How to put my own acrylic artwork on plain material? Does anyone know?

[Darlene Pringle]

I am looking for help on using my own artwork to put onto plain muslin like material.

Does anyone know how I can do it?

PLease contact me..

Thank you!♥ Darlene ♥

[Linda]

Hello Darlene, are you aware of the prepared for printing fabrics that can be purchased??  You can buy cotton fabric, treated and ready to print your artwork or anything you have on your computer.  There are various other methods for transferring art to fabric, but some of the images will not come out clearly enough.  Apart from the first suggestion, I too would love to know if someone has other suggestions.  Cheers.

[Monica]

Hi Darlene, do you mean that you want to transfer the image onto the fabric (such as the printing technique suggested by Linda) or do you want to paint directly onto the fabric?

If you want to paint onto the fabric, the process depends to some extent on what you want to use it for. For example, if you want to make a mixed media wall-hanging, which won't require laundering, you can paint straight onto fabric (although, it's often best to wash it first to remove the sizing) and heat set the paint before stitching onto it or adding other embellishments.

If you want to paint a garment, you definitely need to remove the sizing first and use a fabric paint or mix the acrylic with fabric medium. Then heat set according to the instructions for the fabric paint or fabric medium.

[Liz in Kansas]

Darlene, there are really several ways to accomplish this.  You may have to experiment and try them all!  I won't go into any details now, but if you see something you want to ask about, please do.

Most of the ways I do this require you to take a photo or scan your artwork into a computer.  From there you can print it onto pre-packaged fabric sold for that purpose.  You can get cotton, silk, or organza.  To print on fabric you already have just iron a sheet of freezer paper to the back of it, trim to size and run it through your printer.  Lutrador is a new-ish product that gives some interesting results when printed on.  Then there is TAP - Transfer Artists Paper - which is also a fairly recent product.  This uses heat to transfer the image to fabric.  I have not tried painting directly onto the TAP, but it sounds like an option worth experimenting with. 

If you want to paint directly onto the fabric, Monica's remarks really say it all.  There are many fabric paints available and many, many fiber artists who have had success using them.

Hope this helps.

[Kalona Simmons]

Hi,

Golden also have a digital ground medium, which you apply to any fabric.. this allows to to print on whatever you like. Tape the material to a piece of acetate for stability and off you go. Let us know how you go!!

Kal.x

[Annette Garcia]

I've used tee-shirt transfer paper which works really well. You do need to have a good scanned or photographed copy of your artwork as a printable graphic file. My best results have come when the image is the same, maximum, resolution as my printer. Tee-shirt transfers work in ink-jet printers and can be washed afterwards.

The BIG, drawback is that the transferred print is quite stiff and not easy to stitch on. Washing before stitching helps a bit. The transfers tend to be a bit shiny as well, which has not been a problem for me. I have recently been given TAP (transfer artist paper) which is supposed to stay soft and flexible to make stitching easier but I haven't tried it yet.

my most recent experiments have been with POLYSOL (disperse) transfer dyes. These are great. You paint using the dyes onto paper (photocopy or cartridge paper) and then iron onto your fabric. You can use the paper original three or four times. The fabric remains soft and the dyes are really, really colourfast. The dyes on paper tend to be very subdued but the iron heat makes them bright and wonderful. Almost like magic!

have fun, Annette

[Sally Hutson]

You can have your work printed on to fabric with a company called spoonflower.com ( in the States) . They print yardage on to cotton or silk. Its perfect but a bit expensive ( especially when I am ordering from the UK).Just take a photo and then upload into their site and its done.