Am I the last person to discover this method of creating awesome prints?  I’ve read about it on everyone’s blog so now you get to read about it on mine. 

It was my daughter’s idea to create t-shirts for a meet-up today of her favorite homestuck character (don’t ask me to explain, it’s a teen thing).  I suggested trying it with freezer paper and promptly showed her the instructions over at one of my very favorite blogs, Jessica’s How about Orange.

The list of supplies is relatively short and inexpensive.  You can buy freezer paper at the grocery store in the wrap aisle (as opposed to the dub step or hip hop aisles, as my daughter kindly pointed out).  Then we bought some fabric paints at the craft store, but more about that later). As with all art projects, it’s coming up with the design that is the hard part so that was left to my daughter to work her magic on her computer and print out the stencils.  Here is a very brief overview. For proper, and much better instructions, do visit Jessica’s blog.

step 1 trace and cut out stencil         step 2 iron freezer paper on            step 3 apply paint

Okay, this is where our choice of paints totally wrecked the process, although the t-shirt still worked out alright, just not great.  Jessica recommends using Jacquard brand textile paint.  This is lovely paint that I’ve used before and it is great.  But, my daughter had a very specific shade of red in mind so we went to the local craft store and after looking around settled on a fabric spray paint.  It was the same price as a large container of another type of paint-on fabric paint, plus spray + stencil = easy peasy.  Wrong.  The spray was terrible.  Just terrible. 

The spray went on very poorly and despite drying it between coats and doing two or three coats it never got dark. We even tried painting white fabric paint first, drying it, then spraying (the green example) and still it never reached the saturation shown on the bottle.  And in trying to achieve the right amount of color the red ended up seeping into the fabric and spreading beyond the stencil lines.

The method is awesome though and the freezer paper is fantastic and works exactly as described.  Foolproof really.  But splurge on the paint and get the good stuff.  I know that here in the Seattle area it is carried by Pacific Fabrics who carry a lot of great surface design tools and materials.