Wednesday 4 September 2013

Why can't we have Protour day?

So, tomorrow is "footy colours day" at P's kindergarten. I confess I did see the notice about this a week ago but as I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in Australian Rules Football I ignored it.

Had it been declared to be Protour colours day I could have got excited about that. I could have happily stencilled a big pink T on s shirt and sent him off as a Jan Ulrich from Team Telekom in the good ol' days


Or even more fun for a crafty mum, how I would have loved to get some paint out and knock out a Mapei kit à la Cadel circa 2002




Or, without making anything, P might still be able to squeeze into his own yellow jersey, seen here in celebratory pose after Cadel Evans' win in the 2011 Tour de France:

Eeek. he looks so little!

Yet today when I picked P up from kindy he said he HAD to wear footy colours tomorrow and declared which was his team. I suspect that choosing your team (rather than inheriting one from your folks) could actually be a really monumental moment in a kids life, but as I don't think he has the faintest idea of what it's all about, I'm remaining dismissive of the whole thing.

As a supportive, loving mum I did, however, volunteer to make him a footy colour T-shirt for kindy. He got all whiney on me and wanted to buy "a real" one from a shop. That lead to a really long discourse from me about branded merchandise from which P was eventually rescued by A spotting a garbage truck and shouting about it very loudly. I hadn't even got to the bit about offshore manufacturing and child labour.

The deal breaker in the end was that if we made our own P could do the painting of the logo. My kids seem to respond to paint like others respond to candy or some grown-ups to crack cocaine.


We did an internet search for the logo of his chosen team. All I know of this team is that their training oval is nearby and is a great place to fly a kite on a windy day.  We hit up Spotlight for the Setacolour fabric paint and then I cut out a freezer paper stencil.

 

 I don't know if my anti-merchandising tirade was at all effective, but the power of paint certainly won him over and P declared this to be much better than buying a shirt after all. Yay!

We let the paint dry in the afternoon and in my evening sewing time I've pulled out the overlocker (man I love that machine) and whipped up yet another Oliver + S Field Trip raglan T-shirt.

I'm wishing I put the logo higher up

I've just snuck into his room and popped it on the foot of the bed. I hope he'll be pleased and, if I can be forgiven for trying to influence my children, I hope he'll quickly lose interest in AFL football.

8 comments:

  1. Ha ha, the 'left on the foot of the bed' trick. Gets them every time.
    Well done, I am with you on the merchandising crap. I hope he loses interest too. Hugo hasn't-groan.

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    1. Thanks, I'm not the fastest sewer , so making something and leaving it for them to discover is a bit of magic as far as both of us are concerned!

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  2. WELL DONE!! The shirt looks great, and the lesson of process over purchase is much easier learned through good fun and creativity. I'm taking a lesson from you. :)

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  3. Great job with the freezer paper stencil! I'm all for making your own vs. the unattractive mass produced junk that's out there.;)

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    1. Thanks, I'm counting my blessings that he at least chose a team with a very stencil-friendly logo

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  4. You crack me up!! "crack cocaine for some people" Here people like to wear their favorite player's name and numbers. I can't for the life of me figure out why you would want to wear someone else's shirt?!

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    1. They sure do love paint! I saw a guy this morning at a coffee shop after his morning bike ride in full World Cup winners kit. What did he win a world cup for? latte drinking? :) The only thing that's worse is wearing one team's top with another team's shorts. Cross dressing in it's true sense is much more tolerable than team-cross-dressing!

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