Help me pick my next cross stitch project!

I'm getting that feeling again, folks - it's time to embark on another large cross stitch that will, no doubt, take about 6 months and cause me much misery and madness. But there's nothing quite so satisfying as having stitched something so large and so special. Last year I made a Starship Enterprise, and the year before that it was a Fantastic Flying Petrelli. But what shall it be this time?

Before we get to that, however, a quick diversion to explain why I stitch the things that I do.

I hated all the forms of sewing and crafting that I learned as a child. But then I got back into cross stitching a few years ago after stumbling across the concept of subversive cross stitch. I liked the idea of working in a medium with so many connotations and stereotypes (traditionally feminine, old-fashioned, sweet-to-the-point-of-nauseating) and creating something so counter to those ideas. An early project of mine was to stitch the sweary-est of swear words on a cushion. I must find a picture of that some day.

Anyhow, I'm far from alone in finding it great fun to craft items that are pretty far removed from your grandma's "home sweet home" sampler (no offense to your grandma, of course). I've seen many great pieces of subversive cross stitch and other crafts over the years, and there are two I'd like to share before I try to make my decision on Operation Cross Stitch of Doom 3.0.

Becky Schaefer's work adds unexpected touches to otherwise traditional needlepoint landscapes. This one featuring Lara Croft is my particular favourite:

And then there's Noelle Mason's work ‘Nothing Much Happened Today (for Eric and Dylan)’ a cross stitch of a security camera image of the Columbine High School shooting. I won't post a pic of it in this post for those who might not want to see it, but if you are interested, check it out here. It's definitely not a fluffy, nice piece of work, and I'm not sure I'd ever want to make something similar, but it did make me think. And isn't that always the point of any artistic endeavour?

And so, finally, we get to the point. I know exactly what kind of project I want to stitch next, but I don't know exactly what image I want to work from. I need your help, peoples of the interwebs! It is going to be an image of a fictional woman, committing, or about to commit a violent act. It has to be a fictional character because I'm totally fine with fictional violence, I even really enjoy it in some shows and movies. But real life violence is not so awesome. It has no cool soundtrack and people don't magically heal completely about 2 minutes later. And it has to be a woman because that fits with the subversion of expectations concept. But which fictional woman? Buffy? Ellen Ripley? Sarah Connor? Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace? Someone else? And what specific image do I want? If it's Ripley, surely it has to be the the "get away from her, you bitch" scene from Aliens where she's in the mechanical power-loader thingy. And if it's to be Buffy, I'd love to try and capture the sheer rage in Buffy's eyes from the moment she gets back up in Chosen and tells the First Evil to "get out of my face". But there's so many images flying through my brain and my google-fu is failing me right now, so advise me. Help me internet, you're my only hope!

T-Shirt Tutorial

Ages ago I promised I'd post a tutorial about how to make a "bleached out" t-shirt design. And here it (finally!) is.

So, without any further ado, how did I go from finding this pumpkin carving, to making this t-shirt? And how can you make your own?

 

 

Things you will need:

A dark coloured t-shirt
Something to be a stencil (options discussed below, I'm using freezer paper on this project)
A craft knife
Something that is safe to cut on
An iron that has both steam and no steam options
A paint brush
Something to "bleach out" the colour (I'm using a paste that takes the colour out of fabric)
Fabric pen or paint in the colour of the t-shirt fabric (optional)
 

First of all, you need to pick an image for your design, and then make it practical to be a stencil. As you can see I've just nicked someone else's pumpkin idea to make this quick and easy. If you need to turn a full colour, complicated image into a silhouette for a stencil, then this tutorial is pretty good at helping you through that process. Remember that you want to cut out the pieces that will be light, leaving behind the dark, so dark bits floating in the middle of light spaces can sometimes be tricky, although not impossible (see Spock's eyebrow and eye, or Audrey Hepburn's eyes in other t-shirts I've made)

I use freezer paper for my stencils, because they can be ironed on to the t-shirt, making the process nice and simple. You can use pretty much anything though - card and acetate work well, if you tape them onto the t-shirt, or sticky back plastic (known as contact paper in the US) can also do the job (remember to flip the image if you're printing it directly onto the sticky back plastic, as you're printing on the back).

I inverted the colours of my image to save ink and printed it directly onto the freezer paper.



Then cut it out. I use my awesome fingertip craft knife (so much easier for cutting around corners than a regular craft knife) on a cutting mat so that I don't damage anything!



So, that's the stencil all ready.



Iron the freezer paper onto your t-shirt (at an appropriate temperature for the fabric, with no steam).  Make sure that all the pointy bits are firmly stuck down.



Now it's time to remove the colour from the t-shirt. Some people use bleach, but I find it really difficult to work with and it can damage delicate fabrics. So I use discharge paste. I know, I know, worst name for a product ever. And it doesn't help matters that it's a gloopy, smelly paste, but the results it can give you are worth putting up with all its drawbacks.



Brush the paste onto the fabric, making sure all the open stencil areas are covered evenly.



Leave it to dry for a few hours then peel the stencil off. If you're careful you can remove the stencil in one, allowing you to use the stencil again.

This is a weird picture of how the paste looks as it's drying.



I'm afraid there's no photo of this next step, as I just didn't trust myself not to damage the camera. Make sure you're in a well ventilated room for this bit.

