silk screening?

I looked back through my posts and couldn't find a previous post about Camp Quality Illinois this year. So I hope this isn't reduntant--I was sure I'd mentioned this year's project.

Each year my EGA chapter teaches at this camp one morning--we design, kit and teach a project that can be done by children from 6 to 16, boys and girls both, with and without experience. It's kind of daunting but fun.

This year our day's theme is Hawai'ian Luau. Our chapter has on hand tins for our Indiana State Day event coming up and we decided to use them and develop a project that could be put into the cover. Since we have felt and I love working with felt, felt it is...

I used freezer paper stencils to create the positives of this hibiscus. The negatives were made by carefully ironing on the cut out bits--not too easy and the little pieces didn't stick well.I played around with some embroidery on the samples above. The top one is in the tin we'll use--it's just a bit large for the opening. We got a nice donation of perle cotton to use for the embroidery. My inclination is to give the children the stenciled fabric and some thread and let them do what they want--no set pattern or rules. I also plan to have extra felt on hand for the creative ones.

Below is a shot of the used stencils, set up for reuse. They should iron on a few times. I also decided to try my hand at silk screening the negative design. I read all I could find on it and checked out some silk screening supplies at J0-Ann's and then I bought some bridal chiffon, the finest I could find.

I tacked and taped it to stretcher bars and then traced my design with a Sharpie marker. I painted in the parts to remain white with Modge-Podge. I had read about someone else using this because it's more water resistant than some other media. (It was a while back that I read up on this and didn't keep any source material or printouts, just vague memories.)

I haven't tried it yet, but there's a long weekend coming up this weekend and I plan to give it a go and see what happens. Hopefully, the final silkscreened piece will look like the stenciled version on the bottom right and be easier to do in multiples. (Sadly, Camp Quality is always booked to the max with kids wanting to come---I generally estimate about 75 kits.)

I've also developed a tiki design for the less flowery stitchers. I think I'll wait and see how the silk screen does and, if it works, do that one as a silk screen. Any suggestions are welcome! Wish me luck!

I'm going on a computerless holiday from Thursday night through Monday! Mostly we'll be at home, hanging around, although one day we plan to visit with my family. (It's hard to find a day on a holiday weekend when both of our nurses are off work at the same time!)