Fabric Spray Paint Test-Part 1

A few weeks ago, I talked about attempting ombre fabric dying for a costume I want to make. This week, I wanted to talk about something else I tried to create ombre colors on fabric before I tried ombre fabric dying: fabric spray paint.

Back when I was afraid to try ombre dying, I thought that I could use watered down fabric paint to achieve the same affect. I tried this before with just one color and it turned out really nicely, so I thought I could do it with three colors.

While looking at the fabric paint section at Hobby Lobby, I found that they had fabric paint in aerosol cans. I got very excited, so I bought two cans in two different colors so I could try them out on scrap fabric to see how well they blend.

Since I did multiple experiments with the paint, I’m breaking them up into two posts.

The fabric paints I bought is Tulip brand Color Shot. They cost more than the spray bottles and squeeze bottles, but they act like other spray paints.

The two colors I bought was purple and bubblegum pink…

I eventually bought another color, yellow, but I’ll talk about that later.

The fabric I used for my experiment was blue satin that I originally intended to use in the waistband of my 1970’s Elsa skirt…

 

The fabric is backed with interfacing because, when I worked on the skirt, I the pattern called for interfacing in the waistband. I ended up changing my mind and used fabric that did not have interfacing in it.

While I would have preferred to use white fabric instead of blue, but I had no use for the fabric because it was interfaced so it made a decent scrap fabric to test fabric paint!

I tested the fabric paint hanging outside on a clothes line so I wouldn’t get paint everywhere inside the house and all over my hands.

Unfortunately, my idea to hang the fabric on a clothes line to keep my hands from getting paint all over them didn’t work. There was a breeze the day I sprayed the fabric, so I had to hold the fabric steady with my left hand while I sprayed with my right. I didn’t get the paint on me because I stood downwind of the spray, but I did get it all over my left hand…

And the clothes pins also got paint all over them as well…

Anyway, the paint turned the light blue fabric purple and dried fairly quickly.

Since the purple fabric is so dark, I wanted to see how the pink painted after I sprayed over the purple color.

The pink did a good job covering the purple, but it did take a few layers of pink before it was dark enough to tone down the pink.

After I finished spray painting the fabric, I took it inside to take some better photos of the paint color contrast…

Overall, I like the way the fabric paint looks and goes onto the fabric. There are projects I’d like to use it for, but the costume I wanted to make is not one of those projects. Just to make sure I was right, I painted some fabric to see what it looked like if I painted fabric with the spray paint in ombre colors.

Part of the costume needed to be made out of light weight, airy fabric such as chiffon. So, I took some scrap chiffon and, with a can of the fabric paint in a yellow color, I painted it with three colors, trying to blend them the best I could.

The fabric looked ok, but it didn’t look the way I wanted it to. I wanted the colors to be pastel, not vibrant and bright. Also, I wanted the colors to blend more than they did. I could fix this by soaking the chiffon in water before spray painting it, but I’m not sure if it would work because the paint is quick drying. It might work, but then again it might not. Since this test on chiffon didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, I decided to learn more about how to ombre dye fabric. Fortunately, I didn’t buy fabric for the costume when I did these tests, so I didn’t spend money on fabric I ended up not using.

Since I plan on talking more about my tests with the color shot paint in another post, that’s all for now!

Thank you for reading!