New Orleans Jazz T-Shirts

The design originally started as a classroom assignment when I took a Commerical Illustration class at a local community college during the 2004 fall semester. The assignment was to create an illustration to accompany a story on the annual New Orleans Jazz Festival. Based on the story as well as my own research on the culture of New Orleans, I created an illustration of a crawfish playing a saxophone using the color scheme of green, gold, and purple (which are the traditional colors of the Mardi Gras celebration held in that city each year) that I would later dub New Orleans Jazz. I originally did the illustration on an illustration board using both acrylic paints and watercolors. I finally finished the assignment on November 15, 2004. A few months after the class ended, I created a digital version of that illustration to archive as part of a digital version of my art portfolio.

On August 30, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast with such a fury that it not only flattened several towns (such as Biloxi, Misissippi) but it broke the levees in New Orleans, which flooded the entire city. As a result, there were mass evacuations of the residents, many of whom lost everything (including even loved ones in some cases). Hurricane Katrina has gone on record as being one of the worst natural disasters to ever hit the United States.

I took the digital New Orleans Jazz file and used it to create t-shirts that I sold on eBay (through its Mission Fish partner) as a fundraiser for AmeriCares.

T-Shirt Sizes: There were three different sizes of this t-shirt:

one that fits a 1/3 scale doll (such as a Super Dollfie and Dollfie Dream)
one that fits a 1/4 scale doll (such as a Mini Super Dollfie, Tonner, and Ellowyne Wilde)
one that fits a human adult (in size XL)

Pattern It's Based On: For the doll shirts, I used t-shirt patterns from Venus A. Dodge's book The Dolls' Dressmaker. For the human shirt, I purchased a blank white t-shirts from a discount place. I printed the design on the t-shirts using special t-shirt transfer printer paper that I purchased at a local Best Buy.
T-Shirts Sold on eBay: September 12, 2005.

The t-shirts are modeled in the photos by a Volks Dollfie Dream and a vintage 1970's Beautiful Crissy doll. Click on any photo below to see a larger version of the same photo open in a new window.

The original artwork.	The t-shirt.	Left to Right: small doll t-shirt, human t-shirt, large doll t-shirt
Volks Dollfie Dream models large doll t-shirt.
	Beautiful Crissy models small doll t-shirt.
		I created small snaps in the back of the small doll size t-shirt in order to accomodate a variety of doll torsos that crop up in the 1/4 scale dolls. One can use the snaps for thinner torsos or not use them at all for thicker torsos.

New Orleans Jazz T-Shirts

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