Fabric painting project (parkrun zip hood)

[Siwi]

First, a brief overview of parkrun if you don't know what this is: parkruns are free timed 5k runs every Saturday morning (plus Christmas Day, NYD and national days in some countries). They started in London in 2004 and little by little expanded to more and more venues and countries, such that there are now over 1000 events worldwide with around 700 in the UK alone. There are milestones at 25, 50, 100, 250 and 500 runs (nowhere has reached 1000 events yet!) which have different coloured t-shirts, also for volunteering.

Everyone has a 'home' parkrun, usually their nearest, where they would typically run the most often, but it's also common to travel to other locations either nearby or on holidays. This is referred to as tourism and whilst there are no official milestones for this, more prolific tourists use apps to keep track of their totals and often DIY t-shirts with the locations they've run at. Typically these are total run milestone tees which the parkrunner will get printed a list on the back along with flags for any different countries. I have now run at 45 different locations, with the remaining five scheduled for the coming months, so I felt it was OK to start thinking about getting something to mark this milestone!

However, I wanted something a little different - firstly I have more than enough running tops already and although they do have a 'shelf life' I will doubtless acquire sufficient replacements. I therefore decided to decorate a zip hood - firstly because by the autumn/winter I will be glad of something warm to wear to the start line, secondly because it comes with more 'real estate' to decorate, and thirdly because it doesn't need to be able to stand up to being run whilst worn, so will need washing a lot less and thus is more likely to survive.
My plan is to fabric paint a nice design, saving the cost of commercial printing and gaining the enjoyment of a craft project.

I made the initial design in Inkscape using a photo of an existing hoody to get the approximate dimensions. After that I measured out the practical area on the jacket I was going to use, and rescaled the elements of the design to make stencils. The fabric paint was made using a fabric medium mixed 50:50 with acrylic as per the instructions. This seems to work fine and avoids cracking or flaking.
The design involves a finish token, a large 50, and the flags of the five countries I have or will have run in. The list of venues will be on the sleeves, which is done by making stencils for the alphabet and painting letter by letter, along with an icon representing something significant about that run/location. It's actually reasonably quick to do once a little practice has been gained.

[Don Boose]

Missed this post last July. Attractive artwork and definitely an impressive record of running!

You are a person of many talents.

Don

[Siwi]

Here's where I'm at. The back is finished aside from the date, and heat set. The arms of Hampshire represent having done every run in the county (unless a rumoured new one starts) and the compass represents having completed Compass Club (with Gloucester North, Southampton, Eastleigh, Westport). Republic of Ireland and Norn Iron were visited last month bringing my total to 48 locations. The right sleeve is also finished with 23 of the venues stencilled on - the remaining 27 will go on the left.