How to make your own souvenir garment pt.2

Last week I told you all about ruining my fave sweater in a sudden spring cleaning urge and deciding to make it into on of my fave projects: a souvenir garment! Me and my loves went on an amazing half year trip through North and Central America and I have been looking for ways to keep our travels close to our hearts while easing back into our life in Rotterdam. We are sending each other random memories over whatsapp, at dinner we do little games like where were we exactly 2 months ago, what was your favorite day, what was your favorite bed etc… But as an artist I also love doodling memories and using those to make my lasting garment. Upcycling fave garments with awesome memories is triple awesome!

I like to draw and doodle when we travel. Here is a page from my notebook. I doodle mostly with my fave black muji pen, just quick sketches of things I want to remember.

(left a “ I am going on a trip an I am taking…’ sketch. We played that game for hours while cruising in our rented campervan through California. At the end I made a little drawing of it (not during the game of course that would be cheating!!! Right is a drawing of all the things miss J carries with her all the time in her bg <3))

So I will use all these doodles to create my souvenir sweater but first I had to decide on colors!!!! And I am so happy y’all helped me out. The poll of last week was pretty close but the most votes went to this one. I am all for this color combo and also using the freedom of being an artist to add dark blue. I think that will be a great color for some fine line details!

(read all about this amaaazing A Dictionary of Color Combinations by Sanso Wada in last weeks newsletter.)

I am really diggin’ those polls, super fun to see your votes! So I am thinking of making it a thing. This week you can choose between two very important memories of our trip: the sequoia and the tostidos (iykyk). I will print them both on my souvenir sweater but which one first?

Left: My favorite Sequoia tree. They are the tallest and one of the oldest trees in the world. 100 meters (300 ft) high and over 2000 years old. We camped under them in our little van and they are so so so beautiful. To think of all the ages they lived through! I want the Sequoia tree printed on the full sleeve of the sweater, nice and tall. I am thinking of experimenting with making a stencil bigger than my screen and see if i could print along, if that works it would be a game changer! Also printing fine lines is always such a fun thing to do. This one is time wise a smaller project.

Right: Tostilicos! My kids favorite snack during our travels in Mexico (iykyk). Not an easy print (read: difficult print) but very fun because of all the techniques in it. Lots of layers and some next level cutting!

So what to do? Ease in to it and discuss some basic techniques in my next post or dive into it and start talking advanced techniques right away?

Also let me know in the comments if there is any specific technique you want me to show y’all!

Can’t wait to see your votes and start printing again!

Xoxoxoxoxoxo

Barbara aka Bobbinhood