Monday, June 25, 2012

How to Remove Acrylic Paint From Fabric

Eli's Pack Meeting this month provided the Cub Scouts with an opportunity to freezer paper stencil their names on the back of a scout shirt.  Eli brought a friend with him and while I was ironing on his stencil my extremely self-sufficient son started applying paint to his shirt.  Wonderful, right?? Wrong!  He went to town before I had a chance to iron on the freezer paper resulting in a big blob of blue paint slightly above where his left kidney is. It resembled one of those ink blot tests...

Anywho, it dried overnight, and I thought it would be his new pajama shirt.  Until, I did a little research and found a way to remove the paint (at least most of it).  Yippee! The pictures show a little bit of residue still on the shirt.  I think it is because he was really liberal with his paint application.  I wish I would have thought to take a before picture, but I seriously thought it was a lost cause.  Once I redid his name, it really isn't noticeable at all.

  1. Put something (cardboard or old absorbent rag) under the layer of fabric to prevent bleeding.
  2. Soak, I mean really soak the fabric and paint in rubbing alcohol.  I used 70% because that is what I had on hand.
  3. Scrap off as much of the paint as you can with the dull side of a butter knife.  Reapply rubbing alcohol as needed to keep the fabric really soggy.  Keep scraping until you can't scrape anymore residue off.  At this point you will still be able to see a lot of the color.  My hopes weren't very high at this point, but keep going-it works!
  4. Use a strong soap and scrub the life out of the fabric.  I used my favorite soap, Hogwash (my children have this soap to thank for their lives). 
  5. Send the fabric through the cold wash cycle. 

2 comments:

  1. Wow, did I ever need this last week!! Thanks for sharing, this is a keeper!
    Desi

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  2. Fantastic results and what a revelation! Very much needed this week. Thanks for sharing!
    June at celticmooncat.com

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