A Deconstructed Silk Screen Play Date

Beth is majorly in love with deconstructed silk screen.  I am less so.  She likes the spontaneity of it and I dislike the lose of control.  But we had a play date this week where we both did deconstructed silk screen.  We set up our screens very differently.  I am sure Beth will post about her work on her blog so I am just telling you about mine.  And I am posting to Nina Marie.

I set up 4 of my screens with thickened dye squirted in lines.

The last screen I applied the navy blue thickened dye in thicker lines by pouring it on the screen.

Unfortunately I stacked the screens one on top of the other to dry and the top screen in the stack was the navy blue which dripped on all the screens, as you can see in the top picture.  Then, to make matters worse, when the dye was mostly dry, I set the screens upright to finish drying.  Yeah, they were not as dry as I thought and all of them ran.  See below.

Oh well.  Not the  plan but they still  printed.  I used thickened dye paste with dye and soda ash added to deconstruct the screens.  Most of the fabric I over-printed for more complexity but I loved the graphic nature of the last piece and only printed it once.

Here are pictures of the 4 pieces of fabric I printed. The first two are yard long pieces and the second two are fat 1/2 yards.  All were dyed before since I don't really care for white showing through deconstructed prints.  There are detail shots after each whole piece.

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

Do you have a favorite fabric?

Batik play date with Beth, Ellen, and Abby

On July 5th my daughter, Ellen, and her daughter, Abby, joined me at Beth's house for a play date.  Ellen lives in Ohio but was visiting with her in-laws who live in New Hampshire.  They left the rest of the family at the in-laws and continued to Maine.  Beth and Ellen had become friends when Beth stayed at Ellen's house while taking a class at Nancy Crow's barn.  Abby and Ellen made batik silk scarves that turned out very successful.  I would have been happy to claim them as my work.

I used a couple of tjaps I bought from Dharma several years ago.  They had sat on the shelf for a long time unused.  This batik play date seemed the perfect time to try them out.  I used them on some fabric that had already been died multiple times, getting uglier with each new layer.  I figured I had nothing to lose.

The first piece is a yard long piece that has been died twice before.  I like it now.

And a close up.

The second piece is about 1/2 yard and it has also been dyed twice before.  I like it more now but it needs another layer before I will call it finished.

And a couple of close ups.

Play date with Beth

Saturday I had a wonderful play date with Beth.  We were trying some variations of soy wax and thickened dyes.  One of the great things of having a play date with Beth is that we start at the same place and end up in totally different locations. You'll need to go to Sew Sew Art to see Beth's material which is totally different from mine.

Our first experiment was to draw with the soy wax on our silk screens and then to use the thickened dyes with the screens.  I drew a zentangly type thing with the wax.  I chose to use a variety of color dyes and to screen them using a credit card.  Here is the gorgeous fabric that was produced and three detail shots.  The fabric is a little over a yard long and the entire width.  I am definitely going to play with this technique some more.

The second experiment was stamping with soy wax and then applying the thickened dye with a credit card again.  The experiment part of this trial is that I layered fabric. I got the idea from this post.  I love the green bottom layer.

I am not as happy with the top layer.  It isn't bad but it needs another layer.

 

The bottom piece I stamped with a large circle and then dyed with yellow and greens.  Then, without waiting for the dye to dry,  I layered another piece of fabric over the green dyed fabric.  On the top fabric I stamped wax with a smaller circle and then dyed with blues and an orange on the edges to darken it.  If you compare the two pieces, you will see that the colors, the wax, and the circle pattern transferred between the two.

Here are some detail pictures of both pieces. Both finished pieces have the two different sizes of circles.

I have shared this post on Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

Play Date with Beth

Beth and I got together on Saturday for a wax and dye day.  Beth wanted to try a technique she found here on Edwina Mackinnon's blog.  Beth had fallen in love with the brush marks on the finished fabric. 

 She read and re-read the blog to figure out how it was done, prepared the brushes, mixed the dyes, and sent me the instructions.  I showed up. What a slacker! Beth will post her own results but here is my process and result.

I started out with a yard of white cotton fabric, pinned it on Beth's dye board, and spritzed it with soda water.

 I brushed the fabric with lemon yellow, golden yellow, turquoise, and basic blue.  I tried to leave white spaces and brush with a light stroke to leave brush marks.  I added some blue splatters for interest.

Here is a close up.
There are no pictures for the next couple of steps. We wrapped our dyed fabric in plastic and let it batch for hour.  Then we draped the batched fabric over a drying rack, turned on multiple fans, and let the fabric completely dry.

If you look really, really close, you can see the wax stripes that I have brushed on the dyed, batched, dried fabric.  I used a foam brush that Beth had notched.

Next step was to coat the dyed, batched, dried and waxed fabric with thickened dye.  I was going to only use Fuchsia but I ran out and Beth had leftover Navy Blue so I used some of it too.  I thought it would add some lovely depth.

Once again we wrapped the fabric in plastic and batched.  And there are no pictures of my washing and washing out all of that dye, hot-water rinsing to get the wax out, washing it in the washing machine, drying it in the dyer, and ironing it.

But here are the finished results--one large and several small detail shots showing all the brush stokes.  I am in love!  I think it is the best fabricI have ever done.

Results from Play Date

Last Saturday the five of us in our play group got together and played with soy wax. Well, 4 of us got to  play.  When Beth plugged in her electric skillet she blew the fuse and got to spend most of the rest of her day shoveling out the basement to get to the fusebox.  Sorry, Beth!  Anyway, here are the two pieces that I finished.

This one I liked just the way it is. It is a cotton fabric.  The next one is silk.  I love the shades in it and have plans for a second layer of decoulorant to finish it off.  Sorry the picture is so shiny that you can't see all the lovely detail in the colors.

Play Date and Blue Roses

Last Saturday we got together for a play date and to celebrate Beth's and Rosalita's birthday. I'm not telling any secrets but Rosalita said she is turning 39 again. The play for the day was silk screen and collages. For my attempts I wanted to try using watercolor crayons with the silk screen. So, first I watched Jane Dunnewold's DVD and then I gave it a try.

Here is my first attempt. I drew directly on the screen with the crayons. I am currently infatuated with blue roses --I'll show you the reason why later--so I drew blue roses. I screened the image using a print paste so there is no color except the crayon. I printed onto 6 ft long length of fabric I had dyed with some blue and green dye earlier. So, the blue and green in the background is from the previous dye. The crayons left only the distinct markes I had made. I probably printed 6 or so times before the marks were too faded.

This is my second attempt with watercolor crayons and silk screen. This time I used two new thermofax screens I had made from a photo of a pomegranate cut in half and a photo of the rind and some loose seeds for the second screen. I colored the screens using the water color crayons and then screened them using a metalic gold print paste. The results were a wonderful mix of the colors and each print was colored slightly different. I printed onto the fabric I had eco-dyed with mums at one of our last play dates. I overlapped the images so that it would be more of an allover pattern rather than a print of pomegranates.

In the afternoon we tried to make fabric and paper collages following the directions we found on Wen Redmond's blog. She also has these instructions for collage. Unfortunately it was a while since we had read the article so we did our best. Here is my attempt. I think it is a good beginning and just needs several more layers of stuff.

Okay, on to blue roses. I am going to make a piece named Blue Roses from this silk dress I found at Goodwill.  I am not sure yet how I am going to turn them into a quilt yet. I think I will also include the eco-dyed and silk screen rose material and the bureau scarf I have already started embroidering with my hand dyed pearl cotton. I am open to suggestions.