How to paint a Seascape on fabric - Tutorial

Here's a quick tute for how to paint a shimmering seascape that you can use for further embellishment or simply frame as is (and if DIY isn't your thing feel free to commission a piece off me from $25 for a fat quarter size 50x 50cm). I love painting and fabric, so it only seems just that I combine the two frequently!

An example of the technique described below.

1. First wash and iron white cotton an inch or two bigger than your intended finished piece. It should be 100% cotton, washed to remove any sizing (coating) and then ironed to be wrinkle free.

2. Lay your fabric on a paint proof surface - I use a piece of metal or acrylic but you could use the glass from an old picture frame (put tape around the edges so they aren't sharp) or in a pinch work on a chopping board you've covered with a wide sheet of aluminium foil. Spray it with water until thoroughly damp and smooth down.

3. Decide where your horizon line will be. I like to use the Jacquard Lumiere acrylic paints as they have two tones in the one pot - where you paint thickly appears quite metallic and gold and where the paint travels and soaks into the wet fabric is quite matte and the alternate colour. For a sky over the sea I start with halo violet-gold straight from the tub and paint a line along the horizon allowing the colour to bleed out into the wet paint.

4. Add colours to the sky. I've added halo pink-gold, burnt orange and sunset gold. However using pink-gold by itself can create similar effects if you use it both watered down and straight. Allow the wet fabric to merge the colours and keep your paint lines mostly horizontal - the more angular you do them the windier it will look. Spray more water as needed.

5. For the sea bunch up that part of the fabric and paint over the top folds. I've used halo blue-gold.

6. The colour will soak down a little way into the fabric. After painting the visible folds with both straight and watered down paint (to get different effects) re bunch the fabric to make the white ares stand up. Using a different colour paint the now exposed white areas (i've used pearl turquoise). Lastly re-bunch the fabric again to show any remaining white areas and paint those (i've used the very metallic 'super sparkle' for these. Keep bunching and adding paint / spray with water as needed until you have covered the fabric and are pleased with the result.

7. Lay your fabric out flat and admire your work. Ta Da!

Hand Painted Fabric

Have just added two hand painted fabric pieces for sale for the very first time! (So exciting for me as i've wanted to do this for ages but wasn't sure how to do the payment buttons for unique one off items!)

They are listed in my 'Pages' menu on the RHS, and you can also get there by clicking on the heading above.

Both of these pieces have been painted this week and will look stunning as whole cloth quilt tops or with borders / panels added. They have been painted using iridescent Shiva Sticks which really glow against the black fabric. The cotton is high thread count 'Emma Louise' quilters muslin, which is wonderful to sew and the finer weave helps the colours to really pop.

To quilt you could do absolutely anything - while painting them i was imagining them being stitched with either shiny rayon or metallic threads around the painted lines and then quilted with bright swirls over the entire background. I will do one as a sample when time prevails, probably pillow cased before quilting with no binding and intensively quilted.

Over the next few weeks I'll be adding more together with a free downloadable PDF file on how to turn them into a quilt for quilting newbies. I'm thinking about offering some as kits with instructions, backing fabric and wadding too - please add in the comments below if you think that's an idea you'd be interested in!