This year both my 7 year old 2nd grader and 13 year old 8th grader had fabric-based art projects at school. Interestingly enough, both required alphabet fabrics. So we walked into the local fabric store with the two boys. The store, is an amazingly neat and tidy place with its white shelves stocked with hundreds of different colorful fabrics of a surprising variety of designs, styles and quality and a comfortable little nook with multiple racks of magazines and catalogs of additional fabrics available for special orders and custom deliveries. The owner promptly rolled out at least a dozen different kinds of ABC fabrics for us, some of which even my somewhat disinterested boys found interesting enough to take a closer look at.
Eventually my younger boy picked out an alphabet fabric where colorful, dynamically and energetically shaped letters alternated with images of various sports against a white background: baseballs and bats, tennis rackets, lacrosse and hockey sticks. He turned it into a vibrant and cheerful, framed picture in art class; it is now proudly displayed above his bed. The older one opted for a more sophisticated fabric: dark blue background adorned with small, elegant black and white letters organized into ‘words’ that were put together not to mean anything special, but to provide eye-pleasing and intriguing patterns and combinations of round and straight lines, peaks and troughs. A few weeks later he brought home a generously stuffed square shaped pillow whose ‘face’ carried the mysterious black-white messages on the dark blue material.
However, we were still left with yards and yards of ABC fabric: of both the cheery-sporty kind and of the more highbrow dark blue textile. Since both kids ended up enjoying the projects, we brainstormed additional project ideas.
As the semi-annual visit of the boys’ grandparents was approaching, we decided to customize a picture frame with the sport ABC fabric for Grandpa. Since Grandpa is a big sports fan and he also has a collection of framed photos of his grandsons on his huge desk, a recent picture of the boys inserted into the newly dressed frame sounded like the perfect gift idea. It was a bit challenging to work the material to make it smoothly and perfectly hug the edges of the frame, but overall it turned out very nicely.
Grandma got a replica of the ‘literary’ pillow with a twist: her pillow was designed to be round. The circle shape actually worked almost better than the original square as it contrasted nicely with the strict, edgy geometry of the fabric design.
The ‘literary’ fabric was also used for a Father’s Day gift: a set of magazine holders for Dad’s software magazines. Originally we were planning for a fancy, sturdy, yet simply elegant rack design, but that project proved to be beyond our skills, so we eventually draped a couple of standard cardboard magazine holders with the dark blue, letter-covered fabric.
The sporty alphabet fabric was sturdy, almost denim-like. As my sister was expecting her first baby, a little boy, we turned the remaining sporty letters into a diaper bag and a diaper holder. This ended up being mostly my project as it involved a lot of complicated patterns, cutting and sewing. Fortunately, there are plenty of well written and illustrated patterns and instructions available for both projects.
Eventually, alphabet fabrics kept us busy with really nice and useful projects from mid-winter when we purchased the fabrics until June when we proudly presented the ‘literary’ magazine holders for Father’s Day. Now we are looking forward to next year’s school art projects: may they involve number fabrics this time?
