Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth Class Plan

by Rayna Gillman

How to Move Last Season's Fabrics
With Create Your Own Hand Printed Cloth

NOTES for Shop Owners from Rayna Gillman

Surface design is taking the quilt world by storm! These are just a few ideas that can help you increase your sales and expand your market when you showcase Create Your Own Hand Printed Cloth.

1. Offer classes based on the book.
Many of my students are traditional quilters who are ready to experiment.
This handout includes outlines for two fun and easy classes to help your customers start creating their own custom-designed cloth. You can offer each class separately, or combine them into a full-day workshop called "Working in Layers."

  • Class #1: Stamp and Stencil with Everyday Objects (Chapter 2)
  • Class #2: Adding Accents with Rubbings (Chapter 8). This class is a follow-up to Stamp & Stencil, and can use the fabrics your students create in the first class. This class does not require water.

Either class is ideal for helping you upsell not only muslins and current solids or background fabrics, but is perfect for moving many of the fabrics left at the end of the season which have not sold.

2. Create a special display area.
Your display area can contain any or all of these items:

  • Copies of Create Your Own Hand Printed Cloth
  • Bolts of muslin (no permanent press), solids, background fabrics, tone-on tone fabrics, and especially last season's fabrics that are perfect for printing but have not sold.
  • Fat quarter packets of last-season's fabrics that could be improved by over-printing, using techniques from any chapter in the book.
  • A sample of an "ugly" fabric you have improved by printing on it.
  • Shiva Paintstik mini packets.
  • Fabric paint kits fromG&K Crafts.

3. Host a workshop for your employees.
Let them loose with either Chapter 2 or Chapter 8 of Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth. They'll have fun, may provide you with samples, and they'll become experts on the book.

4. Keep a list of customers who bought Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth.
Collect purchasers' names and email addresses, then follow up with events for them, as well as other customers.

5. Invite customers for a 1-hour lesson on how to choose fabrics to go with their hand-printed cloth.
Show how different colors and textures will combine to change the look. Make simple blocks as samples. Then, let them loose in the store with their own fabrics and be prepared to give advice and opinions that will help them buy!

6. Schedule a workshop that will showcase their hand-printed cloth.
A simple pattern like Square in a Square is perfect for this. They'll be sure to buy fabrics to go with their hand-prints for the quilt while they are there.

7. Invite customers to bring "ugly" or "boring" fabrics from their stashes.
Use them for a workshop called "Fabric Facelift." Customers who might not have thought about printing will purchase the book and transform fabrics with a workshop based on Chapter 2. Have an extra display of last season's "dogs" available while they are in the mood for a challenge!

8. Check my teaching schedule on my website www.studio78.net. If I am going to be in your area, invite me for a book-signing.

Take advantage of this excitement and contact me if you have any questions! rgillman@studio78.net

Wishing you a successful year!
Rayna Gillman


Print Original Fabrics!
Stamp and Stencil with Everyday Objects
From Create Your Own Hand Printed Cloth
by Rayna Gillman

Class description:
Bring out your "inner kindergartener" as you transform fabric with textile paint and paintstiks, using ordinary household objects as art supplies! There are no mistakes in this basic surface design class. If you don't like what you print the first time, add another layer! It can only get better.

Approximate class time:
This introductory class is 1 1/2 hours of experimenting with stamping and stenciling to create your own unique patterns and colors on cloth.

What each student will get:
Hand-printed fabric they have transformed, plus a wealth of ideas for printing more exciting fabrics that will make their quilts truly unique.

Project supplies:

  • Required Text: Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth
  • 1 yard (or equivalent) washed cotton fabric cut into eighths: can be white, muslin or light-to-medium color, solid, tone on tone, or pattern that reads as solid.
  • Scissors
  • Assorted colors of fabric paints
  • Rubber brayer + foam roller
  • Several 1" foam brushes
  • Several plastic spoons
  • 1-2 foam plates or meat trays
  • Batting or 2 old towels to use as printing surface
  • Straight pins
  • Assorted household object with texture or holes such as corrugated cardboard, bubble wrap, construction fence, plastic grids, sequin waste, etc. Use your imagination!!
  • Paper towels

Advance Preparations:

  • Make your own sample pieces of stamped and stenciled fabrics. Have fun!
  • Cover tables with plastic.
  • Set up ironing surface and irons.
  • Bring some household objects to use as stamps and stencils, as above. Bubble wrap, corrugated cardboard or foam pool noodles sliced crosswise make good stamps for demonstrating stamping. Plastic berry basket sides or plastic garden fencing make good stencils.

During the class:

  1. Fold batting to use as printing surface and pin fabric into it. Have students do the same.
  2. Following the instructions in Create Your Own Hand Printed Cloth, Chapter 2, pages 12-13, and then pages 14-15, demonstrate how to create unique fabric by using found objects as stamps and stencils.
  3. Have students experiment on their own, using your demo and Chapter 2 as a guide.

    Stamping demonstration
    • Apply paint with foam brush to bubble wrap, apply to fabric and roll with brayer.
    • Apply paint to corrugated cardboard and stamp onto fabric.
    Stenciling demonstration
    • Lay object with holes onto fabric (sequin waste, plastic fence or grid)
    • Apply paint to foam roller and roll over object with holes.

Tell students they can heat set painted fabric by letting it dry and ironing it, putting a paper towel between the iron and the fabric.

Play Time for students
The rest of the hour, students can stamp and stencil with fabric and objects they have brought with them.


Print Original Fabrics!
Adding Accents with Rubbings
From Create Your Own Hand Printed Cloth
by Rayna Gillman

Class description:
Remember the crayon rubbings you did as a child? Now they are a surface design technique! Using Shiva Paintstiks or oil pastels and ordinary textured items, you can transform commercial fabric into hand-printed cloth by adding accents or adding a layer of your own design!

Approximate class time:
This introductory class is 1½ hours of rubbing with dry pigments to add accents or create your own unique patterns and colors on cloth.

What each student will get:

Hand-printed fabric you have transformed, plus a wealth of ideas for printing more exciting fabrics that will make your quilts truly unique.

Project supplies:

  • Required Text: Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth
  • 1 yard (or equivalent) washed and ironed cotton fabric cut into eighths: light-to-medium color, solid, tone on tone, or pattern that reads as solid.
  • Assorted colors of Shiva Paintstiks and/or oil pastels
  • Batting or 2 old towels
  • Pins
  • Assorted items with texture or raised designs such as corrugated cardboard, doilies, plastic or wire grids, kitchen implements, old license plates, or shells for example.
  • Any rubber stamps or plastic rubbing plates you may have (optional)
  • Paper towels

Advance Preparations:

  1. Create examples of "before" and "after by making sample rubbings with Shiva Paintstiks on light-to-medium colored fabric from your shelves—background fabrics or tone-on-tone.
  2. Set up ironing boards and irons for students to heat-set fabrics.

During the class:
Following the instructions in Create Your Own Hand Printed Cloth, Chapter 8, demonstrate how to add excitement and layers to fabric by using ordinary objects for rubbings with Paintstiks or oil pastels.

  1. Fold batting or towels to create a print surface.
  2. Stretch and pin fabric to the print surface.
  3. Slide a textured item under fabric and re-pin if necessary.
  4. Rub with Paintstiks or oil pastels.
  5. Heat-set pastels or Paintstiks by putting a paper towel on top of the fabric. When the paper towel no longer absorbs color from the rubbing, it is permanent.
  6. Have students spend the rest of the time playing and experimenting with dry pigments and fabrics, as in chapter 8.