Painting Doesuede

I had fun today experimenting with painting various products on some stark white doesuede fabric. Doesuede is a one-way knit fabric, fuzzy on one side, and smooth on the other. I needed to paint the smooth side. I decided that my Crash Test Daughter was just too 'dead' so I wanted to give her some skin tone. Here's the results .. in pictures!

First off, a photo of the products I used. Jo Sonya textile medium, this is an Australian product, Stuart Gill Colorise textile and craft paint in skintone,which is from Scotland, and Jacquard's Dye-na-flow fabric paint, which I believe is a product from the good old US of A!


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These three samples are painted with the Stuart Gill paint. This paint is rather thick, kind of like an acrylic. I treated the first piece with textile medium by itself and let it dry. Then I used some paint with textile medium in it and some paint that was watered down on it. Neither of them went on easily - although it worked better than the untreated cloth. Next piece is paint thinned with textile medium - the top half was painted dry and the bottom half was wet down first. I couldn't get the dry fabric to take the paint except in blotches - so that was an easy one to forget! The wet wasn't much better. Last one is just watered down paint - top half dry, bottom half wet first. Didn't care for that either. This paint was just plain hard to spread, no matter what I mixed with it or if it was wet or dry. Probably would work much better on cotton than a knit though. To be fair I did use Stuart Gill paint on the doll I have in Patti Culea's new book - but she's made of Pimatex. This experiment was on doesuede.


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Next I tried the Jacquard Dye-na-flow fabric paints. These aren't thick like the Stuart Gill paints - they flow like water. I did one piece dry and one piece wet. If you've ever done one of Patti Culea's classes she likes to use these dyes and have the colors run into each other. The coverage on these were great, and I liked the dry best.


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So - here she is ... all painted with Dye-na-flow. I mixed ochre, white, a bit of yellow, a smidgen of red, and a drop of chartreuse for the skin tone. You can see where some of the paint migrated at the leg joins. I laid her on her back to dry and some of the paint migrated into the paper towels so I'll probably give her a light coat on her back tomorrow. Next time I use this fabric for a doll I will paint it first now that I know I can. Oh, you might notice she has a head now - amazing!

Check back tomorrow .. I have a funny photo of her I'm going to post.