Just Make: Painted Fabric Tips

 Next week's Project Run and Play challenge requires working with a white sheet.  Since everything I am sewing for this season will be part of our community's First Friday Gallery Cruise in October, I feel like each look is part of a "collection."  The theme of this collection is costumes representing characters from Alice in Wonderland.  The colors I am using are very bright and I am trying to mix and match a lot of polka dots and stripes.  After researching  a few techniques for getting stripes on fabric (resist dye, freehand painting) I decided to use a tip I saw on HGTV at one point and treat my fabric like painting stripes on a wall.

The first thing I did was iron the fabric to create a smoother surface.  I picked up this sheet at a thrift store a few weeks ago and it has been sitting, folded up on my sewing desk since then.  I wish I had been more aggressive about ironing, because any imperfections I had were definitely caused by wrinkles.  Next, I measured and taped off my stripes with blue painters tape.  I wanted the stripes to be pretty wide, so I put two strips overlapping to create about three inch stripes.  This is where the HGTV tip comes in.  Instead of just painting all over the fabric, "dry brush" paint the edges of the tape where it meets the fabric.  This means only put a small amount of paint on your brush,

and then, starting with your brush on the tape, paint onto the edges of the fabric along the tape.  The theory is, this prevents excess paint from seeping under the tape onto the fabric (or wall), and instead creates a nice, crisp line of paint.  Once the paint is dry where you dry brushed you can go back over and paint the entire fabric.  After this coat dries, you can peel the tape and admire your nice clean lines.  I was really pleased with the stripes, and my neighbor didn't even realize the fabric had been painted when I was trying the skirt on her daughter, so I count that as a success.  Tune in next week to see the fabric in Week 3's look for Project Run and Play!