Your Cart

Textile Medium

This post is about the use of a Textile Medium if you want to wash your colored pencil designs on fabric. I took one of my designs (Circle of Spring) and traced it with a Pigma pen and then colored in the flowers with Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils. I then divided the design up into 4 areas and applied a Textile Medium in various amount to see which would launder the best. I washed the final fabric in my washing machine warm water and Tide 2 times.


The clear winner was Textile Medium with no added water.



In one section there is no Textile Medium - only colored pencils that were Heat Set with an iron. In one section I painted Textile medium straight onto the fabric after Heat Setting. The other 2 sections I watered down the Textile Medium with water. I found that by adding water to the Textile medium made the colors run. The clear winner is the straight Textile Medium below is a side by side comparison.



Other tips when adding a Textile Medium: First Heat Set (iron) your colored design - especially the darker colored areas. If you do not heat set your color the addition of Textile Medium will cause the colors to move or run. If you have very dark colors like the red tulips you may want to add the Textile Medium to the lighter areas first and the darker areas last so the colors do not run.