Background
In the Feyi Fay series, Feyi wears an Ankara skirt. Ankara is a fabric primarily associated with Africa because of its colorful and vibrant tribal-like patterns. The fabric is made of cotton and traditionally designed using a wax-resist dyeing technique called batik, but other methods have been adopted over time. Most people use the fabric to make clothes, but it can also be used to make other items such as hats, earrings, jewelry and more. Ankara fabric is often worn as formal African attire, however, it can be worn for informal events also.
Fun Fact: Ankara is also the name of the capital of Turkey.
The Craft
In this craft, we are going to make your own pseudo Ankara fabric by painting a t-shirt with a vibrant Ankara-like pattern. If ease of explanation, the pattern we'll use for this craft is simple, and we'll be painting just a small section of the shirt, but feel free to get creative and try out different styles.
What you’ll need:
- A solid colored t-shirt.
- Two jars of fabric paint. Each a different color (we used yellow and red for this example). You can find fabric paint at your local craft store, or you can order them from Amazon. Here are some you could try:
- A fine paint brush. Try this this brush set from Amazon:
- A flat surface
Once complete, we'll transform a plain black t-shirt to look like the image below. Note that we only painted the area that could be a pocket on the shirt, however you could also paint the pattern across the entire width of the t-shirt.
Instructions:
1) Lay your t-shirt on a flat surface. Use your fine paint brush to paint 4 straight lines on the shirt where you will paint your pattern. Two at the top of where your pattern begins, and two at the bottom. Make sure there is enough space in the middle for the rest of the pattern.
2) Paint short lines in-between the spaces of the top two lines and the bottom two lines.
3) Paint on triangles on the top and bottom of the pattern.
4) Paint in some ovals in the middle of the pattern.
5) Add some polka dots. You can even add some polka dots to your sleeves, like Feyi Fay's shirt.
6) For flare, fill in the spaces with the second color. We used red in this example.
Once all the paint is dry, you are done! You can now rock your t-shirt in style.