We'll be doing crayon transfers onto t-shirts this week for Art Group. The kids will draw with special fabric crayons onto regular white paper, then we'll transfer that design to a t-shirt with an iron. Rachel and I (and Maia, Marlise, Justin, and Nathan) did a test run of the project on Friday using cotton t-shirts and it seemed to work well. Marlise's drawing and t-shirt are shown above.
But when I washed Maia's shirt, most of the crayon design came out!!! The project in the Scribble Art book had specified a 100% cotton t-shirt, but it turns out that with these fabric crayons you need to do the transfer onto a synthetic fabric or a primarily synthetic blend. Oh well. This is why we do test runs (sometimes). And why it is always a good idea to read ALL the instructions.
Yesterday I went to a fabric store, two art supply stores, and a craft store, and none of them had the fabric crayons that you can transfer to cotton. I just tested the crayon transfer onto the synthetic fabric and washed it. The design held this time.
This time I sewed the synthetic fabric with the design transfer onto the plain cotton shirt I had bought for Maia. It's a little crooked, but oh, well.
