Dish Detergent Resist with Fabric Paint

I conducted another experiment today using dish detergent

 as a resist to fabric paint to create a design on fabric.

Below shows the fabric after the blue dish detergent dried. 

Next, I painted black textile paint over the resist and let it dry.

I followed up with a magenta and teal. I love how easy and clean this method is. 

However, my design could use some work.

Sun Printing fabric and Painting Fabric

I painted some fabric yesterday and then put it out in the 109 degree sunshine, covering it first with all sorts of dried grass and leaves to get a subtle sun print. In that heat, it didn't take long.

I love how dyes interact with fabric, but with the drought, 

I try to be conscious of how much water I'm using and painting fabric uses far less.

Below our closeups of the fabric after it dried.

On the next piece, I painted the background, then scrunched it up slightly

 and painted a contrasting color on the tops of the folds.

Here is it drying on the line.

Painted Fabrics ala Mickey Lawler

Sorry I haven't been able to update my blog in almost two weeks.  Have been incredibly busy with getting the elementary Art Docent Program revved up for this next year and trying to get my classroom ready to go for next Tuesday when the little middle school darlings arrive.

But last Wednesday, I took a break from all thing school related and painted some fabric, ala Mickey Lawler style, http://www.skydyes.com/  Her book, Skydyes is fabulous.  It's been out forever and has wonderful, easy to follow instructions and tips on painting beautiful fabrics.

So here's a few I did.

Above is the front, where I applied the paint and below is the the back side of it.

In the picture above,  you can really see the contrast  between the front and back.  This is something you don't really get much of when you dye fabrics, because the dyes permeates the fabric much more, whereas the paint sits on top of the fabric, with the excess showing slightly on the reverse, similar to commercially silkscreened fabrics.

And another.

And another.  This was lots of fun and very improvisational, which is the way I like to work.