Painting my new apron

I am so excited. I will be leaving Sunday for a week-long Pat Pauly workshop at QSDS (Quilt & Surface Design Symposium) in Columbus, Ohio. If you don’t know about Pat, she is a wonderful artist who makes contemporary quilts with her printed and painted fabrics. The class I’ll be taking is called “Glorious Prints.”

But before I go, I wanted to paint a new apron to take with me. Here is the finished apron.

The idea for this apron and the tutorial are not mine. One of my favorite artists/blogger LuAnn Kessi shared this technique on her blog recently. If you’ve never read her blog, check it out. Lots of great inspiration. She also is in a group of artists who get together monthly to teach local cancer survivors art. What a wonderful gift for her community. Check out this post about her aprons.

Here are the steps. Start by painting the apron with light colors. I’m using Jacquard Fabric Paints. I added white textile paint to the colors to make pastels.

For the second layer use a medium color and stamp with found objects. I used a cardboard tube, a potato masher, Tupperware lid, and a credit card. Of course, you can stamp with anything on this or any of the layers. The point is to use different marks on each layer.

For the next layer use darker colors with foam stamps. I’m using my homemade foam stamps. I also am using the same colors with no added white.

Now add black and white paint only. For this layer I used my mandala stencils I made awhile back and another stencil. I also added the potato masher again since I love the spiral mark it makes.

The last step is to add detail with black and white paint pens. I ended up also using a gold paint pen on the white mandalas. Neither my black nor my white pens had much paint left, so the detail doesn’t show up in the picture or on the apron!

Here are a couple close up pictures. I think I need to buy some new paint pens!

I look forward to wearing it at the workshop. Thank you LuAnn for this and all of your inspiration. I’ve soda ash soaked and labeled 15 yards of fabric for this fun week. Now to gather the rest of my stuff for the trip.

I hope you can carve out some time this week to do something creative. And if you paint an apron or even a piece of canvas, I’d love to see it. Thanks for dropping by.

I’m linking this post to Off The Wall Fridays. Check out all of the inspiration there.