Getting ready to change my "blank canvas" of color splashed linen fabric was a bit of a challenge because I didn't know ahead of time what I wanted to do with it.
I could have left it like it was and finished sewing everything up, but decided that since this was an experiment, I should just go further along.
Lately, I've been liking the color red. Wearing it is fun! So I said to myself, "if I were me, what color would I like to play with?" and there it was, red.
I have several bottles of Setacolor fabric paint that are at least 5 years old and mostly full. Again, figuring, "what have I got to lose?", I committed to the red and decided to actually use some of the many commercial stamps I've been collecting over the years. See this butterfly? It's big. Really big. It's over 6 inches across and really makes a statement. Yes, butterflies are reminders of ongoing transformation, change and beauty, but this thing is kind of blocky. Oh well. Letting it sit in a plastic bag in my garage isn't using it, is it?
I was kind of happy with how well the Setacolor by Pebeo covered the stamp and really did show up like, "WoW!" on the spattered fabric. Once I put one down, I had a hard time stopping. The little kid inside kept saying, "more, more!", but I managed to keep it down to about nine impressions across the front and back of the skirt.
Since the paint dried so fast, I hung it up and went to work on the top while the stamp was still damp. Partial butterflies were fun to do, but I wasn't all that sure about the actual design of the front of the top, so I washed out the stamp and took a break to think.
Going away from a project is sometimes the best thing you can do. While having some tea and finishing up some billing for the office, I remembered a phrase about change that really appealed to me. "Change is to give up what we are to become what we could be." I'm sorry I don't know who said or wrote that, but it stuck in my head and arrived for this project. I found a set of really neat typewriter font stamps in my stamp box and stamped the phrase out on pieces of paper. Then, it was just a matter of laying them out to see how it would look. What fun! No committment, just a chance to see how it might look!
The butterfly was the center and the words, both small and large size, fit nicely on the top.
Of course, as I looked at it, I couldn't imagine wearing the thing, but it was pretty!
I used some black fabric paint for the letters and did one word at a time. Easy!
I got so good at it, I put the phrase on the skirt too, though it doesn't show up as well because the drops and splotches have more of a pattern that pulls on your eyes, but that just doesn't matter.
This is the skirt laid out on my work table with one seam sewn and the butterflies scattered all over.
That's the nice thing about sewing something yourself. You can work with the piece nice and flat and place images over seams very easily.
I let everything dry for a few days, then pressed the painted and stamped fabric to set the paint.
The butterflies are really bright, and this is a little more garish than I am used to, but hey, who really cares? I doubt if the fashion police even have a station here in south Florida, so I will wear this thing with red dangly earrings and forget that I am over 62.
