As my exhibition hung in the Level Best art gallery I was invited to deliver a t-shirt workshop to the trainees. This workshop would explore the use of text on fabric.
I had a number of pieces hanging in the gallery and chose to recreate one of the outcomes on a t-shirt as an example. I've not worked on t-shirts before or cotton. It was interesting to feel the difference between working on calico and canvas to working on cotton.
The cotton was far more stretchy which made tracing the letters onto the front of the top more difficult. The fabric moved and stretched as it got caught on the end of the pencil. Before applying acrylic paint I put some paper inside the t-shirt to ensure the paint didn't seep through to the other side and then started to fill in the shapes with a thin paintbrush.
For the workshop, I provided a collection of word stencils for the trainees to work with and also saved the cutout letters too, so they could make up their own words too.
The workshop was a great experience and it was really insightful to see the group respond to the exhibition and create their own wearable outcomes. During the workshop, we mixed acrylic paints with a medium to make them machine washable.
Some words went down particularly well, such as 'joy' and 'happy', which was uplifting, and some trainees ran with the idea and added signs and symbols to their t-shirts such as smiling faces.
You can see some of the outcomes over on the Level Best Facebook page, linked below.
https://www.facebook.com/LevelBestEnterprises
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