This fabric was not destined to be considered art

Do you remember this fabric (old bed sheets) I overdyed from some fabric I originally dyed using food coloring?  I did this on Day 12.  I promised when the fabric was dry, I would iron it and show how it turned out.

Here I'm in my basement and have unveiled these pieces that I thought I was overdyeing.  What happened was, the original "dye," aka food coloring, went away while this fabric was soaking in either roses and potpourri (behind) or thyme (in front).  

After I ironed these pieces, they had seriously beautiful shading, but not much color.

The more I looked at them, the more I appreciated their subtle color.  But of course, I am a color, not SUBTLE color person.

That's when I grabbed my new ironing board and laid two layers of felt on top of it.

I covered the felt with an old bed sheet to protect the felt from paint.  I assembled my art supplies.

Supplies from left:
Golden Fluid Acrylics
Water in large bucket in back
Recycled blocks of wood covered with stamping bits (more on that later)
Foam brush
Empty container
Masking tape, low tack

The first thing I did was take the fabric I had overdyed using roses and potpourri and dampened it with my foam brush.  I was surprised at how much the color changed when I did this.

 

Next came some Green Gold Golden Fluid Acrylic and a tiny bit of water.

I was surprised how thin the paint now was, but was more than willing to stamp the image onto the fabric.  Note that I have placed some low tack tape on the top and bottom of the fabric to keep it from moving while stamping.

The paint was so thin it turned into a mess and ran.  It looked more like green blobs than circles.

I decided to dump the watery paint and use it straight from the bottle.  This worked marginally better.

However, the paint turned to foam on the foam stamp.  Not sure you can see it, but it's definitely foamy paint on that brush.  That's when I realized I needed to rethink this process.

It was obvious I didn't have the right paint for the job, and the foam brush was only adding to the problem.  However, I liked what I was seeing with this handmade stamp.

I would like to reiterate that for Day 20, I took three blocks of scrap wood and turned them into stamps for fabric.  The one on the left was made using gasket material I crafted from a 1 inch punch.  The middle block was more of the gasket material, but this time I cut it to the size of the block face.  The third block was covered with bubble wrap.

I know this fabric is salvageable, but for now, I have to rethink this process and work with different paint.