The weather and the timing were perfect this morning and I was able to get outside for a little bit and do some fabric painting. I never know quite what I’m going to come up with on days like today, it’s just a matter of whichever color paints I combine that particular day.
These were done with Pebeo Setacolor paints, in bright sunlight. After drying these, heat setting them in the dryer and then steam pressing them, the hand is wonderful and I’m looking forward to getting to work with these. (yes, I have plans for them!)
The process I use is really simple. I used a PFD (prepared for dyeing) fabric this morning, but have used regular commercial cottons, white on whites, tone on tones, whatever I have on hand that I want to use.
First I cut my pieces into sizes I want to work with, today I used fat quarter pieces. I soak them in a bucket of plain water and gather my supplies. Supplies today included my Setacolor paints, a spray bottle of water, foam brushes and some plastic trays. One piece at a time, I choose my colors and method. Most of these are scrunched, a few are specifically striped and hung to dry.
What is do to start is to spread the wet piece of fabric out onto the picnic table (where I work) and pour a little paint into a plastic tray, brush it onto the fabric with the foam brush, spraying the fabric with the water bottle to keep it wet and to spread the colors. Sometimes I’ll pick up a piece of fabric and twist it, or paint the colors in stripes and then twist. After the piece is sufficiently painted to my liking, I scrunch the fabric on the picnic table and leave it to dry. It’s the scrunching that causes the deep variations in the color.
The pieces I want more control on (skies, landscape backgrounds), I’ll paint in specific strokes and leave to dry either flat on the picnic table, or if it’s striped, I may hang it on the line to dry. Sometimes I hang it with the stripes vertical so there is no color run between stripes and sometimes I hang it with the stripes horizontal if I’m not concerned about color run. Although when it’s this hot, the paint doesn’t have long to run before it’s actually dried!
I actually have no green or purple paints in my colors. I have several shades of yellows, reds, oranges and blues, with one jar of Fawn as well. Part of the fun of this (for me) is to pull the paints I think are going to produce a specific color range and see if it actually does that once they’re mixed. Today I was spot on for 10 of the 11 fabrics. Which one do you think I was “off” for?
They all look great to me, Judy, but I’ll guess the 3rd from the right is the one that wasn’t as you’d hoped. Thanks for sharing your process!
Andi
Andi, you’re right, it’s the third from the right. I was hoping for a deep, dark green, but was getting extremely low on yellow paint.