Intricate stencil work

So... my crafting hiatus didn't last very long. Ahem.

This is not my artwork. A friend of mine gave it to me after I complimented him on it many years ago. Now a special event of his is coming up, and yesterday was the 9th International Morsbagging Sunday, so I decided to print some Morsbags with his design on them.


I painstakingly traced the design onto freezer paper and cut it out (nothing like a looming deadline to make such tasks seem attractive). Doing the leaves and the basket was extremely fiddly.

Seeing the freezer paper ironed on the bag briefly made me consider screenpainting the design in white rather than black!

This was the first print. I made two, because I wanted to make the most out of all that cutting! As you can see, it's the inverse of the original artwork. It was simple because, as you can see from a couple of photos back, it was made from a single cut-out.

Here is the second, more fiddly bag. For this one, I ironed down all the remaining cut-out pieces one by one.

I had originally planned to add some of the finer details (flowers, petals, hair...) with embroidery thread after painting the bags, but I've decided that they look good as they are, and the threads would probably just snag on the inside of the bag anyway.


The labels went on the back, as there was no real place for them on the front.


Here's a little visual reminder of why you need to place some newspaper (or my favourite - cereal boxes) under fabric that you're screen-painting so that the ink doesn't seep through.


For the presentation, I rolled them up and tied them together with a simple tie I made from the same linen I used for the bags.

The linen was picked up for next to nothing at my local op-shop and was so beautifully soft and easy to work with, that I fear I will not want to sew nor print on anything but the best!

Everything has been packed away again, so hopefully I can get some uni work done now. Although when I went to bed last night, my mind was racing with ideas for doll joints and projects using them... uh oh!