Everything Papercraft - Fabric

Fabric is a versatile and widely available item that can add both colour and texture to handmade cards. It comes in an endless array of patterns including holidays and celebrations, food, florals, children’s prints, animals, and so on. Most fabrics are easy to work with and can be glued, stitched or pierced to hold them in place.

Fabric can be used as a background by applying an adhesive, such as PVA, directly to the fabric and then laying it over a card front and smoothing out any air pockets, or it can be used in smaller pieces to embellish a larger design. Strips of fabric can replace ribbons, lace and pieces of patterned paper, and can be tied into decorative knots and bows.

It's also possible to stamp on fabric, which is great for making personalised t-shirts, bags or other items, or just to add a little more interest to your fabric embellishments. Here's a TUTORIAL.

Tutorial - Stamping on Fabric

Stamps are a great way to add decoration to t-shirts, bags, pencil cases, placemats and many other fabric items. The trick is in finding an ink that will leave a crisp, clear impression and stand up to the laundering process. I happen to own many different types of stamp pads, so decided to put ten of them to the test!

I stamped the images on small pieces of cotton calico, looking to see how much the ink bled into the fibres of the cotton. I was surprised to see that they all did well, producing nice, crisp imprints. Next, I tested colour clarity and intensity, but to be fair, some of the ink pads were VERY old and perhaps not as juicy as they could be. Overall, I was happy with the impressions from all ten.

Since a number of the inks were water based, I really didn't think they would stand up to the laundering process, which involved a hand wash with laundry detergent, a clean rinse and drying with a hot iron. As you can see from the photos below, many of the inks did very well, with only one disappearing completely.

Although many of the ink pads produced great results, my preference would be either Archival or StazOn for permanent, crisp and clear impressions on fabric. Keep in mind though, that I didn't take longevity into account, so you might want to do your own test to see how many launderings your ink choice can take.

Stamped Cushion

Every now and then I feel the need to handle something other than paper or cardboard, which is when I drag out the textiles or the paints or clay...  I'm sure a lot of you can relate to what I'm saying!  Anyway, I just happen to have a couple of metres of "grubby" calico, hand-dyed by a lovely lady who has a gorgeous little shop at Old Petrie Town - well worth a visit if you are ever in that area of Brisbane.  I used some beautiful Prima stamps, inked up with black StazOn, to add the images to the fabric, which actually stamped a great deal easier and clearer than I thought it would.  I coloured here and there with my copic markers being very careful to colour well within the lines to give the ink room to bleed across the fabric.  A couple of turns in the sewing machine, a length of cotton lace and voila, one pincushion!

Little Chairs

At the most recent Brisbane Paper Craft Show I picked up these gorgeous little wood chairs from the Twiddleybitz stall - I can never resist making a purchase from them, everything always looks so good!  Anyway, I had some lovely hand dyed calico at home that I used to make very tightly stuffed seats for each chair.  A few licks of paint, some pieces of lace and trim, a couple of hand stitched cushions, long scrapbooking pins and a scattering of little flowers completed the project!