PVC Silk Painting Frame

Making a silk banner painting frame from PVC is easy and economical!  I used 1/4" pvc pipe and fittings, rubber bands, binder clips and straight pins to make a knock-down frame that I can store in the attic in a tub when I'm not using it.

This is everything I need to paint a 14"x74" banner!

Start by cutting the pvc.  You should make sure that your pieces are not less than 4" longer than your piece is wide.  If you have a really long dimension, you will want to break it up into shorter lengths, and join them together with connecters.

Here you can see my corners, and the connectors (which I use for longer banners).

You will want to make sure that you cut your pvc pieces in pairs, of course!  Join them together.  The "feet" of the connectors will keep your piece slightly off your table.  If you are working outside, you can easily add legs to these connectors so that you can work at waist height.  I am working at the table, so the short height is good - the silk can be easily released so that I can trace my design from a sheet laid out underneath the banner (this is not shown).

You can see that the frame is a bit wider than the silk.  This is necessary!

Take your binder clips now, and put a rubber band in each one.  If you need more length, chain the rubber bands together so that you can loop a band around the pvc pipe, and nearly reach the silk with the clip.

The chained rubber bands, in the binder clip.

Looped around the pvc pipe.

Now take a straight pin, and bend it into an acute angle.  This will go into the hem of the silk, and is used so that the binder clip can "grab" the silk.

Bent pins

A pin, in the silk hem.  The binder clip grabs the head of the pin, the acute angle of the pin keeps the pin from rotating and slipping out of the silk.

 

 

Now stretch the silk, taking care to do so evenly, so that the pins are about equal around the silk and pulling roughly opposite each other. 

Now you are ready to paint!