Painting fabric and silk ribbon

 

My friend who reads tarot convinced me to make and sell tarot deck bags on Etsy. I don't know how people will ever find my bags among the hundreds already out there, but I'm going to give it a try. Mine will be set apart because I'm painting most of the fabric, including the pure silk ribbon drawstrings. (Plus I'll offer some affordable quilted items and maybe some beaded jewelry.)

So that motivated me to dig out my fabric paint and play with it for the first time in years. Here is some of what I did in the last two days.

I only painted the fabric for the bag on the right, but I painted all of the ribbons. I line the bags with silky soft garment lining fabric.

Here's my setup, on my cutting table right inside the front door. Not that anyone ever comes to the door.

I wet the white cotton fabric and white silk ribbons (I order them from www.dharmatrading.com) and paint them with cheapie foam brushes. I use Setacolor, Jaquard, and Lumiere fabric paints, also from Dharma.

After I paint the fabric, I scrunch it up while it is still wet so that it develops hills and valleys patterns. I crumple the silk ribbon in pie tins so that it dries in interesting patterns.

This shows the dried and ironed fabric and ribbons -- you can see from the patterning that it still looks three dimensional. The pink and orange-yellow piece above was overpainted with a wash of buttercup yellow to give it more depth. If you let the fabric dry and heat set it by ironing, you can then add more layers of Setacolor transparent paint on top. 

Note: Setacolor by Pebeo recently started calling its transparent paint "paint for light colored fabrics." Also, if you use opaque paint it will cover up the first layer completely.

And, did anyone else notice the quilt behind Rep. Katie Porter on TV last night!? That was exciting! I love her chunky necklace, too.

Have a colorful day