How-to: Spray Paint a Figure Skating Dress

Remember how I ruined a figure skating dress for Ice Girl last fall? http://tinyurl.com/monssp Well, I did it right over the weekend.

If you’ve read the previous post, you know that constructing the figure skating dress before spraying with Simply Spray fabric paint is a disaster. There’s no way to prevent the dye from spotting through to the panties and back – I don’t care how well you cut out tag board shields.

Here’s how I spray-dyed the figure skating dress:

Cut out all of the pieces from white lycra.
Cover an old folding table with an even older sheet. Ice Dad, a wizard with an iron, ironed the sheet flat using steam and spray.
Let the sheet dry for 30 minutes (the steam and spray need to evaporate).
Set out the pieces, matching notches and hems.
Spread out the pieces just a bit so they’re not touching, but so the seamlines and hems match up. Make sure they’re flat, flat flat. No wrinkles.
Spray with Simply Spray fabric paint in an arc starting off the fabric and ending off the fabric.
Allow to dry for a good 24 hours (the package says 1 hour, but I had trouble with this last fall).
Sew as usual.

The fabric is stiffer than unpainted lycra, but it looks really pretty. I used 1 ½ cans on this dress.

Cautions:

Shake the can away from the fabric or you’ll have spots.
Don’t use all of the paint in the can – it spots as you finish the can.
Start and end off the fabric or you’ll have spots.
Dry well or you’ll have weird shadow images from whatever is behind slightly damp fabric.
Paint and dry on a perfectly flat surface.
Be careful to wear an apron or old clothes and spray in an area that you don’t mind covering with fabric dye spots.
Don’t spray in the wind or where leaves, twigs, and bugs will fall on your fabric while it’s drying.

Update: Oh, you’re going to just love this. You might notice something missing in the photos above. Yep. The panties. I thought I’d outwit the system and allow the dress pieces to dry while I sewed the bodice and the panties. The bodice and panties were both white. I watched Ice Girl skate yesterday at a competition and noticed the white panties peeking out from under the dress. Er. They looked like…well…underpants. Geez. I’m such a dork. I should have sprayed the panties along with the dress. After a fit of guilty giggles and lots of head smacks, I debated for a minute or two about asking Ice Girl to change dresses between the spins event and the jumps event. However, there was little time between the two events, so I decided not to tell her. Yeah. Not my best parenting moment, I’m sure. However, Ice Girl didn’t seem to mind when my friend told on me. Ice Girl just shrugged it off and told me she liked the dress anyway.

Bottom line: Again, allow me to be your horrible warning. Um. Paint the panties while you’re spraying the rest of the dress. Duh, Ice Mom.