Painting Fabric: Not as Easy as I Thought

After working with some beautiful hand-painted fabrics recently, I decided to try my hand at creating some of my own.  Although I had painted fabric before, I had never done so with a really specific purpose. This time I wanted to:
– Paint at least 2 large pieces of fabric that would coordinate,
– Paint at least one of them with large scale high contrast designs.
That second one turned out to be the most difficult, so I’ll show you the easier one first.

I was working with a variety of blue-greens, greens, and blues and wet this piece of fabric before painting it very loosely.

Painting Fabric: Not as Easy as I Thought. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I hoped the wetness would cause the colors to move and shift a little and I think maybe it did.

Next, I wanted to add some low contrast texture.  I did so by stenciling soft blue-green paint through a scrap of gridding.

Painting Fabric: Not as Easy as I Thought. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I really liked the effect.

Painting Fabric: Not as Easy as I Thought. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I also wanted to add a contrasting color and selected a dull orange.  The complement of blue, I thought this would work well.  Again, I stenciled it on; this time with a commercial stencil left over from my scrapbooking days.

Painting Fabric: Not as Easy as I Thought. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Not bad, I thought.

Painting Fabric: Not as Easy as I Thought. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

But, as the orange paint dried it turned much darker, to more of a rust color. I decided to overpaint with brighter oranges, which helped.

I tried 3 more things that I forgot to photograph:
– Drawing with a syringe.  A big fail!  I wet it down and wiped it nearly all the way off.
– Adding small dots.  Okay, but not exciting.
– Smearing on white paint over everything.  This was pretty interesting, but heavier than I wanted.  Again, I sprayed it down and wiped much of it off.  That left a faint film which was unifying.  I liked it.

Finally, I added white rings stamped with a nearby roll of painters tape.

Painting Fabric: Not as Easy as I Thought. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Painting Fabric: Not as Easy as I Thought. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I think that was pretty successful.

A few observations and lessons learned:
– This takes a lot longer than I had imagined.  It’s worth the purchase price of gorgeous fabric created by OTHER people, when I can find it.
– I’ll definitely do more of this.
– I have a lot to learn.  Chief among my questions is how to get saturated colors without making the fabric stiff and without using lots of paint.  I’ll need to do some research.

The bottom line is that I can definitely use this fabric and I met my goals with it. Yippee!

Ellen Lindner
P.S. I used mostly Pebeo Setacolor Transparent, along with some artists acrylic paints.

 

 

 

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10 Responses to Painting Fabric: Not as Easy as I Thought

  1. Mary Frances Ballard July 20, 2018 at 7:56 am #

    I love your techniques and products! Painting and dyeing fabrics definitely help satisfy the creative side of working with fabrics. And I definitely agree that purchasing fabric that meets design criteria is preferable. No matter the strategies, I always end up at the sewing machine–my happy place!

  2. Gail Florin July 20, 2018 at 7:57 am #

    What a beautiful way to start my day—waatching your wonderful creativity! many thanks for sharing===

    • Ellen Lindner July 20, 2018 at 9:11 pm #

      Thanks, Gail!

  3. Gen Grundy July 20, 2018 at 10:52 am #

    Love your fabric. To increase the hand of the painted fabric, try adding some GAC to the paint.

    • Ellen Lindner July 20, 2018 at 9:10 pm #

      Thanks, Gen. I did eventually think of that, but I don’t think I added enough. Do you have a rule of thumb for the proper ratio of GAC to paint?

  4. Bette J Gove July 20, 2018 at 5:34 pm #

    Go to Pro chemical. They have fabric paint in both opaque and transparent. So if you want colors to blend over each other, transparent is good. However, if you want your colors to be separate then opaque is the way to go. Yes you can use both in the same piece. I have found that using an extender can “water” down your paint without watering down the color. Fabric paint leaves fabric much softer than acrylic paints. Although there is some paint feel to it. Set-a color which I think is no longer available is much softer feel on the fabrics. You can also look at Dharma Trading (www.dharmatrading.com) for softer fabric paints. Both companies are good.

    Have fun! I love to paint on fabric (as well as dye it).

    • Ellen Lindner July 20, 2018 at 9:09 pm #

      Thanks for all the great info, Bette!

  5. Candace Shively July 20, 2018 at 5:38 pm #

    Ellen,
    Can you talk a little about the Setacolor stuff? Is that a medium so you don’t have to heat set? or something else?

    • Ellen Lindner July 20, 2018 at 9:07 pm #

      Hi Candy,

      Setacolor is a Pebeo product. It’s a fabric paint, so it doesn’t need any additional medium. It’s supposed to be heat set, but I’ve tested it and found that it’s not completely necessary.

      I used the paint straight out of the jar. That gave me the strong color I wanted, but I used a LOT of paint that way. I think I should have diluted it slightly for smoother flow, etc.

  6. Ellen Lindner July 20, 2018 at 9:03 pm #

    Glad you like this piece, Mary Frances. Lots more to learn!

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