{"id":1607,"date":"2014-07-19T23:05:28","date_gmt":"2014-07-19T23:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/?p=1607"},"modified":"2014-07-20T07:01:04","modified_gmt":"2014-07-20T07:01:04","slug":"storycloth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/2014\/07\/storycloth\/","title":{"rendered":"#storycloth"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last 6 weeks we have been involved in a community art project with local visual artist Denise Stanton <\/a>creating a family story cloth. There are 2 sections to the cloth one part created by us the other by our family in Chicago. <\/p>\n

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This has been a great experience, we’ve learnt new skills, met new people & created a piece of work we are really proud of. We created a stash of little pieces of printed & stitched material to make up the story cloth. We also added flashing lights behind the book spines print on the cloth, programmed & stitched by Owen using Lilypad Arduino to include some tech.<\/p>\n

The project involved weekly sessions as a family creating pieces for our story cloth by printing into fabric & sewing as well as a couple of morning sessions which I attended alone giving me the chance to focus.<\/p>\n

Our first step was creating a design for a screen print. We agreed on books as something we all love & added the family names of those involved in the project. <\/p>\n

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In possession of our screen print we then learnt about what paints to use, mixing colours & made numerous prints on different fabric. Denise suggested making a patchwork of fabric & printing onto them with a mix of colours. <\/p>\n

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\nOther printing techniques included Lino cutting, which I had previously attempted but this time I got to work with colour opening up new possibilities of combining prints on different backgrounds. A key lesson I learned with printing (aside from have an organised space) is to make lots of prints & experiment.<\/p>\n

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\nWe also discovered some child friendly printing techniques, the simplest was mono printing where we etched out a drawing into the paint then laid the fabric or paper on top to print onto.<\/p>\n

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We also used some foam to cut out a simple shapes to create a stamp. We used this technique to make a ribbon by making a couple of simple stamps & repeating the pattern onto long strips of cloth.<\/p>\n

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\nAnother printing technique was easy print\/ safe print where the children impressed a design onto a polystyrene type printing material. Easy to use & no sharp cutting tools like the ones used for Lino cutting.<\/p>\n

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Using these techniques we all learned how simple designs were the most effective and that using the rollers was the most fun part.<\/p>\n

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\nAside from printing I had the chance to overcome my fear of sewing machine, using a machine with a speed setting was a big help. I loved freehand stitching, moving the fabric to make pretty designs was great fun.<\/p>\n

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\nMy new found confidence with the sewing machine was put to the test when I had to sew on all the different prints and finish with a bias binding bordering to the cloth.<\/p>\n

A fantastic project allowing us to celebrate our creativity, be bold with our ideas & turn Owen into a knitter.<\/p>\n

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For the last 6 weeks we have been involved in a community art project with local visual artist Denise Stanton creating a family story cloth. There are 2 sections to the cloth one part created by us the other by our family in Chicago. This has been a great experience, we’ve learnt new skills, met […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}