Spontaneous Screen Printing Class

Beth gets ready to print with a glue screen.

Beth’s freezer paper prints.

Laurie’s unique pumpkin prints

Mark tries adding color to his freezer paper prints.

I love how this one turned out.

Jan works on a piece of commercial cloth, adding more designs to it.

One of Jan’s paper designs.

This is another of Mark’s designs. It took him a while to paint this design on the screen, consequently some of the dye dried and when he printed it, it had a breakdown printing appearance to it.  Of course, I love that.

Susan paints some of the open areas of her prints.

Some of Suzy’s work.

A pretty cool freezer paper screen made by another Beth in the class. I really like this screen design.

 

The Very Busy Month Of June

As you can see I haven’t blogged for some time.  June was a really busy time for me.  I was creating two brand new classes…and then trying them out on my “guinea pigs”!  Postcard Panache was the first class. I had the actual idea for this class last summer, but like anything else, if there is no demand for something, my ideas may remain just that…ideas.  But in March this year, two ladies from Louisville put a demand on me for this class, so I worked hard to get samples made and get it prepared so they could have a full day of learning.  These two ladies came to my house for the day and seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.  Now I just have to get it up on my Lectures/Workshops page.  There is always something to do!

Postcard Panache is a class geared to teaching people how to use all of the new artsy products that are  on the market.  I sell all these products at quilt shows, but demos are important because people don’t quite know what to do with Angelina fibers  and other items.  So, in postcard format, I showed these ladies a number of ways they could use bottled inks, Smooch Spritz, Angelina fibers and film, BoNash bonding powder, foiling glue, foil, stencils, etc.  They had quite a play day and were very complimentary, which makes me feel happy that they were so pleased.

The second class I created is a screen printing class.  I finally settled on a name for it no one else has used, at least not that I know of…Spontaneous Screen Printing.  Several gals from the St. Louis area and other friends of mine signed up and declared that they  had a great time and learned a great deal, so I feel I have done my job.  It is a lot of work creating and planning a brand new class, then packing everything for it.  At the same time I was planning a demo on Friday for the artisans center where the class would be taught the following day.  Due to the extreme messiness of using dye paints to demo I opted to do something totally different!  Which made me even more work…what was I thinking?  Again, it was a project that had been in the back of my mind for some time, so in a way, by demo-ing gelatin printing using paints, I got some “work” done for future artwork…AND I got a commission out of it too, which was very unexpected, but welcome.

What I’m Getting Done

Some days it’s not so much, except for a visit to Curves and errands. I finally got my life arranged where I could start doing some printing this week.  I need to print several yards of cloth…how much I’m not so sure.  I guess I’ll know when I get there.  Thursday I got dye paint mixed and then yesterday I got 4 yards printed.  I have 3 weeks before I vend at my next quilt show, so I need to make good use of the time I have between now and then.  After printing the cloth, then there is sewing it up into items for the home.

I call this a VERY improvisational screen printing technique…basically, I just paint circles and drips on the screen and immediately print it.

I made table napkins from the other colorway I previously printed.

There will be matching tablerunners also.

Someone on my blogroll has now turned me on to what a “potato chip” scarf is.  Today has seen me online hunting up a pattern and yarns.  And ordering.  Since I don’t really knit yet, I will crochet it with a big hook.  My nieces may get these cool scarves for Christmas….we’ll see how I get along.  I also got my new printed fabrics ironed.

From the Lion Brand yarn website, the double boa ruffled scarf…

My plan is to do three colorways for Select Collections.  I will print black and white as well as more of the amethyst, curry, and turkey red colors.  That’s all I’m gonna do. Ideas need to percolate too.  It takes about an hour to print two yards of fabric in this manner.  I can’t do it all in one piece as my set up won’t handle it at the moment, so I do one yard at a time.

I now have sets of inks for sale…I have the Mini Stations for painted faces and the Basic colors Mini Station.  Contact me if you’re interested.  These are very nice inks to work with if you like to do detail work. They look wonderful on the cloth I dye on which is a 76 x 74 thread count.  I won’t use Setacolors on this cloth…it just looks better on Pimatex cotton, but these inks paint well on this pfd cotton, which I like about them.  Each mini-station comes with a helpful dvd, and there are tutorials on the internet to help you learn to use them too.

Working, Working, Working

Last week I took advantage of the wonderfully mild weather to get out in the patio and work on silk scarves.  I screened on most of them.  I used deconstructed screen designs, glue designs, and paper resist designs.  Some of my breakdown screens didn’t print very long.  The new silk screens that Julia and I made worked well, but I see mine are starting to stretch a little.  Perhaps that is because I didn’t review Kerr Grabowski’s instructions before we  made them!  This throw together scarf design turned out to be my favorite.  Since I ran out of good breakdown prints, I used other screens and partial designs on it.  Another idea has emerged for me to use for future screening.  I love the contrast of a large bold design over smaller prints.

The other side of this scarf is a bit different, just because with printing by hand you can get lots of variety. This scarf was printed using all three of the types of printing I mentioned earlier. I’m having a great love affair with chartreuse and turquoise this summer, as well as all the blends in between the two that happen when one does not wash the screens between printing.  This scarf is printed on silk charmeuse.

