Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Crayons on fabric

Did you know about this? Am I the only one who didn't?
please indulge me and tell me that this is a great discovery for you too..

What a fun, cool and awesome way to make a quilt or even just embellish a block!

You take your normal everyday wax crayons. Tape some cotton fabric to the table, keeping the fabric taught. Colour! Draw! Print! Go Crazy!

Then, to set the crayon, you slip the fabric that you coloured in between two pieces of plain paper. Iron on the cotton setting. Do this a few times. You'll notice the wax will 'soak' into the paper somewhat.

Done!

I did this little example in less than 5 minutes just to show how bright it shows up. I didn't press ultra heavily either. Instead of black crayon, use a micro fine sharpie to draw the image first, and then colour it in. I'm sure it will look much sharper.

Mr. Paleo had a try too - he really liked it, and wanted to make a whole bunch of squares to make a quilt. Again - at the end, touch up with a fine sharpie and it would look awesome.

I bet this would technique would be cool as a watercolour wash style....

7 comments:

  1. How cool! I haven't heard of this technique either. I wonder how it will look after it's been washed a few times? I can't wait to experiment with it ... my weekend plans just changed.

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  2. I had no clue-you are brilliant !~!

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  3. Years ago, and I'm not going to tell you exactly when, I started a Better Homes and Gardens project where I ordered a quilt kit, all fairytale blocks, all meant to be colored using crayons. I started it. Still have it. This inspires me pull it out. The finished quilt was sashed in brown calico. Ouch. I would love to give it a modern look. Probably kona solids would do the trick!

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  4. How wonderful! This is new to me too and now I want to try it. Thanks for sharing!

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  5. Brilliant! I never knew that would happen. That's this afternoon's craft activity sorted...

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  6. here's another idea for the boys: take a 5" square of medium grit sand paper. Have the boys colour with crayons a scene on the sand paper. Colour hard and no empty spaces. (keep in mind, image will be reversed after next step, so no lettering). tap off any bits of wax that come off. Flip the sand paper over on to a piece of cotton. Iron with dry iron (and not your best iron) and viola your image will 'melt'on to the cotton. fun to do on tshirts at birthday parites too. enjoy

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  7. We made crayon t-shirts for father's day once, they didn't like the dryer and faded. :( I'm not sure how quilters cotton will hold out but I'd be interested to know. Keep us posted.

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