Once a month we are going to be making quilt squares to highlight some of the fun things we are learning about this year to go along with our Harvest Time unit. We will each be making one 10″ x 10″ square every month and then at the end of the school year we will sew them all into a memory quilt.
This month we used a Glue Batik Fabric Painting method to highlight our recent apple studies. I stumbled across this idea on That Artist Woman‘s blog and knew we had to try it (check out her site for detailed directions). It was a really easy project for any age child but it does take a couple days to complete due to drying times.
First I cut out 10″ squares of white muslin. Then we drew a design on the fabric with pencils.
After we had our designs ready, we traced them with the Blue Gel Elmer’s School Glue. Then the fabric had to dry over night.
The next day we used water down acrylic paints to cover the entire square of fabric.
Once that dried we washed out the glue with hot water and a little dish soap. I hung the squares to dry and then ironed them flat.
A few notes: The next time we do this (and oh yes… I imagine we will be doing this many more times) I will encourage everyone to get more detailed – or at least cover more surface area with the glue. I also think I watered down my paints too much. I would have like brighter colors… they ended up drying a lot lighter than they originally looked but I had been afraid of the fabric ending up really stiff.
