Name: Cindy

Message: My daughter painted a banner on a sheet with Crayola washable paint. I would like to make it into a quilt backing/blanket. Is there any way to set the paint and make this blanket washable? I already asked Crayola- they had no answer. Any help would be appreciated.

Washable paint cannot be made wash-proof. It contains a detergent in order to make and keep it water-soluble and easy to clean up for children. As time passes, it will become less washable, so that even after washing a stain will be left behind, but this is not nearly adequate to what you want. Most of the design will wash out, and the results will look terrible. Even if you don't wash it, it's bound to become dampened at some point during use as a blanket, and then the paint will rub onto whatever it is next to. (At least it should wash out well when that happens.)

What you need to do is change your idea of how to make this banner permanent. Do not attempt to make it a quilt; instead, frame it and use it on the wall. 

You could buy artists' wooden stretcher bars, such as we use to stretch canvas for oil paintings, place your banner face-down on the floor, place the stretcher bars (first assembled into a sturdy rectangle) on top, then pull the edges of the fabric over the wooden bars and nail them to the back of the stretcher bars using small tacks or a staple gun. Pull the fabric taut as you do this, so it does not sag.

For a smaller design, you can have your local copy shop photocopy it, or parts of it, onto photo transfer paper made for photocopiers. The copy shop has heat presses that are ideal for putting these transfers onto fabric or t-shirts. Alternatively, you can scan the design in on your computer and print it on inkjet photo transfer paper and then use an iron to transfer the image to fabric, t-shirts, mousepads, etc. If the painted sheet is large, you can scan in just one section at a time and print it out, perhaps reassembling the whole thing by ironing the transfer for all of the sections onto a single piece of fabric.

If none of this works for you, just take a nice photograph of the design to remember it by, and then buy your daughter some good fabric paints for her next banner. Good brands include Jacquard Textile Color, Lumiere, Neopaque, Setacolor, Dye-Na-Flow, and ProFab Textile Paints. If you don't care how the fabric feels, you can give her ordinary artists' acrylics (Liquitex Soft Body is preferred), but for a softer paint that feels okay on clothing or in a quilt, you must use a good fabric paint. It is possible to turn artists' acrylics into an acceptable fabric paint by adding Fabric Medium. Two good brands to look for are Liquitex and Golden. Your local craft store probably does not have this, but you can mail-order it from Dick Blick or another good art supply store.

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