Dots, dots, everywhere…

I have a bit of a problem. A dotty problem. Slowly, everything in my wardrobe is becoming polka dotted! I’ve been looking for some spotted tights, but I just couldn’t find any that matched my (very specific) mental image. I wanted navy, with little white dots, so in the end i bought a pair of plain navy 70 denier tights and some white fabric paint to do it myself!

I cut some lengths of cardboard to go inside the legs of my tights, so that the paint wouldn’t go through, and to stretch the tights out a bit. Happily, I still have lots of empty cardboard boxes left from our move! Then I spent about two hours looking for my paintbrushes. I had planned to use the end of one of the brushes to make my dots, but I really have no idea where they’ve got to. In the end, the only thing I could find that would make the right sized dot was the end of my old fashioned house key!

Initially, I thought I might make a random pattern of dots, but in the end i went with a pretty standard, regular pattern. I get a bit obsessive about patterns, so its safer if they’re more structured! I was sitting next to a girl on the bus the other day who had trousers pattered with little rearing horses. On one leg the horses were facing up, and on the other they were facing down. Its just as well I was getting off at the next stop, because otherwise she would have noticed me staring in horror at her legs! I wonder if she had even noticed the mismatch? Anyway…once I had both legs all dotted up and the paint had dried (that was the hardest part, waiting for the paint to be totally dry!), I took the cardboard out, and ironed them carefully to set the paint.

I think they’ve turned out pretty well! They match the mental image i had at the beginning, anyway. I’ve got lots of fabric paint left over too, so who knows what I’ll be decorating next! No more polka dots though, or I wont have anything plain to match them with…