Okay, we’re stepping away from the usual kitchen redesign posts to share a smaller-scale but equally impressive project. Calling it “small” is a bit of a stretch when it involves tracing and arranging 120 hand-drawn monsters, but the result is worth it. Here’s Jen’s account of how she turned her son’s artwork into a one-of-a-kind duvet cover.
My son Daniel is a prolific artist and I wanted to showcase some of his sketches on a duvet cover. He designs his own creatures, complete with names, types, and evolutions, and he picked those designs for the project. Here are his design sheets:
I photographed each selected drawing. In Photoshop I removed stray marks, used Hue/Saturation to desaturate and bleach out color, converted the images to grayscale, and adjusted brightness and contrast to create crisp black-and-white images to trace. I resized each character to fit a sheet of paper and printed them out.
I chose a character to start with, placed the printed image on cardboard, and slid it under the top-left corner of the duvet cover. Then I traced the design using a fabric marker.
After about four and a half hours of tracing, there was already a noticeable difference:
Preparing the images took roughly two to three hours, and the tracing itself took around eight hours total. I worked on it in multiple sessions, packing it away between tracing times. Below is the finished duvet cover — I’m thrilled with how it turned out, and Daniel loves it too!
The finished piece is such a personal and playful statement: Daniel now sleeps surrounded by his imaginative characters, and the duvet serves as a daily reminder of his mom’s support for his creativity. This technique would work for many kinds of artwork or hand-lettered designs — a great way to create a meaningful custom textile.
P.S. We announced this week’s giveaway winner — check the giveaway post to see if you won.