How to Spray Paint Fabric {Striped Curtain Tutorial}

Happy Friday! As promised, here’s the tutorial for spray painting fabric or in my case, curtains.

I finally finished them up and hung them on Tuesday. Right now, they are behind the bed, but it’s not my favorite. I am going to try to live with them for a few days and then move the furniture if I can’t stand it.

Disclaimer: this is a long one. Not because it’s difficult but it is a little “step intensive”

I did tons of some very little research before I picked up my spray paint. However, through trial and error, I was able to make things a little simpler for you.
SUPPLIES

• Painters tape
• Thin Plastic Drop Cloth
• Fabric

tip: I bought my curtains from Target. They were $30 for a set of 2 95” panels with grommets. That breaks down to about $5/yd and I didn’t have to sew them. You can’t really beat that.

• KRYLON spray paint (2 cans per curtain)

tip #2: Krylon lists fabric as one of the approved surfaces. CLICK HERE for my comparison of different spray paint brands. Also, I’ve been told that there’s a product called Simply Spray from Hobby Lobby that is made for fabric, but it’s more expensive than Krylon.
PREP
As with most painting projects, the most important step is prep. In order to get crisp lines, you want to be very careful in this step.

1. Determine your stripe widths. You want to stick with odd numbers of stripes. My fabric was 95" high, so I chose 9 stripes. So each stripe was 10.5”, except for the bottom one which was 9.25”. You can’t tell.
2. Determine which stripes will be painted and which will remain white. This is important for tape placement. I wanted to have more yellow than white, so I started and ended with a yellow stripe.
3. Using a fabric pen and a ruler, make a small mark down each side and in the middle every 10.5”.
4. I used a long ruler line up my marks. The ruler helps you get a straight line all the way across. Using the ruler as your guide, lay the painters tape along the marks.

important tip: ALWAYS put the tape on the white side of the line. This is kind of hard to remember. Your white stripes will look smaller than the yellow stripes because the tape will be covering up 1” on either side.

5. Cut your drop cloth into 10.5” strips. I actually just laid it on top of the fabric and cut over the lines. Leave enough on the edges to be able to wrap it around the back of the fabric. You’ll be spraying the edges.

6. Using the painters tape, tape the plastic strips over the white stripes. Be sure to overlap the existing tape some. Wrap the tape and the plastic around the edges of the fabric and secure to the back.

tip #3: Be sure that your fabric is flat anytime that you are applying the tape.


7. Wrap the grommets in painters tape. I sprayed it once without doing this and it was much easier to wrap them than to get the paint off later.

Now repeat the entire process for all of the stripes. I had 36 stripes. I did this process in stages. because it was not super fun work. Though I still think it was faster than painting the stripes with a brush. You’d still have to do everything exactly the same except for steps 5 and 6.

Painting
1. Lay the fabric on a drop cloth outside. Spray on the first layer pretty thin. You’ll still see white through it.
2. It dries very fast. I sprayed on my second layer within 15 minutes after the first. The second layer should completely cover the rest.
3. Pull off the tape and plastic! This was by far my favorite step. You get to see your pretty crisp paint lines:

If you accidentally punctured your plastic, then it might not be as happy because you’ll see it:



But the good news is, once I hung them, I took me forever to find this little mistake. It kinda disappears. The end result is significantly softer than regular paint and you can still see the texture of the fabric through the paint.




How do we feel about the bed in front of the curtains? I don’t hate it as much as I thought I would, but I definitely don’t love it. Do I leave it or move the bed to the other side of the room?