to paint on it?  Much deliberation and I decided on butterflies (my new fancy)  So here I go with a blank canvas again... takes me a while to get going in one direction when there are millions... so got over to JA's for more paints and found some spray paint - Yes! that would be perfect for the background... I like the misty soft gradient nature that would build on the base.  Then I found spray on glitter - Yes! had to have that, too.  I was well on my way.

 

I cut the pieces and sewed the back pieces together, and began to paint my background

 

It sort of goes on and soaks in very fast.  I worked with it, and a few coats....

 

 

Then painted the glitter on...

 

 

So, Now to let the background dry a good 4 plus hours....

 

Sewed together the font pieces, and painted them.  This is the first coat - it soaks in after it goes on...  I think by the time I was done, I had more of a solid shade on the underneath of the vest, than on the top of the vest.  Not thrilled with that; I was hoping for a more opaque spray paint job for the back ground.

 

 

Below is the after shot....

 

 

Making the stencil for the main butterfly on the back of the vest.  Now mind you, I was in the kitchen looking at the finished back panel, visualizing different images and trying to figure out what kind of butterfly design I was going to paint on the panel, so I'm staring at the panel on the floor on the newspapers "drying" and DH comes in and says - "Nothing like watching paint dry"... LOL...

 

 

Got the basic down, now to play...  I had inspirations from this Butterfly Pictures Website and went on to paint the main butterfly.  The whole image was going to come along as I was inspired to make each next step....

 

 

Butterfly Done

 

 

Next inspiration...

 

And finally the end result:

 

 

So that is the rear panel.  I am letting the two front pieces dry overnight.  We'll get more pix as we proceed to the front pieces.  I also want to top this off with another shot of glitter - I like that added sparkle.

 

The Next Day...

 

Well, I'm working on the front pieces today, (painting)... So far so good...  The pieces dried overnight, so my "canvas" is ready... See below what I mean that the paint seemed to coat through to the underside more than the top side?  There must be some sort of primer available to prime the fabric to avoid that... Wrong side is shown first below.

 

 

 



 

Okay, so off to drawing a little bit of an outline of my butterfly... yes you can barely see it in real life, too....

 

 

So painting the first side then wanting the second side to come out reasonably mirrored, I traced the first image mirrored onto the Stabilizer Paper, to cut a quick template...

 

 

I basically laid the paper on top of the wet paint first to get a general outline.

 

So now have both sides painted the base image.

 

 

Now to go to work on the painting - Fun!

 

Here is my result...

 

 

The picture doesn't grab the glitter paint that is what you see the gold as.  I think this top looks real nice in person.  I want to add a little some thing more to the sides... not sure If I'm going to add some kind of glittery swirls, or some green stemmed flowers...  It's a big decision... still gotta ponder... the gold swirls will enhance the butterfly, and the green stemmed flowers will bring more color... need to determine what I am going for on the front... The back is very colorful....so do I want to keep that theme or ???.... anyway, I'm really enjoying this, and can't wait to sew it all up and see how it looks modeled with the pants. 

 

It's supposed to be sunny and 50F next Friday, so I am hoping to model my new outfits on my motorcycle... I have 4 outfits now. (well this will round out the 4th) 2 spring and 2 summer.  I need to get more of that brown knit and make a long sleeve tee to wear under the fringe faux leather top.

 

Later

 

Okay, so paint dried, and installed side panels...

 

 

Then the zip on front pieces...

 

Oh yeah....BTW I decided on glitter flowers with butterflies on the sides of the big butterfly. Just a little accent.

 

So, sewed up all the top stitching/hems and we were all done. 

 

Now I have a piece of Wearable Art.

 

Final Pix:

 

 

 

Hip Hip Hoo-ray!

 

Cheers,

 

JDol

 

 

 



Patch It

Saturday Morning...

Well, DH projects are backing up so I had to get some out the door :-)... I have another pair of leather pants to alter for him, although I've been intimidated because the last ones didn't last perfectly.  I would like to get a larger eye needle so I can use my stronger thread that I have. ("gotta go to JoAnn's")  :D HaHa!...  So that's been on my rack for a few weeks, contemplating what to do.... ( I just thought of the needle solution this morning as I wrote this.)  You see I'm still a novice and figuring out the billions of details that go into sewing by machine...

 

I also have a dress shirt monogramming project from, oh, way back when, it is now on the rack, but it is from so long ago I have to re-ask what I am supposed to be doing with it... something on the cuffs.... it was so long ago, that I was nervous to do it, not really knowing how.  Now I know how and am confident, just need to know the what... :D...  Then there are two pairs of jeans that I was going to let the waist out a little - those need to be found and put back in the queue.

 

So that leads me to Saturday morning...There was a jean jacket that the sleeves needed shortening, that was a bit tricky for some reason, but we worked it out by fitting the sleeves while the jacket was on him.... For some reason it wasn't a straight "take it up by 2 inches all around" type refit... the front was only being taken up around 1 1/2 and the back about 2 1/2 - like that.  It was interesting.  but it came out with the nod of approval from DH, so we were happy.

 

 

 

Then there were a bunch of patches that he had ironed on, but that needed to be tacked down on two jean jackets, so we got all those done for him.

 

The Ravens Jacket:

 

 

 

 

 

And the Patriotic Jacket:  (You should see this patch in person - it is beautiful, and takes up the whole back of the jacket)

 

 

So we had started out the morning that way, then went on to work on my painted denim halter which will be in another post when I am done....

 

Cheers!

 

 

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!