Kid Painted Quilt #4 - Shaving Foam Rainbow Paint

We spent a great deal of time the other day playing with shaving foam paint. It was so successful that I thought perhaps we could use the same technique on fabric. Armed with my Biocolor paint and Fabric Medium we went outside with fat quarter size pieces of white fabric a couple of cans of shaving foam.

Putting in the shaving foam proved to be the highlight of this activity to my 4 year old who had already explored this activity for over an hour the day before.

I should have stuck the fabric down - but the kids still got to work - smearing on the thick & puffy mixture of paint & shaving foam.

I had the kids in painting t-shirts (Daddy's old t-shirts) - ready for them to engage in some messy play. But it was one of those days - no one particularly wanted to get dirty.

I thought the kids would smear and squish with their hands as we had done the afternoon before - but instead today was a paint brush day.

My eldest did however enjoying coming up with the idea of slapping the paint brush from a great height down onto the fabric sending the foam flying ....

... kaboomb!

Here are our fat quarters all laid out and drying.

As the mixture dried the colors got darker.

Here are the fabrics before I put them in the washer (twice due to the immense amount of shaving foam on them!!)

And here is our finished little quilt. I used this tutorial here to help me construct this Around the World pattern with our rainbow colors. I adapted it as my blocks are 7 squares by 7 - I don't know if this take on the pattern is illegal in the quilting world.

Unfortunately our violet & purple were just too close in color - so I removed the violet and just used the purple - so our quilt is a little smaller than I had intended - but I think it shows the soft smears and mottling that shaving foam brings to your dying/painting process.

I had also used a bubble/dot white on white print for our fabric - you can still clearly see the bubbles/dots through the fabric paint. I have not used straight lines for quilting in a very long. For this quilt I sewed in the ditch and then on the diagonals - following the patterns of the blocks.

I always forget that simple can look delicious too. I'm actually in love with the back of this quilt. I used a cute white & pink print and the simple straight and diagonal lines really appeal to the inner minimalist in me. Negative space is something I really want to explore more in quilting.

We are building up quite a collection of fun mini quilts that the girls have helped me create this summer!

Our other kid painted fabric projects this summer have included:

Kid painted Teepee

Kid painted Garden Picnic Blanket

Kid painted Quilt #1 - Blotter Art

Kid painted Quilt #2 - Throwing Paint

Kid painted Quilt #3 - Spraying Paint

Tutorial: Bunting

I have posted a tutorial about bunting before back in January of 2008. It has been a while since I have made bunting but Bunny #1 has a school fair coming up and I offered to make bunting for the event.

They requested rainbow bunting - I made 5 reams of approx 30 yards (90 feet) each (total 150 yards/450 feet). Bunting is so easy to make - and such an effective decoration - I wanted to update my tutorial with what I learnt this time.

Simple Bunting
You will need:

• Triangle template and pinking sheers
OR 

• Ruler and rotary pinking blade (for large amounts of bunting I highly recommend investing in a ruler and rotary pinking blade)
• Bias tape (I make my own - you can make yards and yards of it very easily and cheaply)
• A selection of pretty fabrics
• Cotton for sewing

1) Cut flags using a template and pinking sheers OR
Cut flags using your ruler and rotary pinking blade.

Fabric typically comes in widths of 44-45". Fold your fabric in half and lay it on your cutting mat. With a standard (straight) rotary blade cut the fabric into strips 8.5" wide. Then using your pinking rotary blade cut the 8.5" strips into triangles as per the diagram below. Each 8.5" strip of fabric should yield you 11 flags in total. The end 6th flag cut on the fabric fold will have to be unfolded and trimmed to the correct size. If you layer your folded fabric (I cut 3-4 fabrics at a time) you can make hundreds of flags in next to no time.

 

Note: I did not remove the selvages from the fabric first - any selvage visible on the tip of the 1st & 11th flag was covered up by the bias tape.

2) Fold the bias tape and sew at least 14"+ of the bias tape together before adding any flags. (This will ensure you have enough tape on the end of the bunting to tie it up)

3) Add the flags one by one leaving the same spacing between each flag. For indoor bunting you can leave a smaller space (approx 1"+) between flags. For outdoor bunting you can leave a larger space (approx 3-4") between flags.












Note: I used a plain straight stitch - but you could use a decorative stitch if you wanted to.

3) Ensure you leave at least 14"+ of the bias tape without any flags at the end of the bias tape too!

4) Give the bunting a firm press with a steam iron. If you have a large amount of bunting you might want to wrap the bunting around a wide piece of cardboard to keep it flat.

Info about this project: I used 2 yards each of 7 different fabrics to make all the flags. The red, purple and yellow fabrics were all plain cotton broadcloths, the green fabric was Goodnight Spot Stars Green, the violet fabric was Michael Miller Mini Mikes Tiny Gingham Purple, the orange fabric was Michael Miller Apothescary Spooky Spots Pumpkin and the blue fabric Nursery Rhymes Stripe Royal Blue. I tend to buy most of my fabrics from Fabric.com. All the flags cut from this material required approx 5 more yards of fabric made into bias tape. This yielded approx 150 yards+ (450 feet+) of bunting.