Fourth of July Patriotic Flag Handprint Craft for Children

A quick and easy patriotic Fourth of July handprint craft keepsake for children! Let them have fun painting and preserve those sweet little handprints to put on display for years to come.

Patriotic Flag Handprint Craft: What you need

Flour Sack Towels
Permanent Fabric Ink or Paint – “Poppy” and “Navy“
1 Piece of Cardboard for each Flour Sack Towel – I buy the big trifold project display boards from the DollarTree and cut them to size (you know, the kind of display boards you used to use for your science fair projects as a child! 🙂 ) An old cereal box or Amazon box would work too!
Clothespins– I also buy from the DollarTree!
Aluminum Foil or Wax Paper
Scissors
Painter’s Tape
Craft or Children’s Paint Brushes

This fabric ink is made to be permanent on fabric! It does wash off before you “set” it, but to be extra careful I would not let your children paint with this paint in clothes that you don’t want to get ruined. We painted outside and my children chose to forgo clothes all together 🙂 Less messy laundry for me so I didn’t fight it!

Center and secure Flour Sack cloth onto cardboard

Open up your flour sack towel and center it onto your piece of cardboard. Wrap the excess fabric out of the way in the back and use tape and/or clothespins to secure the edges.

Make flag rectangle and stripes

Cut a small piece of aluminum foil into a rectangle (I just eyeballed the shape and size!) and use painters tape to secure it into the top left corner. This is where the handprint will go in the end!

Then use long pieces of painter’s tape to make flag “stripes” horizontally. We couldn’t fit 13 but that’s ok : )

Start Painting!

Now for the fun part!

Squirt some red paint onto a disposable paper plate and let your children start painting!

This is such a perfect craft for children of all ages!

John Davis (age 4) loved it and was so careful and meticulous to paint perfectly in between the lines, covering all of the white areas : )

Fletcher (age 2 – just turned two last week!) loved it just as much! The painter’s tape allowed him to do it completely independently, and if I’m being totally honest I love the “imperfect” stripes the best 😉

remove aluminum foil Add navy handprint

Once the red paint has dried to the touch, remove the aluminum foil and painter’s tape in the top left corner.

Add your child’s handprint in navy blue! The easiest way to do it is to actually use a paint brush and paint the blue directly on your child’s hand, then help them press their hand on the flour sack towel.

Finished patriotic flag handprint flour sack towel

And that’s it! One all the paint is dry to the touch you can remove the remaining painter’s tape.

To set paint

Let paint dry for at least 24 hours. Then heat set using a dry iron with a pressing cloth between your iron and flour sack towel (a pillow case works great for this!). Hand wash cold after 72 hours.

How to Use your patriotic flag handprint towels

These patriotic flour sack towels are so cute on their own, but here are a couple of different ways you can use them:

Display them in your kitchen (I like to drape them over my oven door handle) or anywhere in your home over a decorative towel bar
Use the patriotic handprint flour sack towel to wrap up a homemade baked good or loaf of bread. Tie it up with a ribbon and it makes the cutest gift!
Use them as placemats or napkins on a patriotic tablescape
Recreate patriotic flag handprints on any fabric medium: think pillows, children’s t-shirts, tote bags, aprons, etc!