craftgrrl | My first stencil! & other goodies...

Well, my mom gave me this bright pink zip-up hoodie a while back, and I just can't do bright pink!! So I knew I would have to do something with it ~

Here is the original color of the jacket:

So first I grabbed some black Dylon fabric dye & used a small amount to tone down the color to more of a dark rose/mauve kind of color. Then I bought some Freezer Paper & made my first stencil!

I just drew it out on the Freezer Paper & then cut it out, so I don't have a stencil to share. I used a design that I had done as an applique on one of my dresses before (you can see it here, just scroll down one row). And the best thing ~ there were no islands at all!

Everything turned out pretty well (especially since I was stenciling on top of front pockets that are hard to see in the picture). My only problem is that when I was doing some touch ups with a smaller brush, those areas had a different consistency of paint than the other areas & so they are shiny, while everything else isn't & is more sunk into the fabric. Any suggestions?

Also, the fabric medium says that you have to air dry your project after washing ~ is there something else I can use for stenciling/screening that can be dried in the dryer afterwards without wearing off?

And some other crafts ~

While I had the dye, I decided to do another shirt that I had that was equally as bright. It was a pastel lavender color with the star pattern in baby blue (bought, not screened by me). As I had hoped, the screened blue area did not dye (at least not much) & so now I have a shirt I will actually wear!

This brings me to a similar question about the Dylon ~ it said after dying to dry out of sunlight & heat, but doesn't say how to dry it later on. Do I need to be hang drying these each time I wash them?

And lastly ~ I have often wanted something to prop up my work when I am sewing a large applique on my machine, and so one day I decided to find something. I realized some Priority Mail boxes I had were just the right height, so I used three boxes (just the flaps from one) to make this:

The first two rectangles are attached but the back box is separate (I left a gap in the pic so you could see). Sometimes I just want something on the back, sometimes all the way around. I then covered them with some super cheap, and slightly ugly, contact paper & then put packing tape over the edges to keep it from peeling too bad. I also covered a smaller box to keep these from falling over when they are not in use & on the floor by the machine ~