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A while ago I started experimenting with two-tone stencils for t-shirt designs. I made a Flight of the Conchords tee, and then made an Enterprise one. So when I embarked upon a t-shirt with the Enterprise D on it, I figured it was time for another tutorial post, since the bleached-out t-shirt design tutorial went down quite well.

I'm going to do this in two parts - this post is about turning an image into the stencil, then the second part will be about putting that design onto a t-shirt.

So, let's find out how I made this:


(See, Star Trek fandom, I haven't entirely abandoned you for Inception!)

( Lots of images behind the cut )

If you've got any questions, please feel free to ask.

I am currently an organizational disaster zone. While there are many reasons for this, I am mostly blaming Inception fandom. Yes, still.

So, here's some things wot I made.

Previews:

Got featured in my very first treasury over at Etsy. It's exciting!

Go check it out here and have a good browse - there are so many amazing geeky crafts going on over at Etsy right now.



And while we're at it, I'd also like to reccomend that you check out Ory B's amazing Red Shirt mini Munnys.



Sold a pair of the phaser pants last week, and they turned out much nicer than my own ones. ( Quick Pic! )

After my first foray into two-tone stencils I decided to try something a little more complicated. Which then turned out to be a great deal more complicated. I never learn, apparently.

I decided I needed a t-shirt with the Enterprise sweeping majestically across it, as you do. The first hurdle came when I discovered that photoshop won't print a large image over multiple pages without a fight. (Thank goodness I'm related to a graphic designer.) Once that was dealt with this, of course, resulted in a very large and very delicate stencil, which, of course, the cat wanted to attack. So once I had rescued the stencil from furry, clawy doom it would all be plain sailing, right? Wrong. Grey fabric paint seems to be an endangered species, so I had to mix that colour myself. And matching the second stencil up proved to be quite annoying. (To the extent that it became a stencil made of five separate, overlapping pieces.) And I hurt my arm by holding it too tense to try and get perfect lines. And... And.. I'll stop moaning now.

In the end, as ever, it turned out really quite pretty. It would seem that I have some sort of ridiculous need to hate a project whilst actually doing it, in order for it to turn out well. I'm not sure that's a good thing. But my Enterprise t-shirt is beautiful and I love her! So nyeh.



( click for more pics! )Many more photos here (I went even more snap-happy than usual with this one!)

If anyone would like me to do a tutorial on this sort of thing (like I did for "bleached-out" t-shirt designs) please let me know and I'd be happy to oblige!

D'oh! Oh well, tomorrow is another day and perhaps all my picture uploading issues will magically fix themselves.

To be going on with however I have a thing of magnificence to share. My ontd_startrek Secret Santa present is a GQMFing Spock Monkey, made by hurricanine , and it is a thing of beauty. Thank you so much.

( Pics of my Spock Monkey and the present that I sent await after the cut... )

Exactly 16,752 stitches, approximately 66 metres of thread, and four months have gone into this 42cm by 20cm piece of loveliness.

It's very pleasing to have finished a project and actually still like it. Goodness only knows what craziness I'll put myself through next. But for now at least I know that I like this ship. It's exciting!

A wee preview:


( More pics (some very large) behind the cut! )

And as this is the first time I've used my new mood theme I'll take this opportunity to credit: saxa246.

Whilst trying to not let my cross stitch Enterprise drive me insane, I've been letting myself be distracted by making some more t-shirts. But the lure of Star Trek managed to get in there too.

I'll post some of the other new stuff later (followers of my Flickr stream or Facebook page will have already seen them) but for now here's a Next Generation type uniform t-shirt and my very own GQMF top.

Previews:



( More under the cut... )

Why do things become automatically cuter when they're made for small people? It's a mystery to me. But a cute one!

I appear to have lost some of the momentum I had previously with this project, but there's not that much further to go now. I trundle on. I may even allow myself to do some dark colours soon and I always like them much better than the pale bastards.

Oh dear. I appear to be anthropomorphizing individual stitches in a craft project again. That might not be a good sign...



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Wheee! You can actually tell there's more than one colour in there now. Just barely, but still, it's exciting enough for me.

She's looking real purty. I am a happy stitcher right now.

Still plenty of stitching to go though!