Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Painting T-Shirts


 
A day of play today. What fun G and I had!  Rarely do I paint with fabric paints, preferring to paint with thickened dyes but today I wanted to try some fabric painting techniques on T shirts.
Golden Paints produce a produce GAC 900 that is a fabric medium to use with acrylic paints. http://www.goldenpaints.com/technicaldata/fabric.php
After drying the shirts will need to be heat set with an iron 3-5 minutes on medium heat. To start, a plastic bag was slipped inside the shirt to keep the paint from going through to the back. Acrylic paints in the colour scheme I chose were squeezed out on a palette along with the addition of white acrylic paint and the GAC. The GAC 900 is to be mixed with the paint 1 : 1 and it really helped to spread the paint on the T shirt. It is important to think of placement of the images on a T shirt and helpful to hold the shirt up once in awhile to yourself while looking in a mirror.
On the white shirt, after painting a flower or two in the positive, I pencilled in another flower and painted around at least some of it to create a negative image. Leaves can be done this way too. It really adds interest to have positive and negative shapes.
The Golden Paints website also gives guidelines for caring for your painted clothing, but mostly it was suggested to turn the shirts inside out for washing. Hand washing was preferred, but I know that won't be happening with these shirts.  

If any of you have experience with this technique I would be pleased to share more information about it. Can you let me know how well they have stood up over time?

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Very nice! Going to have to try this for sure!

Gloria said...

A great project for covering up stained clothing!

Win Dinn, Artist said...

What fun, Eileen - so many ways to play here, plus get a wardrobe addition!

Mellowood Gallery said...

I painted flowers on a sweatshirt in 2000 and it is still as strong and clear as it was then. I have also used the Gac 900 when I paint my cotton purses and they survive numerous washes and lots of banging around. As Win says - so many ways to play!

Laura Leeder said...

It looks like great fun Eileen! Thanks for sharing.

Watercolour and Textile Artist, Eileen Gidman said...

Thanks Val for the feedback about the Gac 900, which is what I used.
Yes, Gloria this technique would be good for covering spots. All the T shirts I used were from the closet.
The process worked well with stamps too.