Fiber artist Mary Battle creates unique painted fabrics for bed linens, pillows and bed canopies with easy-to-use fabric paints and salt. A sprinkle of salt added to the freshly painted fabric diffuses the dye and imparts a soft, mottled look. Materials: Natural-fiber fabric: cotton, silk or rayon
Transparent textile paints
Rubber gloves
Spray bottle filled with water
Plastic dropcloth
Jar of water
Clean rags or paper towels
Paintbrush
Salt
Iron
- Wash and dry the fabric before painting to remove any sizing.
- Protect your work surface with a plastic dropcloth and your hands with rubber gloves.
- Lay the fabric on your work surface. If you're using cotton, consider misting the fabric with water from a spray bottle, which will allow the paint to bleed a bit for a soft watercolor effect. Sheer fabrics absorb the dyes more readily and may not need misting. Experiment on scrap fabric before beginning.
- Paint the fabric with overlapping areas of color (figure A), laying down lighter colors first, then painting the darker shades.
- While the fabric is still wet with paint, sprinkle salt sparingly over the surface (figure B) and set the fabric aside to dry. The salt repels the dye, giving the dyed fabric a somewhat speckled appearance (figure C). Fine-grained table salt gives a soft, diffused look, whereas sea salt and kosher salt, which have larger grains, create bolder patterns.
- When the fabric is dry, brush away the salt, and heat-set the dye with an iron according to the manufacturer's directions. The painted patterns are then permanent, and the fabric can be washed and dried normally.
To add stamped images to the painted fabric, use foam stamps or hand-carved plastic foam stamps with opaque fabric paint.
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