Quick! Painting tshirts question...

[Pinoikoi]

Ok, so last night I dyed two long sleeved cotton tshirts for ds' gift and picked up some fabric paint and stencils/stamps... (HUGE sale on them at Joanns.. some of the larger stamps were just 25 cents!) anyway, I also dyed a couple of older tshirts so that I could "practice" without feeling guilt if I mess up the first time or two.. so here are my questions...

I assume I tape down the stencils before I paint (it is a spray on type I got) and I stick some cardboard inside the shirt so the paint doesn't go through... my question is, do I paint with the stencil and REMOVE the stencil to let the paint dry, or do I paint with the stencil and leave it on until its dry? Which is going to prevent smearing better? Thanks.. I do not have much money, but wanted to make something special for ds to match his longies..

I got some cute stamps though! I found a big snail and a skinny little snake (snakes and snails, get it?) and dragonflies and some double sided stamps lips and words, etc...

[Pinoikoi]

ok- I tried it on my sample tshirt, and the paint was all smudgy, and you couldn't see the stencil.. what went wrong? I secured it all around with wide tape and tried to spray evenly.. I also tried spraying on another piece of fabric and dabbing it on..

[Starflower]

I'm trying to picture what you are describing. Are the edges of the stenciled parts smeared? Or do they look fuzzy like a blurred edge? If they're blurred, I would wonder if maybe you had a gap between the shirt and the stencil which led to some overspray (or in this case "underspray"). I think this sounds like the most likely scenario but it's hard to tell without photos. Even if the edges of the stencil was taped in place, if there was any gapping between the actual stencil/painting area and the fabric, there could be some room to spread in a kind of fading out manner. If this is the problem, maybe putting some sort of weights on the stencil to help keep it flush to the fabric would help?

Or does it look like it bled? If that's the case, perhaps removing the stencils would help so it didn't wick the paint. Is it possible you had too much paint and it pooled?

I've never done spray paints on fabric, but I have used acrylics (with and without fabric medium) and painted it on with a brush. I think this gives more control, but I know you mentioned being on a budget so I hope you can get the spray paints to work.

Good luck.

[Pinoikoi]

It did seem like when I was spraying, the stencil was a little poofy... but I had taped the edges down all the way around, and I did try to hold the center of the stencil down (with a gloved hand) and it still didn't come out.. the paint is pretty runny, though, so I think in the future (I have some more blanks headed my way), I will try painting it on... what type of paint do you recommend? I have a JoAnn's near me..