V35: Starting on Fabric Stamping for Colonial Williamsburg

Yesterday I thought I'd try my hand at stamping the linen/cotton I bought for one of my Colonial Williamsburg jackets.

I don't have a ginormous fabric stretcher thing, so I smoothed the fabric out on my dining room table.

First things first, I gave the un-stamped fabric a good hot wash, and a good hot dry, to fully shrink it, then a good hot iron.  I then spread it out on the dining room table and measured out my spacing for the stamping, using an orange chalk pencil to mark a small dot where I would place the bottom of the stamp.  I went with a 2 inch space between motifs, and each line is offset from the one beside it, to create an overall "brick" pattern.

Then on to stamping.  I used a foam applicator to tamp the floral stamp with fabric paint.  This produced quite a lot of variation, and you can see the lines of the stamp around some of the flowers, in the close-up, but in a mass they are not noticeable.  It takes a certain technique to press hard enough and still avoid those lines - still learning :-).

In between the flowers I dabbed a red dot, using a paintbrush.  Simples :-).

'Course, I've accomplished.....about a 36" x 28" wide space so far, out of 2.5 yards of 60" wide fabric.  It certainly takes time, but I am very happy with the result so far.

You can see my mess-ups in the bottom right, where a detail in the tabletop caused a stamping flub.  That part will have to be avoided when doing the cuttng layout.

If you're new to my blog, you can read about my fabric stamps here.