Week two with Carol was even more exciting than the first week. Which means it was really really exciting. But first, a disclaimer:
We let the screens dry overnight:
And then we printed. I added some clear dye paste to pull across the screen. With each pull, more of the dried dye rehydrated and printed the fabric:
The result was a very interesting piece of textured fabric:
I filled in some of the lighter spots with orange-yellow thickened dye. Two closeups of my finished fabric:
We learned how to make a paper lamination stencil using newspaper, sheer organza and matte medium. I decided to make the "negative" of my corn dextrose screen (above). Here is my screen, after I'd used it to print several pieces of fabric. The newspaper stained a bit orangey:
This stencil let the dye through the rectangles and blocked the dye from coming through the "lattice":
I liked this one so much, I used it several times. I love this red and orange one on cotton voile:
We used torn masking tape to create patterns on our screens:
I did lots of monoprinting. To do so I painted a pattern on a 9" x 12" piece of plexiglas and used that to stamp my fabric:
We used thermofax screens to print on our fabric:
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| What happens in the Barn stays in the Barn! |
Carol's "Layers Upon Layers" class focused on screen printing. A very versatile way to make patterns on fabric.
We began with deconstructed screen printing, also known as breakdown printing. To start, we painted our screens with a couple of colors of thickened dye (I used chinese red and black) and placed some interestingly shaped objects on top. The idea was to give our screens a little texture:
I enjoyed this technique so much that I did it again. With even more objects imbedded on my silk screen. I didn't get a picture of the screen before printing, but here are two closeups of the fabric I printed:
We used corn dextrin paste to paint a pattern on our screens. We let them dry in the sun:
I had painted mine with rectangles. The places I had painted stayed white (which I later painted yellow). The places that were not painted printed with this brownish color:
I used both the corn dextrose screen and the paper lamination stencil on this piece, so that I got both the positive and the negative image of the rectangles, printed with brown upon a yellow-green piece of fabric:
We used a lot of other techniques, such as batiking with soy wax. Messy but fun:
At the end of the week, I had printed eighteen yards of fabric. Mostly pimatex cotton, with a few pieces of cotton voile and silk organza. It made for quite an impressive wall:
If you get a chance to take a class from Carol, do it! She's a fabulous teacher, whether teaching about immersion dyeing or surface design techniques!
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