Monday Project - Halloween Collage Shirt

Remember the Five Little Pumpkins finger puppets?  They were a big hit with little c .... and I lost track of how many times we sang it in the four days I was visiting!  While looking for vintage postcards for another project, I came across different old style pumpkins that made me think of the song, so I decided to put together a Five Little Pumpkins Halloween shirt.

First I needed to find all the components that are in the song - a gate (I know, it looks more like a fence!), five pumpkins with the appropriate facial expressions, a flying witch, and a light.  I added in an old tree, the moon, and stars to make a nice picture!  I was able to find great illustrations by Googling "vintage (subject) postcards" or "vintage (subject) illustrations."  To start composing the collage, I copied the images onto a PowerPoint slide - I've found it's an easy way to manipulate images.  I made a guess at the size they needed to be and cropped everything off except for the image I wanted.  There wasn't any need to remove the extra illustrations around the image since I knew I'd be cutting the image out.

When I had a few images, I printed them off (in black and white since I'm stingy with my color ink!), roughly cut them out and started arranging them on the shirt.  This let me know if I had the sizing right or if some needed to be adjusted a bit more.  

When I had all the images, I arranged them on two pages and printed them off onto ink jet prepared fabric, using the "Best" setting on my printer.  There are lots of different products you can use!  I use Blumenthal Craft PhotoFabric - mainly because it's easy to get at the Joann's near me and not too badly priced when I use a 40% off coupon.  The picture to the left shows silk habotai, but for this project I used the cotton poplin.  With this brand, you let the ink dry, rinse the fabric under cold water for 30 seconds, and iron to dry, with no steam.

I then attached the fabric to one full sheet of Steam-a-Seam II, trimming off the extra.  Then it was time to sit down with my sharp, little scissors and a good movie and start cutting all the little pieces out!  A few hours later, I removed the backing from the pieces, arranged them on the shirt, and ironed to attach.  When I put fabric onto other fabric this way, I usually embroider around the edges with embroidery floss and a blanket stitch.  In this case, most of the pieces were so small, I didn't think that would work, so I made sure everything was ironed down well.  And I'll cross my fingers that everything stays attached - it should!

If you'd like to make this same shirt, the sheets of vintage images I used are here and here.

Happy Creating!  Deborah