Flour Paste Resist

I decided to have a go at flour paste resist on cotton fabric after seeing the results my friend Sandra had achieved.

First of all I made a batter of pretty much half and half flour and water.  Then, as it was a lovely day, I set up the fabric outside and spread the batter over the whole surface, then made marks at random with any old implements that came to hand.

On a sunny day it didn't take more than a couple of hours for it to dry - it does need to be absolutely dry, but I guess it could take overnight on a different day indoors.

Once it was dry, I scrunched the fabric up to create cracks and spaces for the colour to penetrate.

I used fabric paint on this occasion, although you could also use acrylic paint or procion dye so long as the fabric was previously soda-soaked.  Fabric paint worked well.  I worked it well into the fabric and into the cracks and hung it up to dry.  I used two or three colours and worked them into each other.  Then hung up the fabric to dry out on the line.

It dried fairly quickly in the sun and then it was quite satisfying to pick off all the dried flour.  I ended up scraping the last bits off.  It looked really good.