Painting … con’t
Here are the four dried and ironed pieces of fabric that I painted yesterday.
These two are particularly close, which is great if I need to use them together for a quilt back.
When I finish ironing, I like to roll it the fabrics onto a tube or cardboard bolt. In this case, I painted about 11 yards. Much of it looks similar so they will stay together on the roll.
Painting over Commercial Fabric …
I have a lot of commercial fabric that I’ve bought over the years, and I hardly use any of it anymore (except on the back of experimental quilting pieces — the stuff I use when working out a design). Periodically I give piles to my sister-in-law. Otherwise, I like to paint over it. It works for nearly everything — sunprinting, monoprinting, airbrushing, and so on. Generally whatever I’m doing to white fabric (in this case painting), I’ll consider trying on commercial fabric. Here’s what I do:
I look for pieces that are about two yards (or more), and I look for light prints (great for overpainting). It takes just a quick eyeballing of the shelves to spy a couple contenders. Because I didn’t prewash them, chances are there is some sizing (probably dust too) on the fabric. To help remove it, I immerse the fabric in a sink filled with boiling water (yes, I boil it in a teapot) and stir it with a wooden spoon. It’s also very helpful to add some soda ash and some Synthrapol. Some fabrics have a brownish gunk that comes out. These fabrics didn’t seem to have noticeable gunk. After 5-10 minutes, I pour cold water into the sink so that I can ring out the water. I then toss it into the dryer.
Next I make my way to the garage via stepping over Buddy who was sunning himself on the deck.
I still have plastic down from yesterday, and it has a lot of dried paint on it. When I start painting on new fabric, I am aware that the paint from the plastic will get onto the new stuff. If I don’t want that to happen, I rinse down the plastic. Since I’m primarily working with the same colors I did yesterday, I leave it. The less I have to wash of anything, the better. Also, be sure you have lots of water around so that you can rinse your brushes as needed.
Get in the habit of saving any type of decent jar, especially if it has a lid. The jar above on the right is from a Philosophy body scrub. As an aside, you haven’t tried their bath scrubs, lotions, and potions, give them a try. They have interesting, practicably edible scents — pumpkin pie, sugar cookie, coconut frosting. My favorite is Gingerbread Man, which is what the jar is from above. I haven’t seen it lately, and I think it’s a holiday scent only around at that time of year. Okay … the point is to save those jars! Otherwise, I’m basically doing what I did yesterday.