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How To Print Kid Drawings On Fabric

Okay, okay – so we’re taking a breather from our usual kitchen-related reader redesigns to share a super cool project on a smaller scale. Well, if you call a project that involves 120 hand-drawn monsters a “small” undertaking. Now I’ve got your curiosity piqued, eh? I’ll let Jen explain:

My son Daniel is a prolific artist and I wanted to showcase some of his sketches and decided that I would do so on a duvet cover. He designs his own Pokemon, complete wtih names, types, and evolutions and he chose those for the project. Here are his design sheets:

Jen Original Drawings

I photographed each chosen design. Then in Photoshop I erased all extra marks around the edge, used the Hue / Saturation tool to effectively bleach out all colour, converted it to grayscale and increased brightness and contrast to get a nice, pure black & white image to trace. Then I resized each chosen character to fit on a sheet of paper and printed them out.

Jen Monsters Printed

I chose the first image to trace, put it on a piece of cardboard and slid it into the top left corner of the duvet cover. Then I began tracing it with the fabric marker.

Jen Tracing Hand

This is after about four and half hours of tracing:

Jen Midway Tracing

Preparing the images took around 2-3 hours (I didn’t take note of the time) and the actual tracing took around 8 hours. I didn’t do it all in one go but worked on it as and when I had time, packing it away in between tracing sessions. And here is the final product, which I am so happy about – and thankfully Daniel likes it too! – Jen

Jen Bed After 2

Jen Bed After 1

Now c’mon, how cool is that? Daniel not only gets to sleep among his (very inventive!) creations every night, but also gets this daily reminder of how dedicated his mom is to celebrating his imagination. You can check out Jen’s blog for more pics and info on the process, like whether or not it survived the wash (spoiler alert: it did!). Maybe we’ll make Clara one of these someday. And even if kid doodles aren’t your design of choice, I can see this method working to transfer a large handwritten love letter or something. So cool.

Psst- We announced this week’s giveaway winner. Click here to see if it’s you.

Comments

  4. Stephen Coler says

    wonderfully brilliant! so simple, yet so fun! a music lover might try to do the score of a favorite song — i think that would look beautiful in black and white, also. or how about creating a large front page of a newspaper? i can see this translated to so many things!
    thanks for the great ideas and sharing others work, too!

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Love the ideas! It’s definitely one of those awesome projects that can spawn so many other DIYs. Everyone share pics if you do something similar! And thanks again to Jen for being so inspiring.

      xo,
      s

  8. Amorie says

    This would also be an awesome idea to do a quilt with. You could trace or get the image transferred onto a large quilting square and work the squares into a quilt in a grid pattern. You could give it lots of color with the fabric you use around the art squares.

    Reply

  13. Nadine says

    As a French person, the first thing that comes to my mind (and I might actually make that duvet cover, I have a white one on my project list) is the so-famous first sentence of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: “For a long time, I went to bed early”. Just an idea.

    Reply

  14. Janelle D says

    What a heartfelt, but still very cool, project!! It looks like a funky duvet cover you could buy in a store. When I was younger my grandmother had me draw on 12 fabric panels with fabric paint markers. She then made a gorgeous quilt of all of my designs. It was on my bed all throughout my childhood & I still have it safely tucked away in a closet at my parent’s place. I’m sure this duvet you made, Jen, will be treasured by your son.

    Reply

  20. readsomething says

    I love this idea! My DD would love to do something like this! Where did you get the plain white duvet cover? And what brand fabric pen do you recommend? I love that the pen you were using looks like it gives a very vibrant amount of ink.

    Reply

  25. Laurie says

    That is so awesome. My eldest has always been an artist, wish I would have been clever enough to do something like this when he was young. What a treasure :)

    Reply

  27. diane says

    adorable and so clever. sites such as spoonflower can create permanent fabric for sheets, duvets draperies etc but the handmade, with love from mom aspect would not be there. too cute…

    Reply

  30. Heather says

    What a great mom she is…she really knows how to pinch a penny or whatever they pinch in New Zealand!! I love Ms. Jen’s blog and so happy to see her here too. A full bloggie circle of love!!

    Reply

  33. coco says

    What a great Mom you are to encourage the next Picasso, it not only shows your support of his art it also shows your children how creative you are:) I am so glad to know that there are people like you helping other people become more creative. Thanks for sharing your great ideas:)

    Reply

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