Printing: Copying a Dress Design to Refashion Pants - Part One

I saw this dress in a shop over Christmas and loved it. The pattern is a bit different from all the bright digital prints you see around at the moment.

Unfortunately it was too small. I even had a look at their lovely Etsy shop here, but to no avail.

What to do? Well, make my own of course. The print is kind of watercolour and I like the way it overlaps. The grey and black go well together. I need to create this overlap and will probably use fabric paint and a roller.

Mum and I did a test print to try out the technique we thought I needed. We tore up strips of newspaper and laid them over the fabric. 

 It's hard to see, but there are two different patterns where we overlapped the strips the second time:

 And pattern two.

I want to print long strips, so I'll have to think about how I tear my newspaper pieces. I also need fabric and it would be better if I could use something I already have. The original dress was heavy cotton. Alternatively, I could print it onto something that I already own, though I don't think I have anything plain at the moment. 

And then I had a thought...

A lot of refashions that I see online are big clothes made into smaller clothes. And if you are a smaller size it would be easier to find Size 14, 18, 20 clothes to cut down to your size. That doesn't happen often for me, so when I found these white cotton pants in the op-shop I pounced on them.

They were way too big for me, which makes it a nice challenge to make them fit. They're also cotton, so I had planned to eco-dye them as I am unlikely to wear white pants. I spill my coffee far too often...

But instead I cut one leg off and used it for a costume for my husband. When I reclaimed it, I went ahead with printing both halves.

My printing kit: the two halves of the white pants (as I had cut them up for the costume), fabric paints, sponges and newspaper. I was going to do a test print first and I had a piece of scrap cotton.

I wanted a watercolour effect, so I watered down what was left of my black paint.

 I cut strips of newspaper out and laid them down.

 I taped them in place to make it easier to sponge over.

And then rolled/sponged paint all over, leaving stripes of black.

I used a dark grey for the second layer. Though it didn't stand out as much as I had thought it would I liked the effect.

I thought that some blue would be good for this test, for whatever purpose I end up using it for, but it might be too lairy for my pants.

Onto the pants, and a lot more newspaper!

The first layer was a success. And an awful lot of sponging, particularly as I lost the handle of my paint roller and had to do it by hand! I need to buy some new rollers...

For the second layer, I added black to white instead of the reverse so that I would end up with a lighter grey. I think the finished fabric is very effective, don't you?

I'm looking forward to putting the pants back together, so watch out for the next post. #lovelypennypatterns