Printing L A R G E

I was given some old dyes and some cloth that had been soda soaked by a friend who is downsizing.  The hot weather has finally broken here, so yesterday morning I was out in the patio.  I wanted to try out the new screens and I needed to get started working on silk scarves.  But for yesterday, I got out a piece of cloth from her stash.  It is  a white on white print and is over 2 yards long.  I printed on the back of it.  The fabric turned out way too light for my taste, but is still very much useable.  I’m not sure if it needed to be soda soaked again or what the reason was.  She said it had been soaked last fall…which may be too long ago.

I don’t believe I have printed a piece this large before, but I can see myself doing it again.  In the lower right corner is printing from one of the new screens we made. I used a paper resist to make the pattern. The other printing is from a design made with blue gel glue.

Just above that printing is the turquoise from the older dyes she gave me.  I used double the dye powder and thought that would compensate for the age, but apparently not as I can see a distinct difference from the newer dyes.  The new screens work quite well. Today, I printed on silk scarves and prepared screens for breakdown printing that I will print on other scarves.

One more thing:  both of my pieces were rejected for the Working Together show this year….that has not happened before! Oh well…there’ll be another place to enter them.

More This ‘N That

Woohoo!  I feel like I actually got something done today.  I got a sample bag made, and it went pretty fast.  This is the Runaround Bag by Lazy Girl Designs, made, of course, in my hand dyed fabrics.  One fabric has paintstik designs on it.  I didn’t have a 12 inch zipper to match the fabrics, so making do with the yellow one I did have.  I think it looks just fine…it makes  a yellow stripe.

Front…

Back….with a heart embroidery stitch used as topstitching…

How about some antique buttons added…?

This is a cute pattern and makes up fast.  The finished bag measures 7 1/2″ x 9″. I have patterns for sale.

I am planning what shows I will be attending this fall and what I need to have done as far as samples.  This bag is one sample I wanted to make up.

On another note, I was juried into the annual Working Together exhibit to be on display at the Evansville museum from July 11 to August 28.  This is an Arts Council exhibit. I have shown this piece in another post on this blog.  It is …But Words Will Never Hurt Me (Sticks and Stones). I am happy it will be in this exhibit.

Rust dyed cotton sateen, discharge dyed sateen, screenprinting, stamping, stenciling, cotton thread, handwriting.

More Painted Cloth…

This piece was done by stamping soy wax onto white cotton with a potato masher and the lid of a film canister.  Then I brushed turquoise and black dye paint on it making sure to get in all the little cracks and crevices.  I think I am going to brush other colors over the white areas.

For this design, I tore strips of freezer paper and ironed them to the back side of a screen.  Again, I used turquoise and black paint.

This is a screened design made with soy wax.  I used yellow and fuchsia dye, and also picked up some turquoise paint from the table.  These three fabrics all go together now.  I will have to be careful what other colors I add to the first one!

This one is made with the same torn paper screen, except that after printing the design in one direction, I turned the screen and printed it in the other direction too.  Looks like I used yellow and black dyes, maybe some turquoise.  The next one was done the same way, except with more turquoise and some fuchsia paint.

Black Cotton Sateen…

….Yummmm….black sateen is so nice. I was told by a fellow artist that the black sateen that Joann’s carries discharged to whites and greys….not so! Maybe it did at one time, but not anymore.

I went outside early this morning to do some discharge. Early…meaning I waited til daylight and went out about 7 a.m. By 8 a.m. I was dripping with sweat so I quit for the day. But I remembered that I wanted to do a screen design with dishwashing liquid. Well…now I’m hooked! Gotta get some more sateen!

Black cotton sateen discharged by screening automatic dishwashing liquid through screen with soy wax design.

Friday This ‘N That

Just a quick post…some pictures from my first attempt at breakdown printing…

Plastic canvas and sequin waste placed beneath the screen. Squeegeed yellow-orange dye across the screen, let dry. Next day, made turquoise dye paste and activated and squeegeed onto cloth. The little dark rusty looking areas are where the orange yellow dye came off the screen. Interesting. Oh, and there was some pink blotches on the fabric when I started, just so you know.

These I screened the yellow orange dye on and then later dye painted with turquoise dye.

Observations:

1. It would be good to have several screens available to use to do this with. I have one at the moment, so I made the design on the screen and had to wait a day til it dried, before I could go on. I will be purchasing more.

2. Putting the textural objects beneath the screen and squeegeeing the dye paste on the inside of the screen worked very well, perhaps better than coating the screen and laying objects in it, at least for me. More exploration is required, but I definitely liked the images I got on the screen by laying the objects beneath it.

3. Some of the fabric had been presoaked in soda ash and dried and some had not. I’m not sure if it made much difference in the colors. The turquoise dye itself was activated on both kinds of cloth. The only reason I had some presoaked is that I had made it for another project. I did not do presoaked specifically for this process.

4. There is more work and mess involved screening with dye than with paint, but I very much like the hand of the cloth with dye. Lovely.