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.

22 Comments

Leave a Reply to Kate Cancel reply