Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Kid Made Modern: All About Fabric Printing
Nonfiction craft book
For ages 6 to 8
Ammo Books, 2012 ISBN: 978-1934429921
People have been printing on fabrics for hundreds of years, decorating them with colors to brighten them up to make them more attractive and eye-catching. In the past, and in some places still, inked carved wood blocks are used to add a motif to fabric. In India carved and inked wood blocks are used to create intricate and richly-colored patterned fabric, which is then turned into clothing and house wares. Silk screening and roller printing are other methods used to add decorations to fabric. These days, digital fabric printing processes give designers all kinds of options that we did not have in the past.
In this book young crafters will use items that they find at home or in craft stores to create their own unique “hands-on” printed fabric. Before the project section begins the author presents us with a page full of “Supply Ideas.” Here readers will see a photo of a surface that is covered with things that can be used to add prints to fabric in interesting ways. There are bottles of ink, ink rollers, and the kinds of rubber stamps that you can get at a craft store, which are not surprising things to see. But there is also a potato masher, a raw turnip, potato and carrot, string, tape, cookie cutters and more. Is it really possible to print fabric using a potato?
It is, and one of the projects in this book shows you how to decorate a washed and dried fabric tote using a potato, fabric paint, and paper plates or bowls. All you have to do is put your paint in the bowls – as many colors as you like. Then cut the potato in half, dip it in the ink and press it on the bag. You can lay out the potato prints in overlapping rows of color, or you can come up with a design of your own.
Other projects in the book include using card letter stencils to print words on a shirt, using cookie cutters and a potato masher to decorate a hoodie, and creating templates in felt to add all kinds of designs to a tank top.
For each project, readers are given a list of the things they will need, and then carefully annotated photographic directions show them how to complete the project.
This book would make a wonderful gift for a child who likes to dabble in paint and create one-of-a-kind crafts.
