Tag Archives | Painting fabric

Challenging Fabric Painting

Like I said, painting fabric is more challenging than it looks.  Especially if you use sort of thick paint to get hard edges, as I did. I wanted to create two coordinating fabrics: one with an allover pattern of sorts, and the other with large scale high contrast patterning. It was this second one that really humbled me.

I started out with some large sweeps of my brush and I liked them pretty well.

Challenging Fabric Painting. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

But, I wanted to add color to the background. And that’s where I went wrong.

Challenging Fabric Painting. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Can you say “ugly” boys and girls?  I wasn’t sure if I could salvage this and I allowed myself a few hours of discouragement.

Clearly, it needed some unifying elements, so I started adding stuff.

Challenging Fabric Painting. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

That helped.  But, do you know how long it took to draw all those little shapes?  Enough to dissuade me from using it all over.  I did like that one area, however.

In the photo below you can see both fabrics.  For the one on the right, I added large aqua circles, which also helped. I certainly didn’t love that fabric at this point, but I felt like I could judiciously use selected parts.

Challenging Fabric Painting. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Then, I tried again with my desire for a high contrast, large scale pattern.

Challenging Fabric Painting. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Challenging Fabric Painting. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

This time I left it alone!  This was my final collection of fabrics, some of which are folded in this photo.

Challenging Fabric Painting. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I can’t say I was elated with this menagerie, but I felt like I could do something with them. What, I wasn’t sure! Maybe I’ll figure it out by the next post.

Ellen Lindner

 

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