Choosing watercolours for fabrics

In this free to read post, we'll look at three different watercolour palettes and create colour swatches to test them out

Hi friends! I’m Clare Albans, a hand embroidery artist who loves craft and colour. I’m here to encourage you to take time out to be creative! Sign up for free project inspiration, honest chats about the ups and downs of the creative process, and tips and tricks to help you find your creative joy. Join my paid space for my hand embroidery patterns and to be part of our growing stitching community (find out more here).

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I hope you’ve all had a good few weeks? Today’s newsletter is a little different and I hope you enjoy finding time to slow down and be creative with this wonderful activity 😊

This month in my Embroidery Membership, we’re using watercolours to create a beautiful garden-themed hoop, plus a bonus abstract watercolour hoop too!

Because there’s so much to experiment with when it comes to watercolours on fabric, I’ve swapped around the Masterclass Month and the Pattern Month. This makes sense because we have to paint the fabric before we can stitch it! If you have any questions about this, please just let me know. You can find out more about how the membership works here.

For those of you who are new around here, or if you’ve followed me for a while but not joined my paid space, this post is for you to get a bit more of a feel of the kind of content you can expect from being a member. So let’s get started!

A few basic things to know about using watercolours on fabrics

• You don’t have to be a watercolour expert to be able to paint on fabrics - I wouldn’t consider myself to be a painter, but it’s just really fun to bring an element of mixed media into your stitching

• You don’t need loads of special kit to do it - just a watercolour set and a brush, plus a jar or mug of water is all you need. Some kits come with brushes, so you might want to get one like this if you don’t have a brush already

• Painting on fabrics has really helped me to be more open to experimenting creatively - it’s so mindful to just sit and paint, experimenting with the colours and how I paint on the fabric. I hope that you find some creative freedom and joy in doing this too! Allow yourself to make mistakes here, it’s how we learn (you might find this post helpful if you’re finding it difficult to allow yourself to give things a go creatively).

Today I’m testing out three different watercolour sets, all of which are less than £20 (and two are under £10). These are:

• Major Brushes 24 colour set, £5.99 from Amazon*

• Artistro 48 colour travel set, £19.99 from Amazon*

• Crelando 48 watercolour paint set, £7.99 from Lidl

You don’t need to test all of these! But you can follow the video to take a look at these ones, and make a colour swatch of your watercolour palette if it’s different to these.

Materials list

You will need:

A watercolour set

A brush and a jar/cup of clean water

Some white and/or light cream fabric - I’ve used Tilda Solid Basics in White and Dove White to test on both - enough to fit in your hoop

A heat erasable pen (this is optional, and is just to label your swatches at the end)

Tutorial video

Here is the tutorial video you need to create your colour swatches and to see what the paints from the different sets look like on fabric.

A few top tips

• Don’t forget to change your water regularly - as you rinse your brush, you don’t want the murky water to cloud the colour of the paint on the fabrics, so make sure you rinse our your jar or cup regularly whilst painting

• Create a paper colour swatch as you go - some sets come with a card to do this, but if not then you can easily create your own on a piece of white paper. Watercolour is brilliant for this but not essential

• Label the swatch at the end - you’ll need to make a note of the name of the set on your swatch, particularly if you have more than one set to test! This will make it easier to refer to in future when you’re looking for that perfect colour. I didn’t do this on the video, but I did label them once they were all completely dry

Need some project ideas? Come and join my Embroidery Membership!

If you’ve enjoyed this post and are interested in some mindful stitching, I would absolutely love for you to be part of my Embroidery Membership! It’s the only place to get my newest designs, and the best place to support my work if you are able to and would like to 💖

We are such a lovely community, with no pressure to join in with anything you don’t want to and you’re so welcome to stitch at your own pace. You can ask me questions about the projects any time too!

Subscribe here and come and stitch with us 👇🏻

This abstract watercolour embroidery is a bonus project this month, allowing you to get creative with the colour palette and stitch some simple text over the top. We’re also working on some slow painting with this Watercolour Garden design, which we’ll be stitching on next month with some gorgeous florals.

Wishing you a creative month ahead!

I am so excited to see what you create with watercolours - and if you’re not sure about using them on fabrics then some paper will be absolutely fine! Do share your makes with me and I hope you find joy in taking time out to be creative this month.

Clare 😊