About Fabric Paints

Painting with dyes? Dyeing with paints?

Pigment "Dyes" Pigment-dyeing is actually not dyeing at all; it is the immersion painting of a garment with a very thin, soft fabric paint. Since fabric paint wears off of surfaces more quickly than dye, garments "dyed" with pigment dyes appear much more worn than their actual age and degree of wear would warrant - yielding an effect of instant age.

Dye Painting To complicate matters, it is not necessary to use fabric paint to paint a design onto fabric. Direct application of dye can result in highly superior results.

Dye may be painted on, dissolved in just water or alcohol, and allowed to spread like watercolor, or dye may be thickened with a product such as alginate in order to give a much more "paint-like" result.

Fiber reactive dyes that are fixed with soda ash may be applied to fabric that has been soaked in soda ash and then line-dried, or the soda ash may be mixed in with the dye, or the painting may be fixed afterwards by painting on sodium silicate (Dharma's "After Fix") or soda ash in a saturated salt solution. An excellent book on this subject is Ann Johnston's Dye Painting!.

Advantages of Fabric Paint (compared to dye)

Convenience

Fabric paint does not require steaming or boiling to fix to the fiber, which adds convenience. Ironing, which is required by many fabric paints in order to make a permanent bond to the fabric, is much easier and quicker than steaming.

Of course, cool water fiber reactive dyes do not need to be steamed, either, but they must be activated by adding soda ash, either directly to the dye, or by pre-soaking the fabric. This is simple, but some find it to be inconvenient.

Safety

Some fabric paints are labeled as being non-toxic, and are thus more suitable for use by children, as well as those who are careless about safe handling of chemicals. Unfortunately, occasionally the label on an art material may say 'non-toxic' when in fact no tests have been done, so in some cases this may be more of a perceived benefit than a real one. However, the mere fact of buying dyes or paints in liquid form eliminates a major part of possible exposure to dyes or pigments, the mixing of dye powders with water, which simplifies safety precautions considerably.

Opacity

While most fabric paints, like dyes, are transparent, some opaque fabric paints are available, either plain opaques, or pearlescent paints, or metallics. This is essential for adding a design on top of fabric that is already dark. The only way to use dye to add a design to a dark piece of fabric is to first discharge, or bleach out, sections of the dark background color first.

Texture

There is no such things as a metallic dye. Metallic fabric paint consists of finely ground particles of mica mixed in a fabric paint binder. If you're embellishing your dyed fabric with metallic or pearl effects, you must use paint!

Some fabric paints are designed for special textures, such as the "slick" fabric paint which makes a shiny plastic surface (and sticks to itself badly in the clothes dryer), or the "puffy" paint that puffs up under a hot iron (see my little boy's "Take Chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!" t-shirt). The special effects can be fun, but the lifespan of garments made with them is typically much shorter than that of a garment that has been dyed with good fiber reactive dye.

Drawbacks to Fabric Paint (compared to dye)

The 'hand' of the fabric

Since paint does not become a part of the fiber, but instead is glued onto the surface of the fiber, it can, in some cases, leave an extremely disagreeable feeling on the fabric, unlike dye, which leaves no "hand" at all. Fabric is invariably stiffer and less soft when painted than when dyed, but the amount by which the feeling of the fabric is changed varies markedly according to the type of paint you choose. It is very important to choose your fabric paint carefully, if you wish to avoid this effect. A few high quality paints give quite satisfactory results, especially when diluted.

Wear and tear

Since paint sits on the surface of the fabric, it is much more subject to wear than most dyes. As has been said elsewhere, the difference is like that between a radish and a beet. Like a radish, fabric-painted fabric has color only on the outside; like a beet, properly dyed fiber has color all the way through. It helps to wash gently, and always turn your fabric-painted or pigment-dyed clothing inside-out in the laundry.

Special Techniques for Fabric Painting

Sun Painting

Any transparent fabric paint can be used in sun-painting. (Opaque fabric paint will not work.) The paint is diluted with water, and applied to dampened fabric. Various items such as leaves, flowers, shells, feathers, bits of metal (beware of rust), and aluminum foil cut-outs are then placed on the damp painted fabric, and the fabric is then allowed to dry, either in bright sunlight or under another source of heat such as a heat lamp or a heat gun (which is a hair dryer without a fan to blow the items about). As the exposed areas dry sooner, they suck wet paint out from under the objects on the fabric, leaving the covered areas as much paler designs. SetaColour Transparent and Jacquard Textile Paint work well for this. Setacolor Soleil is more diluted than SetaColour Transparent, but appears to be otherwise the same, and is actually marketed in kits for this purpose.

See How to Dye and Paint Fabric with Light for more detail on the subject of sun painting, including links to pages with detailed recipes.

Shiva Paintstiks Oil Colors

Unlike other oil paints and oil paint sticks, Shiva or Markal Paintstiks are recommended for use on garments, as the oils they contain are both less acidic and faster-drying than alternative oil paints and sticks. (Most fabric paints are forms of acrylic paint.) The metallic and pearlescent colors add wonderful textures to fabric that is placed over any textured object before coloring; typically the fabric is dyed first, washed, and dried. The paints can be made permanent on fabric by allowing to dry for three to seven days, depending on the thickness of application, and then completing the polymerization by heat setting with an iron. The results can be washed but should not be dry-cleaned.

Painting on a dark background

The vast majority of fabric paints, like all fabric dyes, are transparent. They do not cover up the color of the fabric. If you wish to paint onto dark fabric, be sure to purchase only opaque fabric paint. Recommended brands include Lumiere, Neopaque, PRObrite Pearlescent Textile Paint, and PROfab Opaque Textile Paint.

