How to make your own souvenir garment pt.1

So I accidentally killed my favorite sweater spring cleaning. Darn. After lots of ‘why was I wearing my favorite sweater while running around with a bleach bottle’ dialoges with myself I remembered that I am a screen printer! Thank Goddess! So now I tell myself I did not ruin my sweater I simply gave myself a fun project.

(Okay, okay, I can hear you thinking jeeeeeeez is thát your fave sweater? I know it ain’t fancy but it has the perfect fit and is 1000% cotton which I love (polyester mix sweaters make me deeply sad). Also it is soooo comfy and it has the perfect after surf feel and I bought it years ago in one of my fave surftowns, so…… enough reasons right there!)

What to screen print I asked myself and the answer came quickly. I am going to make this into a delicious long project of making a very fun souvenir sweater of our big half year of travel (wrote about that here). I love making souvenir garments after our travels like I did after our trip to Marocco , when I transformed an old tee into a lasting souvenir. That way I am not only up-cycling an item but also reliving your trip. Every time I wear that tee it also makes my housemates happy and I hear them sighing oooooh Maroccooooo.

I was looking around a bit in my saved instagram posts to get my inspiration flowing. I like to print out my inspiration to keep me company while I am doodling around. For me it is really important to have them off screen otherwise I get distracted way to much and forget to do what I really love… drawing and making real things (i/o doooom scrollling). Here is my inspiration for this project.

ulrikeleamoormann mlgrsdesign philippacoules fenmytaxena baema.t.boa

I was thinking of a color palette of 4 colors, one of them is set, the purple of the sweater. For projects like this I love to grab my A Dictionary of Color Combinations by Sanso Wada. This book always helps me to choose colors. It is a gem! There are two volumes, for this project I used the first one. When you select a base color, the book gives you a couple of options to pair it with. I really love it.

In the back of the book are all the color swatches, there are many. So you pic the color you want as a base color and behind that you see numbers. Those numbers reference to different color combos in the book (combos of 2, 3 or 4 colors). And at the end of the book there are even pages with small swatches you can cut out! So effin cool! (also the book was made in the 1930’s!!!!).

I selected 3 options and now y’all can help me choose. What’s your fave?!

(Disclaimer ;) I cannot guarantee that I will actually use that color way. Artists gotta artist….)

Can’t wait to see what you’ll choose. Next week I’ll start doodling away!

XO Bobbinhood

aka Barbara & Dani