hey paul, paul bunyan

In Portland's Kenton neighborhood is a 31-foot Paul Bunyan statue that I've mentioned before here. Inspired by our travels this past year, I decided to start a new series of kitchen towel calendars based on landmarks and attractions of Oregon, and I picked the Portland Paul Bunyan as the 2014 feature.

I worked the design in several parts on watercolor paper using watercolor pencils, then combined the images in Photoshop and finished up the layout and typography in Illustrator.

I was so excited when the fabric arrived from Spoonflower. I'd never ordered their linen / cotton canvas before; I'm pretty impressed with the quality of the fabric and the printing. Perfect for this year's Christmas boxes.

I finished off the backs with some grosgrain ribbon corner hangers and a 3/8-inch hem.

I'm really happy with how the towel calendars (or "towelendars") turned out, and I'll definitely be planning the next in the series for 2015. 

Here's one in its pretty wrapper (printed on brown paper sack that I've inked with a wood grain pattern).

If you're interested in having one of your own, you can order the fabric from my Spoonflower shop whenever you're ready. One towel prints to a 1/4 yard of linen / cotton canvas, or get a full yard for four towels. I'll update here, too, when I get these listed ready-made in my Etsy shop.

Update: now available in my Etsy shop!

Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas!