Reverse Stenciled Butterfly Dress

Reverse Stenciled Butterfly Dress

a Lil Blue Boo tutorial

Shopping list:

  • Plain white spaghetti strap cotton dress
  • Liquid fabric paint - (The paint I recommend is Dye-Na-Flow because it is more of a dye.....but you can try diluting regular fabric paint as long as there isn't too much pigment in it to clog up your sprayer.)
  • spray bottles
  • Plastic stencil (the butterfly one is from Tattered Angels)
  • Black Fabric Mate Pen

Let's get started!

I made this new dress for Boo using the same reverse stenciling technique that I used for last winter's snowflake dress. It is a quick and foolproof way to make a quick unique dress. This would be a great project for a tween/teen party!

Dilute Dye na flow

I put the stencil on the dress and sprayed enough of the fabric paint to leave the image behind:

Lay out stencils and spray over top

Then I would blot the stencil dry with a paper towel and move it to another area of the dress and use my blue color. Where the pink and blue colors come into contact the pretty purple starts to form:

VAry area and color

Every so often instead of blotting the excess spray off the stencil.....

Take it to the edge!

........I would just flip it over and put it on another part of the dress and use my paper towel to press it into the dress....

Blot or don't for different effects

......leaving the excess ink behind and a layered effect.

Layer!

I kept repeating this process over and over (letting the dress dry when the fabric got overly damp) until I got a medium pink, blue and purple mottled look. Then I used a black Fabric Mate Pen to draw a few butterfly outlines onto the dress.

Outline with fabric pens

I ironed the entire dress to set the colors.

Iron the whole dress to color set

Finished dress!

Finished project