How to Paint Venice Lace

I love playing with color. And no matter how I play with that color, it's a lot of fun. But the most fun is when I get to put the color on the surface of things, whether it's through dying or painting, or coloring with crayons, it doesn't really matter. I just love getting my hands on it. One of my favorite new things is playing with Venice lace. And Venice lace is simply a Rayon lace and it comes in lots and lots of different styles. And my favorite way to put color on it is using ink. Now you can use different paints if you want to, you can also dye it. If you dye it though, it's pretty hard to get really specific colorations or designs on the lace. And when you use paint, the lace ends up being a little bit stiffer. Whereas ink that is made for fabrics is usually really soft and it doesn't change the hand very much. And then when I use the ink I can actually make the lace match up with my project perfectly because I can recreate those colors just very, very easily. Now, the products that I use again, like I said it's usually Venice lace or Cluny lace. Venice lace is what we have here. And it is made with Rayon. And Rayon pretty much takes any product, any type of colorant. You can also get Cluny lace, which is a cotton lace, and the cotton you would think would absorb things really really well. But most of the time it has something setting on the surface of it that makes it look pretty and you really need to prewash Cluny lace or cotton laces. So here we have three different styles of lace and they're done with a very simple coloration. Here on this first one, I just chose three colors that were close to each other on the color wheel. I started with the green and then moved to blue and then moved to a deep violet. And then on this one, I chose a nice orange, very intense orange for the flowers, and a lighter orange for the inside of the flowers. I used yellow on the outside and then orange on this inner line, and yellow as the leaves. Now as you can see this, you can see that those colors have all kind of blended together. So I tend to use analogous colorways when I paint lace. Analogous just means that the colors are right next to each other on the color wheel. On this piece right here I used a violet and a red violet and a red. And then I came back in and touch the tips here with the violet. And that really added a nice effect. The products that I like to use the most is Dr. Ph. Martin's ink. You can also use ink by Sukin Eco. Either one of them works really well with any type of fabric. I like this one because it's a little thicker and then I can determine how thin I want to make it. You want to make sure that you look for an ink that's called a craft ink and you want to read the label. And the label needs to say that it's good on fabric, which this one does. All of these types of inks when you use them on fabric the mordant or the thing that makes them permanent is heat. So you want to iron them afterwards when they're dry so that that heat will make them permanent. The heat responds to a polymer that's in the ink. And that polymer then holds onto the product really well because of the heat. You're also going to want some sort of little cups to put your ink in and then you want some good paint brushes. The paint brushes that I prefer to use for this particular technique are called Sumi brushes and they're Japanese or Chinese calligraphy brushes. And they look pretty thick and heavy, but when they get wet, they kind of come to a tip. And so you can use that tip to put the color exactly where you want it. Now I've taken three colors of ink here and I've watered it down. I like it to be as loose as regular water. The ink itself is a little bit thicker, it's almost the consistency of maybe milk, whole fat milk, which is quite a bit thicker than water, actually. So I want it to be very, very thin because I want it to saturate and move on the lace. So this last bit of lace here, I haven't colored in. So I'll show you what I mean by move and how I go about painting a coloration. I tend to work with the darkest color first and then move away from that dark color. And I work in an area that's usually about six to eight inches long. So I'm gonna take my violet ink here and get my brush nice and wet. Now, when I turn this brush, it will come to a finer tip. So now I've got a tip here on the edge and all I'm going to do is tap that ink down and it's going to move into the places that I want that ink to go. So I don't have to have a lot of the ink on there and I don't have to do a whole lot of work. I simply have to touch the brush down in the area where I want it to be. So I'll go along and do everything that's going to be violet first. And after that, I'll go back in with my other colors. The ink takes about depending on how much you saturate the product that you're using it on, anywhere from 15 to 15 minutes to an hour or so to dry. So you can actually paint your lace just as you're starting your project and have it ready to go by the time you're ready to use it. Whereas if you dyed it, it would take a lot longer. So you can see here that the ink pretty much stays where I put it, but as it dries, it starts to move or spread. So here it's staying where it was put, and here it's already started to spread. I'd like to say that this takes a lot of talent, but it doesn't, it's just a technique. So anybody can do it. The product can withstand a lot of washing so you can do really funky jeans and sew these on the bottom, especially if they've gotten too short. And it goes in the washer and dryer over and over. So there's the violet. Now I'm going to move to the red violet for my little middle portion here. And anywhere that the violet has spread to, I'm going to put the red violet on top of it and it'll sink into it and the two together we'll make a new violet. Okay. Now our last color is our red. And I'm gonna paint the bottom here, and I'm gonna see if it'll go up into these tiny little fine lines in between and mix with that red violet and make another different red violet. So that we get some nice gradation of color. You can see that the lace just wicks it up when it gets onto the plastic. Now I could just leave that be but I find it a lot more interesting if I bring that dark color back in and tip it. So to do that, I simply come in and very carefully just touch the brush along the edge of the red here, and it will wick up the color into the red. Now, if you're gonna tip something, you need to make sure that the color that you're tipping with is darker than the color that you put on, the first color that you put on. Because a light will not go over a dark, but a dark will go over a light. Now, if you're wondering where you can get white Venice lace or Cluny lace, most of your fabric stores, not quilting stores, but fabric stores carry them in their trim department. And they run anywhere from $1 a yard up to, I've seen them $16 or $17 a yard for the really wide stuff. Sometimes they're kept in the wedding department. But it's a great thing to have in your stash along with some ink. And then you can make embellishments that go with whatever project you're working on. So here we are, we're all done and you can see how much brighter it is when it's wet than when it's dry. So you're gonna lose some of that color a bit, some of that intensity. Again, it's going to take about anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour to dry, depending on your weather and how saturated you got it. You want to make sure that the color has gone all the way through to the back. And very rarely does it not. But I always check to make sure. Add some extra color if I need to. So I hope you'll give this a try. It's a really great way to embellish your quilts and your garments and any of those wonderful items that you make.