Now that I'd decided to do a
"scientific" experiment on the choice of paints and fabric mediums for t-shirt painting, I had to gather my supplies. Searching "fabric medium" on Michaels' website came up with three relevant products:
Liquitex Fabric Medium,
Americana Fabric Painting Medium, and
Delta Ceramcoat Textile Medium. While we only sell the Liquitex product online, we do sell
Golden GAC-900 and
Martha Stewart Crafts Tintable Fabric Medium — both of which did not show up in the search — in-store. This gave me four fabric medium products to test.
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| Fabric Mediums |
My craft paint stash includes
Apple Barrel,
Americana,
Folk Art, and
Martha Stewart Crafts acrylic craft paints as well as a few old tubes of "Liquitex Acrylic Artist Color" and a couple of colors of
Fabric Creations Soft Fabric Ink (which does not require the addition of fabric medium).
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| Craft Paints |
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| Old Liquitex Acrylic Paints |
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I added to this a bottle of
Liquitex Professional Acrylic Ink in Cadmium Yellow Light Hue, a bottle of
Liquitex Soft Body Acrylic Paint in Cadmium Orange Hue, a bottle of
Golden High Flow paint in Cerulean Blue Hue, and a bottle of
Golden Fluid Acrylic Paint in Teal. Based on Golden's website and the samples on the bottles, I expect both Golden paints to be relatively opaque.
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| Thinner-Bodied Artist Paints and Inks |
Because I'm looking at doing this in our classroom during off time, I'll also have access to the
CraftSmart acrylic paints and
Tulip Soft Matte fabric paints leftover from previous events. While I should probably add our house-brand
Artist Loft acrylic paints to the mix, I think I have enough variety — four mediums at five paint-to-medium ratios times nine or ten paints, plus a control (no fabric medium) for each... we're talking over a hundred samples, and possibly over 200. The samples need to be at least an inch square, if not two inches square, to have enough material to bend to check flexibility and tendency to crack. Because of the number of samples I'm going to need, I'm not going to heat treat until all my samples are done, and I'm going to wait the full week after that until laundering them.
I brought my materials into work a couple of hours early on Monday, so I could start work on the project. After about an hour and a half of solid painting work, I'm four paints into the project, and the entire front of one T-shirt.
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| First four - a bit overexposed to show the Liquitex Ink (top set) |
I'm debating whether to use the back of that shirt for my next set of samples, or if I should start a new shirt so I can hang the patches side by side.
Meanwhile, it's become apparent that (at least among the thinner paints I've tested so far) paint-to-medium ratios of less than 1:1, produce is some bleeding. In general, the thinner the paint, the greater the bleeding — but what surprised me is how much more bleeding there was with the GAC-900 — which is supposed to be the highest quality of the fabric mediums I used — compared to the other fabric mediums.
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| GAC-900 is the top row of each paint set. Control at far left; ratios go from 3:1 on the left to 1:3 on the right |
I want to see if the bleeding reduces as I test the heavier paints. It may be that the paint-to-medium ratios, and the preferred fabric mediums to use, may change with the viscosity and pigmentation of the paints used. It's also apparent that the dilution effect of fabric medium decreases the opacity of the paints — and that some fabric mediums are worse than others. Again, this may change with both the quality and thickness of paint as well as the individual fabric mediums. Since I've only gotten through about 40% of my test slate, the answers are still waiting to be found.
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