Silk Paints

Paints used for silk painting

The first silk paint I used was Deka Silk; it was very easy to use, and gave beautiful results. Deka products are not currently available in the US, though they are still sold in the UK, but there are plenty of equally good alternatives. Highly similar silk paints include Dye-na-Flow, Silkcolor, and Setasilk. These paints are all very thin and leave only a slight reduction in the softness of the material, not enough to be a problem, in most cases, even on thin silks. To fix them to the fabric, you allow them to dry thoroughly and then press with a hot iron. Although the fixation of silk dyes requires moist heat, dry heat is what is called for in fixing the binder used in silk paints.

Dyes used in silk painting

True dyes sold for use in silk painting include the Basic Type dye sold by Aljo as their "Alcohol/Water" dye for silk, Procion H reactive dye, and Remazol or vinyl sulfone dye. (Procion H and Remazol dyes require steaming to fix the dye to the fiber, unlike Procion MX dye). Tinfix, Pebeo Soie, Dupont and Kniazeff are the 'French Dyes' which yield very bright colors, but which require steaming; they contain various sorts of acid dyes.

Which should you use - silk dye or silk paint?

However brilliant and lovely your results with silk paints, expert silk painters say that your colors will be even richer and more lovely if you use silk dyes, instead. While silk dyes may, in some cases, be fixed by using a strongly alkaline chemical, instead of steaming, it is steaming that gives the best and most beautiful results. Steaming is far more trouble than ironing, however, so beginners are usually advised to start out with silk paints.

Heat Setting Fabric Paints and Silk Dyes

Ironing

Ironing is used to set paints only, not dyes. Most fabric paints can be heat-set by ironing, which fixes the binder in the paint to the fabric. Typical instructions are to iron from the back side of the fabric for three to four minutes with the iron set on the 'cotton' setting. Check the manufacturers' instructions that come with your fabric paint. Use scrap fabric to protect your ironing board against color transfer.

Some fabric paints can also be set simply by time. If you wait at least a month before washing the painted fabric, the paint may be as permanent as if you had ironed it.

Some fabric paints may be set by tumbling the fabric in a hot dryer for half an hour, instead of ironing.

An alternative to ironing, for iron-set fabric paints, is the addition of a small quantity of acrylic catalyst immediately before use. Jacquard Airfix can be used instead of ironing for Jacquard Textile colors, Neopaque, Dye-Na-Flow, and most other acrylic fabric paints. You can order it from Jerry's Art Supplies.This product is ideal when heat-setting is impossible. It cannot be used with dyes.

Steaming

Steaming is used to set dyes only, not paints. A steam iron cannot be used for this purpose. The fabric is laid out on unprinted or aged newsprint paper or cotton muslin and rolled up; the paper is to prevent cross-staining between different parts of the design. The roll of paper is then curled up and placed in a vegetable steamer, and steamed for a period of time ranging from half an hour to three hours, depending on the dye manufacturer's instructions. PRO Chemical & Dye gives detailed instructions for this method of steaming.

Any creases in the silk during steaming may result in long-lasting wrinkles, so care must be taken in this procedure. A more professional steamer arrangement makes this much easier.

Sources for fabric paint, including silk paints

PRO Chemical & Dye sells Pebeo Setacolor transparent paint, Pebeo Setasilk transparent paint, and other fabric paints including their own line of PROfab Textile Paints, and PRO Liquid Decorator Colors for pigment dyeing and tie-painting (like tie-dyeing). PROfab Color Concentrates can be used for industrial-style pigment dyeing (remember, pigment "dyeing" is not truly dyeing);. Their true dyes for silk painting include Pebeo Soie silk dye, Procion H reactive dyes, vinyl sulfone or Remazol dyes (which they call Liquid Fiber Reactive Dye). Their PROsperse Disperse Dyes can be used to mix transfer paints for use on synthetic fibers such as polyester. Unlike many US suppliers, PROchem ships their products to many different countries.

Another excellent source in the US for many types of silk paint and other fabric paints is Dharma Trading Company. Among other fabric paints, they sell a fabric paint called Dharma Pigment Dye (which, like all pigment dyes, is not really a dye) which they promote for use as a silk paint and for a stone-wash effect in tie-dyeing. It's probably the best answer to the common question of how to tie-dye polyester clothing. They sell a wide range of fabric paints, including the Jacquard products mentioned above as well as Pebeo Setasilk and Setacolor, Versatex printing in and air brush ink, Setacolor expandable "puff" medium for making puffy paint, Dr. Ph. Martin's Spectralite and catalyst additive for airbrushing and marbling, and Jacquard Pearl-Ex pigments (which require a binder for fabric painting) and stamp pads.

G&S Dye, in Toronto, carries a newer kind of silk paint they call Liquid Colours, a high quality liquid paint which, they say, is superior to other silk paints, including Deka Silk and Setasilk. They also sell Pebeo Soie and Procion H dyes, and other fabric paints such as Setacolor.

Tobasign Dyes, in Spain, will ship their dye, which is vinyl sulfone ("Remazol" type) dye, to any country.

DEKA Silk and other DEKA products can be purchased from suppliers in Europe, though they are not available in the US. George Weil Fibrecrafts is among the British suppliers which carry DEKA products.

Aurora Silk sells concentrated natural dyes to be used for painting on fabric that has been premordanted with alum or tin. It's not at all inexpensive, and the tin mordant is toxic, but the idea of painting with natural dyes is aesthetically pleasing to many people.

Many other dye suppliers sell a selection of the dyes and fabric paints listed above, as well. See Sources for Supplies for contact information for these and other suppliers around the world.

Page created: November 2003
Last updated: February 29, 2008
Downloaded: Sunday, December 22, 2024

Fabric Paints: a different way to color fibers