Sunday, August 30, 2009

Post-fabric painting housekeeping

I love fabric painting, but alas the day comes when I have to do the boring "housekeeping" stuff. If it hadn't been raining on Thursday, I would have probably said "To heck with this" and painted some more fabric instead! But instead I was a good girl and hand-washed all the fabric I painted this month to remove any salt and leaf bits and excess paint. Then I ironed everything on the pretense that this will heat set it. (I say "pretense" because I don't think I actually hold the iron long enough in place to really do the job, but in the long run, time sets these Setacolor paints, so at least I have less wrinkly fabric.)
IMG_8184 Heat setting with an iron
Some tips on ironing painted fabric:
Don't use your good iron, because you will probably get paint on it. I have an iron reserved for craft use (fusible webbing, image transfers, etc). I also covered my ironing pad with blank newsprint so I didn't fuse paint to that either.
Here's how my iron looked after taking on some red fabrics. You can buy a tube of iron-cleaning goop in the sewing notions section of the store, but I recently learned a tip from Sharon in my book arts group. Save all your used dryer sheets, and after all the fabric softener stuff has been shaken out in the dryer, you can iron them to scour gunk off your iron. You may still need to do a heavy duty cleaning later on, but this is a fast and easy way to clean and keep ironing. (And then you can save those freshly flattened & paint-stained dryer sheets for art projects!)
IMG_8189 Hung out to dry
I'm not a very enthusiastic ironer (is that a word?), so my fabric was still slightly damp when I decided I was finished, and I hung it on a drying rack. So that's all done, phew! And now I have some new fabric to play with!

Belatedly blogged for Fiber Arts Fridays

4 comments:

Terri Kahrs said...

Ohhh, how pretty these look all hung out to dry! Beautiful work! And who knew that dryer sheets could clean an iron? Thanks for the tip! Hugs, Terri

Alpaca Girl said...

Wow! I love your painted fabrics. I will spend some time touring your blog this afternoon. You visited my blog on the knit-to-felt. I used a pattern as I'm not very good at determining shrinkage. I just watch it closely in the washer and pull it out when it's the correct size. Visit my blog again soon. Will have more to share.

Carolyn B said...

Thanks, Terri!
@Alpaca Girl - thanks for the update and for stopping by!

Carolyn B said...

Hi Sara - thanks for stopping by!

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