Painted Fabric Valentines

Painting fabric, what a satisfying thing! And come to find out it’s a supremely economical way to mass produce some fine works of Valentine art.

This project came about because my son, who loves to paint, wanted to make painted bookmarks for his classmates for their Valentine’s Day celebration. I’d been anxious to try fabric painting, so we rolled out a couple big squares of heavy-ish natural canvas and got ahold of some fabric paint. We used Jacquard Textile (semi-opaque) and Jacquard Lumiere (metallics). He made the painting above. And I made the pinker one… or the more pink one shown here.

The whole thing took all of 15 minutes. We let them dry for two days (our paint was laid on pretty thick), then set it with an iron as the paint pots directed us. I cut his painting into 2″ x 6″ strips (below). I cut mine into free form hearts of all sizes. Concerned that the fine-tipped Sharpies he would be using to write Valentine’s messages would bleed through the canvas, I cut extra muslin strips slightly smaller than the canvas strips.  He wrote his messages to his friends on the muslin and I stitched them on the back of the mini-paintings. Next time we do this, I will leave out the muslin step and he will write directly on the back of the canvas, as there is really no threat of the pen bleeding through and the muslin attachment is a pretty time-consuming step.

We delighted at the edges that we created by randomly cutting out the shapes.

Each cut piece was a fine little painting that was strong on its own.

Obviously, this project need not be tied to a holiday at all, as it is just fun in itself and there are really no rules except this: One Big Piece Becomes Many Little Pieces. Use different media, use paper instead of fabric. Origami paper glued to second-hand dress shirts. Crayon on grocery bags. Oil Pastels on old magazines or newspapers.

But pick something that dries quickly at this point… Valentine’s Day is tomorrow after all.

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