Hello there my name is Zoey Murphy I'm a furniture and textile designer from
Margate and today I thought I'd jump on and give you guys a tutorial for how to
make a fabric banner using things that you've got around the house. Here are
most of the things you're going to need to use to make your banner nearly all of
them can be found around the house and if you can't get them from home the
supermarket is most likely to have them. We've got some paint and a nice sponge to
sponge all of that paint on with. A pillowcase just check no one needs it
before you use it. Some salt. Some potatoes for printing. We've got some
tumeric which is the thing that's going to give lovely color to the fabric. Got
some vinegar this is the white vinegar. Scissors, a knife that's for cutting the
potatoes. Be a bit careful with that. A pen, some paper and a nice big pot to dye
everything in. Then finally some rope and a bit of string to tie that rope on
to a stick that we're going to find in the garden. So to start me off with my
natural dye bath I've got my big pot and in it I've put about four or five big big
cups of water you can use as much or as little water as you like you just need
to make sure it covers your fabric when it's on the hob cooking away Next
I'm gonna add some tumeric. For my dye bath what I'm going to do is I'm going
to put maybe half a dessert spoon of turmeric in for every one cup I've done.
I've put about five cups in I'm gonna go for about two and a half
big dessert spoons full.
Now this will make a great color all on its own but with all dyes it's really
good to have something that's going to fix the dye to the fabric once it's kind
of cooked in the color. Vinegar and salt tend to be the ones that you can use the
most so I think I'll start off with some vinegar just pop that in there I'm gonna
do about let's see maybe three of these spoons. Nice big tablespoons of
vinegar, one two and three and then maybe Do three of salt as well.
Now I'm gonna heat this up on the stove.
I'm gonna put my fabric that I've got really damp in. Once it's dyed boiling a little
bit. Here I am in my kitchen and I've got the pot of dye on to cook on
the hop and I've put on some rubber gloves
because this could get messy.
There it is all finished cooling away on the hob once it's cooled down a bit I've
got to lift it out rinse it in the sink and then put it for a quick spin in
the washing machine without any detergent. I'm rinsing it out with
cold water now and you can see how a lot the colour is coming out that is because dye has a bit of run off. Here it is
and look there's a bit of sunshine we can hang it out to dry.
We've dyed it and now it's hang out to dry. While we are waiting on that to
happen you could get busy making your stencil
and your stamps to use on your banner. So for the stencil for the lettering I'm
going to use two pieces of paper I'm going to draw some letters on my piece
of paper and I'm going to carefully cut them out with a pair of scissors or a
craft knife if you've got one of those. I think it's quite a good idea to make the
whole stencil in one go because then you can really see where it's gonna land on
the fabric and move it all around together I'm gonna be writing the word
hope today. I'm gonna go H O P E. When you are doing lettering and you can afford
to because bits are gonna get cut away and you're only doing a stencil it can
be quite a good idea to draw boxes where your lettering is going
to go. This means that when you make your letters they end up roughly the same
size. It's quite easy to draw a box the same as the last box. It can be a bit
hard to do that with letters when you're trying to focus on making them also look
really good and the great thing about this is because I'm cutting all of this
away and you're not actually going to see the pen I can get it wrong as many
times as I like. Say I did my O too small doesn't matter could just draw it
bigger again. I think I'll leave the center because I know that I'm not going
to cut that out very well anyway it will disappear. There we go that is ready to
cut out.
I'm gonna position my stencil right about where I want it to go this is the
important part and I don't want to get that wrong. tThat looks about in the
middle for being and I'm gonna tape it down is to make sure it doesn't shuffle
around as I'm sponging the paint through. Now you can see that there's an
opportunity for these to lift up and move around so we don't want to get
paint underneath so what I'm going to do when I use mine I'm being really careful
about actually pressing it onto something else to take a bit of the
paint off and just carefully only going up and down I'm absolutely not going to
rub it around I'm going to hold each bit and just sponge away and I might need to
keep going back to get some more. You can see here if I lift that up it's
gonna leave a really crisp edge.
So the other thing we're gonna do is make the stamps that we're gonna
decorate the top and the bottom of our banner with using these little tiny
potatoes that I've got here. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna chop them in half
draw on the flat area a nice little design and I'm gonna remember that if it
is anything that's gonna be back to front when I print it you have to do it
in reverse. While we're waiting for the fabric to dry we can make the stamps so
I've got the potatoes a pen and a knife I've got to be careful with this. First
of all I'm going to chop them in half I'm going to want to cut some
interesting shapes into these so that when I'm printing they'll make a really
fantastic stamp. I think I'll draw on some designs with
the pen just really making a bit of an indentation and then I'm going to use
the knife to carefully cut it away making sure that it's always going away
from my body. So there I've got a little cross and I'll just chisel that out.
It could be a kiss that'd be very cute. I've got four stamps to
play with there I think that's gonna be enough to maybe make some patterns.
I think this is all dry you can take them off, hey I'm happy with that so
this is all dry after leaving it overnight.
I hope you like my banner. I'm very happy with how this is coming out. I am ready to print the
top of my banner with some nice decoration. I've got my paint my potatoes
and a nice brush to work with as well. I'm going to start by loading these with
a bit of the black paint using a paintbrush and the other important thing
to remember perhaps design wise is that I'm gonna start in the middle if I start
it on the edge all nice and neat and I got to this end I might end up with half
a stamp and it will look kind of off-center so if I start in the
beginning of my design and work my way outwards you know that everything kind
of matches nice and evenly. So I think I'm going to begin with a nice big
circle and see how that goes and load that up with some paint. Here we go first
one I'm gonna put it right in the center and give it a really good press hey look
at that I mean that's so clean and clear. You can see I have to load up my
potato with the paint each time not too much not too little.
I could always turn them the other way. It means that your
designs although they look similar they're not super identical every time.
Hope with some decoration to boot. Now all I have to do is cut some holes in
each end and get myself a stick to go through. Tie some string to that stick I
am going to put a nice cross bar across the top of this so I'm going to cut a
little shape at the top there to make a hole in my pillowcase I'm gonna do one
on the other side. I should be able to thread my garden stick through, there we
go. Superb and the final thing I need to do
to hang it up is to get this piece of cord to make a little hanging bit there.
I'm just gonna need a little bit of thread and I think what I'll do is I'll
curve this over to make it look really nice and neat when I'm attaching it and
then I'm gonna get the thread maybe I'll start by tying a knot round this and go
round around around until I feel like it's really secure on there. Tie them
at the back cut them away if I repeat that on the other side and that is our
banner ready. We've learned how to make a banner one that we can hang up to cheer
everybody up. You've learnt how to dye fabric with a natural dye
stamp and stencil.