Advent Calendar: Part 2!

Part 1 of this tutorial is here!

So, you have now washed and dried your socks--maybe more than once.  I found as I worked with the socks that the red dye hadn't been completely washed out of the socks, so I got a few red marks on my ironing cloth later on. It wasn't a big deal, but next time I dye something I'll wash it twice before using it.

 And you have your stencils--if you're planning on painting your numbers onto your socks. In the original idea (from Martha Stewart), number stickers were stuck to the socks so that they could be re-used. I didn't care about re-using the socks, so I was going for permanent.  I made my stencils out of freezer paper.  Amy over at naptime crafters has a good explanation of how to make and use freezer paper stencils.  I just cut my paper to 8.5x11 inches, printed the numbers onto the non-shiney side (very important!) and then cut the numbers out with an exacto knife.  It didn't take as long as I expected it to.

 I laid my socks out on my ugly ironing board and rearranged them until I liked what I had.

 Then I laid out my numbers...

 ...and ironed them on!  Now, as you will see later on, I used too hot of an iron OR freezer paper doesn't do well with sock fabric.  I'll show you later how the plastic-y part of the freezer paper didn't want to come off of my sock.

 Back to our current activity: line up the socks in whatever way works best for you.

 Squirt out some fabric paint and get to work!

 I used my finger to put the paint down--it just works best for me.  Normally I would recommend putting a protective layer of something like paper between the two layers of the fabric, but the sock fabric was thick enough that the paint didn't soak through.

Here's the first layer of paint:

 Second layer:

 Again, first layer:

 Second layer:

 I stopped at two layers of paint, though some of the red socks could have handled a third.  Hung up, they look just fine.

Now, on to 24 hours later, after the paint has dried.  I tried to pull off the freezer paper...the paper part came right off, but not the plastic! (Note: please see the update farther down in this thread--or read on if you're looking for how to remove iron-on appliqué plastic.)

 Uh oh...

 So I tried the blow drier. It didn't work.

 What I ended up doing (and managed to not take any pictures of), was heating my iron up to its hottest setting (cotton) with no steam.  Then I laid an ironing cloth over it--mine is just a light weight "flour sack" dish cloth--and ironed the heck out of it.  When I lifted the paper off of the sock, some of the plastic-y stuff came away, but not all.  So I put the cloth back over the sock and ironed more. The ironing cloth lifted some of the plastic-y stuff away from sock and eventually the socks looked pretty good (and my ironing cloth got a bit stiff).

 You can still see a bit of residue where the freezer paper was adhered, but it's much, much better than it used to be. (Oh, and notice my new ironing board cover--thank you Black Friday!). :)

 It took forever--an entire naptime--but I eventually got all of the socks looking pretty good.

UPDATE: I figured out what went wrong with my iron-on stencils. I thought I was using freezer paper, but I was not. I mindlessly grabbed the paper roll stored next to my freezer paper, which happened to be my Heat-n-Bond No Sew Iron-on appliqué paper! No wonder the plasticy part didn't come off--it wasn't meant to! What's even worse is that I started to do it again and thankfully caught myself and saved that project. *headdesk*

So we hung them up!  I used some of those metal ornament hooks. I just hooked them through the sock fabric and squeezed the end shut. I secured a ribbon to the wall (the ribbon ended up being about 60 inches long) and spaced out my socks as evenly as possible.

 We will use candy canes to mark the days that have passed.  I can't wait to start using it!

That's all for now!

~Regina