Made: Freezer-Paper Printed Jersey Scarves

Ackkk! It's almost the new year and I haven't finished blogging about Christmas yet! In part, that's because I was waiting for all of my packages to get to their recipients. With the snowpocalypse here in P-town, it seems like the mail and UPS got very far behind. But hopefully all the packages have been delivered by now!

Remember my friend Stephanie's No-Sew Jersey Scarves? Well, I loved them so much and they seemed so simple so I bought a bunch of really soft jersey knit. I knew I wanted to embellish them in some way but couldn't figure out how I wanted to do it. I tried some free-motion sewing machine embroidery but...well, let's just say it was a complete and utter failure.

So I fell back on a tried and true method--freezer paper printing. I've been obsessing about the Lena Corwin Printing by Hand book so I was playing around with different printing ideas in my head. I printed a few with sort of an abstract pinwheel/snowflake design but I wasn't too happy with it.

I remembered some snappy dahlia prints I'd seen in Mary Englebreit's Home Companion a couple of months back. The dahlia print was just the thing I was looking for. But, oh, the aching back and the exacto-knife-finger! It's no fun to repeatedly cut out a detailed design. I had to come up with a different method before my hands turned into the gnarly knuckles of an old crone!

And then I had what is quite possibly my most brilliant thought in a very long time (obviously, I don't have many brilliant moments): I recalled elementary school arts and crafts and the wonders of the six-sided snowflake. I realized I could fold the freezer paper in 6ths just as you would to cut a snowflake and then I could cut my rounded dahlia petals with a small scissors in 6-licate. Yay! No more exacto-knife-finger!

I printed several different color ways. I can only find the photos of the blue on grey version drying on the crib (yes, a crib, be warned that blogging about about baby crap is in the near future). I wrapped up some of the scarves with the natural lip balms and other products the Crafty Women had made for "Cold Weather Survival Kits".