Didn’t get much crafting done during the past week, so it is time to reach into the archive. Remember the freezer paper screen printing post?

Well, here is a picture of the shirt my sister Jen made for Tyrone:

 He said he wanted concentric circles. It was only when he tried it on that we all realized it was a target.  Recently Ty’s been busy working on a short story for a class with Tim O’Brien.  The class starts at the end of March, and Ty is really excited about it.

My sister knows me pretty well. She knows she can have an idea for a craft rolling around her brain, and she can have all of the raw materials and still not get it done, or totally commit to it. All she has to do is clue me in on the awesomeness of her project and I’m in. It happened like that when she went on the Atkins diet and lost some weight but wanted to lose more. Soon we were frying up huge batches of bacon on the weekends to eat with our weekly lunches of cream-fortified jell-o, pickles, meaty salads, and cheese slices.

This year for Christmas, she brought a bunch of organic cotton T-shirts home with a few colors of acrylic paint and some sort of “fabric paint medium”. Looks like we could have used any sort of regular fabric paint too. She made one for my brother’s girlfriend and Tyrone. We had fun working together and using the iron, although I could have used more color choices. In the end, the light green looks pretty cool.

One form of instructions.

Here is another set.

Here’s how it turned out:

The print is based on a dandelion seed print I once saw, but I couldn’t get the detail I wanted with the freezer paper. I really should probably learn how to screen print someday.

For the record, I think this is the 4th brown T-shirt I own. After the Prairie Schooner ones, I think they have all have some sort of pastel ink on them too. My sister Jen made Tyrone a shirt with concentric circles on it. Yep, it looks like a target, but it is centered more on his right side, “to throw ‘em off.”

Merry Craftsmas to you all! It was fun, but I am glad it is over now!

Ended up crafting almost all of the gifts. If the gifts were not crafted, most had some sort of made-in-the USA craft influence. For instance, we got Ty’s father a Sailor Jerry Tattoo art book, and we had a picture blown up and framed for my father and brother.

My sister even topped-off “Craftsmas” by bringing blank shirts, acrylic paint, and freezer paper to do freezer paper screen-printing. The pictures of those shirts are to follow.

Here’s one of the finished gifts…A sun hat for my mother who really likes floppy sunhats. This one isn’t very floppy. It was my first experience with fusible interfacing, and a valuable technique for when I decide to make my derby hat.

She didn’t realize I made the hat until I pointed it out. As a former Home Econ teacher, she gave it an A+!