Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Bicycle Inner Tube Textile Patches


Bicycle inner tube cut-outs on recycled shirt

An alternative title for this piece might be, "How to Hack a Villager Shirt." If you grew up in the American suburbs in the late '50s/early '60s and were forced into the lock-step fashion regimen of circle pins, Villager clothing and kilt pins, then you'll understand the desire to tackle a Villager shirt and make it a bit more edgy. This is one of a series of projects all created from a single bicycle inner tube (see Bicycle Inner Tube Jewelry for the first project). Materials: Used Villager shirt from thrift store for $1; section of bicycle inner tube; glue stick; needle and thread.

Original, unembellished cotton shirt

I wanted to do a rabbit-in-the-moon motif (if you view the moon from near the equator, it looks like there is a rabbit on the moon, which has spawned a lot of moon and rabbit related folklore). The first step was to print out a bunch of rabbit, moon, and stars images gleaned through a Google image search. After slitting open the inner tube, I glued the images to the rubber (use a glue stick and the paper just washes right off afterwards) and cut them out. I cut circles out of the scraps.

Cutting out the rubber shapes

Stars and circles were attached with a single "X" stitch. Leaving edges free creates a kind of 3D effect. The rabbits have a couple of stitches up their length to prevent them curling back into the shape of the inner tube.


The finished product: a thoroughly hacked Villager shirt.

Front

Back

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