For a while I've had this idea that I wanted to find or make a scarf that felt like a favorite t-shirt. Recently, on a Valentines supplies aquisition mission at JoAnn's, I took a detour into the fabric section and searched for a pattern and material that I could just cut and wear, but didn't find anything I loved. So I ended up settling on about 3/4 yard of super-soft, white stretch jersey that I could paint my own pattern onto, and yesterday I finally did it.
If I didn't already know that I love the combination of yellow and grey, Pinterest has now made it abundantly clear. Like half my pins are of yellow and grey quilts or sweaters or pillows or entire rooms. So it was an easy choice of colors for the scarf. Not sure why I came up with the diamond pattern, except that I wanted it to be something pretty simple that I could easily repeat over and over.
I got a cardboard cereal box out of the recycling bin and cut out a stencil from it. Two stencils, really: a little square cut out of a bigger square. Then I painted around the stencils' edges, feathering the brushstrokes out, to create a pattern of alternating big, grey double diamonds with small, yellow single diamonds.
I concentrated the shapes into a repeating pattern on each end of the scarf and let the pattern "fade" or separate out as it made its way up to the middle of the scarf.
This design, of interlocking pieces that dissipate, is similar to the mural I painted at The Purple Crayon Center last year, which I am standing in front of in the photos above and below. (More on that mural, including lots of photos, in these posts from a year ago: Mural Preparation, Mural Process, Ready to Launch, and Mosaic Mural Wrap-up.) I wasn't thinking of the mural when I did the scarf, but then when I was at the Center last night for a concert (Ruth Moody, so good), I realized the connection and and had to take pictures in front of it.
The scarf is so soft and comfortable. I'm definitely going to be wearing it a lot. But the best was what Stella said when she walked in as I was painting it yesterday. She watched me for a little while and then said, "Mommy, I like that you can just make yourself the things you want." I like it too, Stella. I really do.
