Melitastitches4fun's Blog

Crayon Art or Crayon Tinting was popular in the 1930s and demonstrated the resilience of creativity throughout the Depression. Who better to lead this practical and resourceful use of crayons (remaining from his 30+ year-old son’s Crayon box) than Patrick B of our EGA Brandywine Chapter.

Patrick provided everyone with a 27″ square sack cloth (nicely edged with a cloth hook in one corner). We selected patterns from coloring books or brought our own (which is what I did). We traced the design onto the cloth with a Micron pen, colored them with crayons, and heat-set them with an iron. A paper towel placed on top of the crayon protected the iron.

Then, we embellished the designs. I’m only going to stitch the veins. It’s a little more work on a towel than I would normally do and it’s too large for our kitchen. So, it’ll have to go in the basement next to the sink in the laundry room. We have a long golf towel there now.

I accidentally placed and colored 5 leaves along one side. It hangs like a diamond and I should have placed them differently. It wasn’t until I had left our meeting and was showing friends that I saw what I had done with the placement. And, there is one traced and uncolored leaf in a corner by itself. I’ll have to trace and color 3 more leaves! Since I don’t have any crayons (this is why I hate getting rid of stuff) and want to use the same colors, Patrick is lending me his crayons!