Tutor Hat

How to get (almost) perfect letters painted onto fabric.

(My first tutorial! Tutor hat - get it? :)

I needed a birthday gift for my soon-to-be-sis-in-law, and wanted it to be somewhat themed for this season of her life (it being wedding week for her). So, I decided on a Honeymoon Bag - a beach bag filled with beach stuff (they are headed to Aruba).  I wanted something I could personalize, so I found this great beach bag that was yellow and white with this neat roping and grommets up the side. I searched around on pinterest for an easy way to help me "print" on fabric without really printing on fabric with a printer, but I found nothing.  SO, I came up with this technique! (can also be done with images too!)

What you need:

paper

printer (optional)

pencil

paint

paint brush (small)

painter's tape (any tape will do, just had to keep going with the P's ;)
pretzels (optional)

STEP 1  Print out whatever it is you wish to paint in the size you wish to paint it. (if you're not too confident with a paint brush, chose a bolder font.)

*Now I don't have a printer in my apt, so I instead typed up what I wanted in Word and then traced it off the computer screen (carefully) I don't recommend doing it this way, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do!

STEP 2   Tape your design down to your fabric.  With your pencil, sharpened to a sharp point, carefully start poking holes in the paper. As you poke each hole, stick the pencil point into the fabric and spin the pencil a bit - enough to make a dot. You can poke lots of holes, but then later on that's more marks you have to be sure to cover. I just poked as many as I would need, in key points for each letter. Just imagine you were making a dot-to-dot for yourself. (which is actually what you're doing!)

I peel the page back from time to time to make sure I'm making the dots okay.

Here you can see the papers I used..

See my dots?

STEP 3 Connect the dots! (and sing "connect the dots, la la lala :)

Use your paint and small brush to connect the dots.  I found it VERY helpful to have the paper I used for the dots in front of me to reference when I got confused with which dot went which dot.

Almost half-way there.  Fabric I used (being canvas) not so easy to get perfect lines since it's not a smooth fabric.

Almost done... (by this point I have almost finished watching/listening to "Nightmare in Jamestown" - the 2nd documentary I watched on Netflix while doing this project. :)

DONE! Phewf!

STEP 4: Reward yourself with the pretzels! What? You ate them already!? 

It's FOR SURE not perfect, but I kinda like the "imperfect" look. It's now ready to get stuffed with beach supplies!

This technique has it's flaws - one being if you wanted to paint in white/pastels on a certain fabric, the pencil marks would be tough to hide.  But I suppose you could use colored pencils.

Some may find the painting part tedious, I found it relaxing.

Hope someone finds this post helpful!