How to Design Your Own Fabric!

If you've been hangin' around this blog for a while (I thank you!) then you might know that I love to make my own clothing. It started with a desire to craft clothing to teach a lesson in (a la Miss Frizzle) and then morphed into wanting to make everything in my wardrobe. One thing I never seemed to be able to accomplish: Designing my own fabric.

Well...when my book Larry the Line came out, I was able to do just that! But it was easy as the pattern from the book was a stripe pattern. So it naturally repeated making for the perfect pattern. 

However, there were no stripes in my new book Alfred the Ape Knows his Shapes. So I thought it would be a good time to learn how to design my own fabric. I was so excited with how it turned out! When I shared it on my Instagram, I promised I'd give a tutorial...and, so, here we are!

I hope this helps!

Now I always get dress-making questions too...which I share a little about in the video. However, I'm no dress-making expert. I just know what I like and what works for me. 

For the bodice of my dress, I use a vintage Simplicity pattern #4343. If you search around on eBay or Etsy, you may find it. For the bottom, I use a circle skirt pattern and always add pockets. 

Creating a pattern was very hard for me to comprehend initially. So I thought I'd kick the video off with a little Post-It tutorial. I hope that helps!

And, of course, if you'd like a copy of my book, Alfred the Ape Knows his Shapes, I'd love to sign one and send it your way! You can find my books here. And THANK YOU for supporting my small business! I'm an independent seller so...I'm the author, illustrator, social media person, shipper, handler, you name it! 

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In the Art Room: Kindergarten Hearts, a Follow Up!

What you see here just might be my new favorite kindergarten lesson! I shared this lesson (and video!) originally here, if you recall. My students began with a foam heart shape purchased from the Dollar Tree. We then added foam sticker shapes and pulled prints (I'll get to that here in a moment but you can scroll down to get an idea). Those prints were used for one project. Then we were left with our printing plates.

 I LOVE doing this technique with our old printing plates. I've done this same process with cut paper snowflakes, leaves, round printing plates and styrofoam printing plates. I'll explain the process and supplies here...or you can just check out the video.

 I see my kindergarten kids for 30 minutes, twice a week. Here's how I broke the lesson down. 

Day 1: We read The Shape of My Heart. We learned about organic and geometric shapes. We placed sticker shapes on our foam hearts. The hearts came from the Dollar Tree and the stickers from Michaels.

 Day #2: We printed! The kids printed by themselves and did great! They were to pull at least four prints so insure they had two good ones. We used foam rollers and tempera paint. You can read more about that here. 

 Day #3: We did the 100 Dot Challenge! At least that's what I called it. Each table had 10 Sargent Paint Sticks. The kids were tasked to making 10 different color dots with the 10 sticks. This fell close to the 100th day of school so it was really fun. We also learned to count by 10s!

Day #4: We cut out our two favorite heart prints and glued them to our dotted background. Then we went to the glitter table.

 And, as predicted, GLITTER GOT EVERYWHERE. Thankfully a kid pointed out the glitter in my coffee before I took a swig!

 Day #5: We painted a rainbow! I traced hearts in the middle of the paper before the kids got to class. I did this because our focus was on painting, not tracing. I also wanted them to have enough time to pain. 

 Day #6: Our last day...I took the hearts outside. With spray glue, I added the foil on top. Thin foil works best. Then I gave the hearts a dusting of spray paint. I like the $1 a can, matte black spray paint from Home Depot. The prep time for this took me about 30 minutes for 2 classes.

 Using the finest of steel wool, the kids were tasked with "finding their shapes" by sanding off the spray paint. They LOVED this! They were so excited to see their design come to life. 

 And I hot glued their hearts in place. 

This lesson had it all: shapes, printmaking, 100 dot making, collaging, rainbow painting, metal tooling and more. This is definitely a lesson I'll be repeating. Hope you and your young artists give it a go too!

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In the Art Room: Kindergarten Hearts!

Not long ago, I was at Dollar Tree and found these foam heart shapes. I got an idea to use them in conjunction with the book, The Shape of my Heart with my kindergarten friends. I've ALWAYS wanted to do a project inspired by this book but I just couldn't think of a way to make it work...then, I got the idea to use foam shapes and pull prints. We've been doing it all week and we are loving it. I made a process video for you and your kiddos!

I see my kindergarten for 30 minutes, twice a week. On the first day, we used foam shape stickers purchased at Michaels to fill our hearts. We read the book and chatted about the difference between organic and geometric shapes. 

The following day we were ready to print! A friend on Instagram suggested that I use foam rollers and tempera paint for the printing portion...here is a peek at our table set up:

And here's a look-see at our prints!

Don't you love them!? Each kiddo pulled two prints. Next week, we'll begin cutting them out and adding them to our dotted backgrounds. Details about that in the video.

Now, what to do with our heart printing plates? Well...check out that first image and be sure to watch the video! I'm so excited, we'll be making metal reliefs with them. I did not explain the process of how we will frame those metal hearts in the video as I'm still working that through. I'll keep you posted tho. Have fun with this lesson...I know we have been!

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