Made At Maker Faire

One of the fun things we got to do at the Maker Faire was called Swap-A-Rama-Rama. Picture a big hall with piles of free second hand clothes that people were altering and changing and redesigning with sewing machines and designer help. When I was in there, it was jam-packed and there wasn't any room to sit down and go to town on a sewing machine, so I chose to just do the screen-printing.

I found this green and white checked dobby shirt on one of the tables heaped with clothes. It happened to be in my size and in good enough shape to work with. There was a big station set up with screen printer experts from a screen printing co-op in Oakland with a whole bunch of designs to chose from. I picked this one because the man doing them had a bucket hat with a ring of barrel-full-o-monkeys all around the brim. I totally wanted to steal that hat right off his head! I wish I'd taken a picture of him with it, but I was so fascinated with watching how to screen print. I learn by watching, so this should be useful for any future attempts I make at screen printing.



The design I chose has one of those iconic monkeys with a hat and juggling on a unicycle. We screened it on the side without the pocket. It didn't come out perfectly because of the rough uneven weave of the fabric.

I found on the trims table some nice black stretchy silky cording that I am planning on couching down to make some designs. I also have plans to change the buttons, maybe to black shiny ones.
When I do those things, I'll try to remember to show you a picture!

Another thing we got to do was hang out in the MAKE room where they had tables with piles of scavenged stuff, electronic and other stuff as well as some tools to use, including hot glue guns. I used a flooring chip for a background and hot glued on a carpet scrap that I artfully frayed ( I tore it because I had no scissors to use), keyboard letters, circuit board pieces and shiny circle contact bits that fell out when I took a remote control apart.
The letters spell out ENTER THUD. Fun huh? It was great to just sit down at a big table with other people and my family and make something out of the stuff right in front of me. Really cool.