Set your iron to it the lowest temperature at which it produces steam, and set it to give off the most steam possible. Then you steam the paste off your t-shirt and it takes the dark coloured dye with it, leaving a pale colour right before your eyes. It's almost like magic, except very smelly. I can't tell you exactly what colour will be left behind, as it varies from one colour of t-shirt to the next, and also depends on the fabric. It will be somewhere in the region of beigey-ecru-pale yellow. It often appears to be quite an orangey-yellow right after ironing, but if you leave it for a few minutes it often lightens up. So far, I've concluded that it works best on black, bright pink, purples and red. It does very strange things to green, and brown can often be a bit unpredictable.

Sometimes at this stage there may be sections of the design that haven't lightened as much as you would have hoped, so I occasionally apply another coat of paste and start the whole process over. The colour is rarely completely even all over, unless you have an amazing skill with the application of the paste, but often that adds to the charm of the design. Fabric with discharge paste on it needs to be washed before wearing to make it as soft as it was before. The paste does not damge the fabric.

Other times, there may be slight smudges, where some paste escaped under the stencil, or the iron moved some paste that was still quite wet. That ends up looking like this:



This is the point where a fine tipped fabric pen, in the same colour as the t-shirt, comes in very handy, to just tidy up the design a little.



And there we have it, one silhouetted Batman t-shirt!



I've never done a tutorial like this before, so if I've left anything unclear, or you'd like further explanation of any point, then please let me know.

MOAR T-shirts!

And some more Christmas pressies, this time for adult sized humans.

We'll start with my favourite of the bunch:




Some close ups of the V for Vendetta design:



I loves me an AT AT:



Leverage is back tonight! Woot!



Audrey's face looks a little faded in the pic, but it looks nicer with actual eyeballs.



A t-shirt for science geeks and X-Men nerds alike:



And a big cat chasing a gazelle or something...



As always, more pics here if you're interested.

Teeny tiny superheroes

So for Christmas I decided that all the small humans in my life needed their own superhero t-shirts. For the wee-est ones they're obviously more presents for the parents, but those over the age of four had quite the grasp on which symbols went with which superheroes. Indoctrinate the next generation of geeks early, I say!

All the designs were done with homemade stencils, and a combination of discharging dye for the pale bits, and fabric paint and pens. I was asked a while back to do a tutorial on making stencil designs and discharging dye which I'm in the process of getting together. The more people who prod me about, the quicker I'll get it done!

So, without further ado, I present my mini-heroes.



The Flash one is, I think, my favourite. Although I did have a minor wibble when it was finished about it looking printed and not actually appearing handmade, which is kinda the point. This prompted only mocking from my partner however, so no sympathy for me.



This Superman logo is a bit alternative in terms of colours but basically I started colouring in the wrong bit and decided to make the best of a bad job! Ooops. (No one tell the small human who received this pressie!)



I can never resist a tiny Batman logo!



Captain America. Nothing much to say on this one.



This Superboy one also came out great. There was a bit more freehand involved in this so I was worried it wouldn't come out well. But I never know nuffin' apparently. Seemingly easy projects turn out to be nightmares and things that concern me end up looking great!



Now this was an absolute nightmare. It looks fine from some angles, but from others it can appear mottled, almost tie-dyed. It's like (as I described here on twitter at the time) an undercover Green Lantern at Woodstock. I had previous problems with discharging dye on a green t-shirt, so I'm theorizing that it's something in the very nature of green dye to come out oddly. Shall experiment some more and report back.



More photos can be found over at my Flickr photstream here.

Star Trek Uniforms (I cannot think of a witty title... or even a bad pun...)

As may be quite obvious, I have been quite obsessed with making Star Trek crafts of late. At some point I will wean myself onto other fandoms and obsessions. In fact, pretty soon I will be asking for the wisdom of my internet friends to help me decide what the next cross stitch of head-melting-ly biggness will be.

But for now I present to you some nu-Trek uniforms that I would totally wear as a Halloween costume if I were doing the dressing up thing this year. But I'm not. So goodness only knows why I made them. Hopefully someone will want them!



So here's some Command gold...



Oh noes! It's a red shirt! She's dooooooooooooooooooooooooooomed!



These are totally not the right boots for the look, but they were close enough at hand to give the right idea...



And here's a close up of the phaser on the trousers. I made a stencil of the basic phaser shape and then discharged the dye so that I could fabric paint the details over the top. Unfortunately discharging black from fabric is a bit more unpredictable than with any other colour, which is why it seems a little orangey in the middle. But it's not that noticeable with the naked eye thankfully.


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And you can see even more pics here.

Spaceship Stitched - the Enterprise is complete!

Nearly 33,000 stitches and four months have gone into this 42cm by 20cm piece of loveliness.

It's very pleasing to have finished a project and actually still like it. Goodness only knows what craziness I'll put myself through next. But for now at least I know that I like this ship. It's exciting!

This picture has come out a little blue for some reason, but I think it shows off the subtle changes in colour quite nicely.



This one's much more accurate in terms of colour.



And then this pic shows up my not always perfect stitching skills! But it does show the stitches close to their actual size.



And so she is finished! Hurrah!

And relax.... Until next time.....

Hello!

Cross-posting in progress from http://anonymityblaize.livejournal.com/