Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Contributor Post: Make your own striped fabric

Hey! I'm Karly from Paisley Roots and I'm so excited to be guest posting over here! One of my favorite things to do is play with fabric manipulation. Making my own print really adds to my creative process and sometimes even inspires the foundation for my entire project.


The technique I'm showing you today came from a place of necessity. I LOVE stripes. LOVE them. But sometimes I can't find the exact color I need or it's just on a fabric that quality just isn't up to par, and that makes me crazy. So instead of drafting up a pattern for a straight jacket (which lets face it, is still on the table) I created my own striped fabric in the exact shade I wanted. Whether it's one color or 10, I get exactly what I want, which is pretty awesome. So grab some plain ordinary fabric and lets make it into a one of a kind print!


You will need:
Fabric
Newspaper
Painters tape


Start off by washing your fabric. Always, always wash it! 
When it's all washed and dried, lay it on a flat surface that you can easily get around. I chose to do stripes because, stripes are just amazing. It's also really hard to find the color or design of stripes that I sometimes want, so this is a really easy way to fix that! 
I got the 1" painters tape for this project. Do not use a freezer stencil with the Color Shot spray. The tape worked amazing, but when I used a freezer stencil the paint bled through and made it into a giant blob.
I wanted the painted stripes to be slightly smaller than the tape strip, so I measured 3/4" after each strip to lay the next strip. You can keep measuring each line, or get impatient like I did and just eyeball it....


When you have the tape down, lay your fabric down on newspaper outside or in a well ventilated area. Spray in the lines and keep repeating until your fabric is completely covered. I only grabbed one can of this color and this was about 3/4 of a yard that it finished.
Wait 30 minutes for the paint to dry and remove the strips of tape. 


Viole! You have some super awesome striped fabric. Now you can cut it out however you would like!


I added a fun freezer stencil on Jude's Twisted Tank to make it even more One-of-a-kind.



If you want more than one color, tape it off, spray with the first color, wait until it dries, then put tape over the first color so you don't spray over it. For this one, that I made for Zoe, I wanted to play more with stripe sizing and spacing and Zoe wanted two colors. I also decided to have the design stop near the top. I love being in control of the design!



Happy Designing!

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5 comments :

  1. Omg, that is brilliant! I have the problem of not being able to find the perfect stripe all the time. I love this method of making your own!

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  2. Fun to be able to play with colors and spacing. Great idea!

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  3. I love the mint stripes! I was looking for a fabric like this, but maybe I should just make it myself!

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  4. What a fun idea. Will have to try for sure 😀

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  5. What a fun idea. Will have to try for sure 😀

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