Sun Dyeing with the grandkids

 Visiting the grand kids in Ohio and, of course, wanted to do some craft project with them.  So I ordered Setacolor paints to be shipped to their house and bought some shirting material to make pillowcases for each of the kids.

First we wet the material and painted it with diluted paint and water.  Frankly, the instructions tell you to wash, iron, then paint with water to wet the material.  Iron then wet?  Are you kidding??  We washed the material to remove the finish then used it fresh from the washer.  We did wet it with paint brush just to get it to adhere to the plastic and smooth the surface.  The paint was supposed to be diluted 1 part paint to 2 parts of water.  I just poured paint in the container of water.  After painting the fabric with water, then diluted paint, I poured some paint directly on the wet fabric to add some intensity in spots.  We did all that in the garage to be out of the direct sun.

Next step was putting stuff on the fabric to make the shadows. Kids used alot of their silly bands. Those left great images.  My daughter printed off some shapes on their ink jet printer.  That was doubly cool because the red bled from the red hearts onto the fabric.  The shapes that were done just in black, like the police car and butterfly, left the black and white image from the details on the paper.  KEWL!

Once all the stuff was on the painted fabric, we moved the fabric into the direct sun.  It was supposed to take 15 minutes to an hour.  We checked after 1/2 hour and they were dry and done.  Then I ironed to set the paint and turned them into pillow cases.