Ann showing us various techniques
A group of us enjoyed an extremely interesting and productive day learning how to use transfer paints. Ann Smith, one of our members, led the day and started by talking about the paints themselves which usually come in powder form and are mixed when required. From experience she recommended the paints sold by Art Van Go but also mentioned Colourist paints which are bought online and come already made up.
Ann explained that the transfer paint had to be painted onto paper (we used A4 size) and when totally dry, it could then be ironed onto a man made fabric. She had kindly prepared some papers ready painted for us so we were able to get started straight away.
We had been asked to bring along a non steam iron but several of us found our irons not hot enough and fortunately Ann had borrowed an iron press which was very quick to use and worked extremely well. We had to remember to sandwich our work between sheets of baking parchment. We were shown how to layer the designs up and warned that the colour of the paint/paper did not always reflect the final colour when ironed on the fabric.
Ann had a lovely selection of fabrics for us to use – silk satin, crepe de chine, poly voile and polyester special. She also had a good selection of books for us to get design ideas from and several people cut out figure shapes from a magazine and used them as stencils. The outcome was most effective.
After we had mastered the skill of transferring the paint we all prepared our own papers. Some people also experimented by using fabric crayons produced by Crayola and several of us had papers several years old and we were pleasantly surprised when they still worked. Finally we were shown how to apply a foiling glue to our work which we had to leave until nearly dry and then ironed the foil between baking parchment.
Before leaving we all put our work on the table to admire. Thank you Ann, for a most enjoyable day.
