Astar's Craft: 3 Ways to Hand Paint and Decorate Fabric
With Astar
3 Ways to Hand Paint and Decorate Fabric
Block printing
Free hand and relief
Embossed designs
Onto a white table runner or cloth - using block printing
Onto a white apron - free hand stamping
Onto a white night shirt - embossing or raised puffed method
Things to gather
All materials can be purchased from Spotlight
For the block printed table runner or cloth to be printed -
Set a colour in a colour to suit - depending on size of project
will govern required pots of paint. This paint formulated for
fabric is opaque water based; colours can be mixed together but
needs to be stirred well before using. The colours are
resistant to washing at 40c after 5 minutes fixing with an
iron.
Paint brush
Flat paint tray
Clear Cling stamp and pad
Wash up with warm soapy water
Plastic to cover work surface
Iron
Or relief outline marker fabric pen
Potato
Dress makers marker pencil
+ plastic to protect work surface
+ flat working surface&
Note: Once image has been printed it must remain flat until dry.
Method
Fabric needs to be washed, dried and ironed flat before
printing begins
To ensure that there is no further shrinkage, I always dry
fabric in the clothes dryer on top heat
Hem all edges of fabric, by ironing over ½ cm then turning
again before machine stitching.
Measure clear cling stamp pad, to ensure that once applied you have
evenness of design along all sides etc
Give the coloured paint pot a good stir and shake.
Pour into a flat tray.
You can either dip stamp into colour or paint onto surface of
stamp.
Have a wee practice on a scrap piece of fabric to get the feel of
how much paint is required on the stamp before pressing down on top
of fabric.
Once stamp is thoroughly covered with paint, press to emboss
pattern onto fabric.
When surface of fabric has been completed, leave overnight to
completely dry before iron fixing to make image permanent.
You could also look at using potatoes as your method of printing
images onto fabric. Simply cut desired image away from
potato, then dip into fabric paint before pressing down onto
fabric.
Heat set with iron as per above instructions.
Alternatively - From really good Indian Emporium Shops you can find
wooden block stamps. These are great to work with and as long
as paint is slightly watery you will achieve a great printed
image.
The other method I like is to use embossing outlining pencils or
tubes.
Use a dressing making pencil to scribe or draw desired
image. Allow to dry, then hand paint within lines of
scribed image. Allow to dry then heat set with a hot
iron.
(Broadcast 8 November 2012)
