Painting on Fabric Using Pigment Powder

Lately, I have been working with fabric. It has provided a great outlet for me to play with my stash by dyeing, painting, quilting, incorporating surface design techniques, and anything else which I can think up. Today, I decided to try using Colourarte's Primary Elements pigment powder to paint on some fabric that I had dyed a few months ago.

Hand dyed denim on left and cotton scarf on right

The original fabrics were white or off-white and now they are beautiful shades of blues and a bit of pink/magenta.  These seemed like great choices to paint upon.

Obviously, blue is a first choice for me when it comes to adding additional color! I used several different colors of Primary Elements but chose to stick with a cool palette. (Maybe even a 'cold' palette, as in sherbert! *See note below.) At the time, I was thinking of a tone on tone effect.  But as I was painting, I realized that more contrast would be more interesting so I grabbed some solid fabric to paint, too.  Those pictures are below the scarf.

Stargazer, Bolivian Blue and Green Pearl Primary Elements on tie-dyed scarf

In order to see how the rich colors of the pigment powder would work with a colorless extender I mixed about a teaspoon of the pigment powder with about a tablespoon of medium.  This is what I used:

It was fun to mix the powders and see the results. Sometimes paint colors change quite a bit when they are dry, so the anticipation of the end product was part of the fun! I decided to add a bit of white Brusho Colourcraft powder to the pigment powder to see if it would change the opacity much.  It may have been that I did not add enough but it wasn't a very noticeable change.

Forest Green Primary Elements is most noticeable on the top left piece

The pink denim fabric was left over from when my 11 year old daughter and I made an apron together several years ago. She wants me to make a book bag from today's painting experiment!  I love how the large stencil from this month's Stencil Girl Club collection made this project even easier!  The colors of the fabrics and the paints remind me of summer days with ice cream and sprinkles.

The lighting is wonky, but this is actually an intense pink color!

*Colourarte is having a "sherbert challenge" and I thought of Raspberry when I pulled out the fabric. The painted colors showed up a lot better on the solid color fabric.  And the picture below is a better representation of the background fabric!

The large piece of blue dyed denim in the top couple of pictures was painted also. But I will share the outcome of that on another day when I have sewn it into something!
I hope you have a wonderful, warm day with a cold treat! Thank you for stopping by today!
Have a wonderful day!
Beverly