Adinkra shirt update

Here’s an update on the discharge-printed shirt I’m working on. I took a break this weekend to work on income tax, but after two nights of printing during the week the front is all done. Remind me to zigzag around the edges before I work on the back; washing the shirt in between bleaching sessions (I don’t want to leave the bleach on the fabric the whole time until I’m done printing it) is fraying the edges back to the very limit of the 1/4 inch seam allowance that this Kwik-Sew pattern has.

Arlene showed me some pictures of Adinkra fabric, from a book on African fabric in her vast art library. It’s done in smallish rectangular or square patches, separated with other motifs. She suggested using masking tape to define the rectangles. Since I’m printing it after sewing the front facings on, I could overlap the fronts to match the center lines, so the patterns on the two fronts will match perfectly when it’s done.

After just a few stampings:

A closeup of that state:

I used a junky oil painting brush to brush the SoftScrub onto my stamps. A styrofoam meat tray is a good disposable palette.

I limited my set of stamps to about six motifs of similar size. Actually there are two sizes of stamp, one half again as wide as the others.

After two sessions I had the whole front done. This was the end of the first session:

I’d recommend working in a well ventilated room for this project. DAMHIKT.

Published by deanb

male born 1944 mathematician by training, software engineer by profession; retired since Labor Day 2013 birder, cyclist, unicyclist, eraser carver, knitter when possible

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