Fabric Painting for Fun!

Children's Literature - Ellis Beier

This combination of how-to and overview around the world features plenty of background information and four projects. An entry in the "For Fun" series, it features full-color pictures of some finished products, people making a project, and kinds of fabric art from around the world: Mali mud cloth, Indonesian batik, India dyed cotton, and others. The four bland projects include a banner made of fluorescent paints, stamped placemats, a sun-cured painted canvas bag, and a batik t-shirt dyed after the application of purchased "resist." While the directions are adequate, the realization of each project is less than inspiring to middle schoolers, and three of the four understandably require some expenditure for dyes. Endmatter tries to cover various bases with a timeline of "What happened when?", showing the invention of various tying techniques and another section of interesting bits: "Fun fabric and dye facts." A two-part glossary, part reference to words specific to fabric painting and part words of a more general sort (i.e. "unique," "traditional," and "palette"); sources and resources, including a publisher's based vetted Web site, are also included. Interesting to already devoted crafters, the book's format, content, and projects are not likely to inspire the uninspired.