Breakdown Printing

Not sure who was having the breakdown - me or the screen.  No, to be fair, it was an amazing experience and I am hoping to have another try very soon.  Below is one of the pieces of fabric produced by a member of the group.  It has to be 'batched' and washed yet so it will be interesting to see what it looks like after that.  Pretty different I imagine.

We had pre-prepared 6 screens and I somehow managed to get through most of the morning before I realised that I should have taken some photographs.  It was too late by then as the fabric that had been done was rolled up in plastic sheeting 'batching'.

We also prepared some flour resist pieces of fabric and used the leftover thickened Procion dye to colour them.  Hopefully next month some of the pieces will be brought along to show off.

On another note, one of our members had a nasty fall a while back and, whilst she has been recuperating, she has produced a rather wonderful piece of work from all the bits and pieces she had accummulated over the years.

More Flour Resist

Had a third try at this method and have had a bit better success with the thickened dye paste.  I also tried using plain flour as well as gram flour for the resist paste.  Not a lot of difference really.

These photographs are of the same piece of fabric, as it would not fit completely on the scanner glass.

I used various colours of Procion dye:-

    - Turquoise
    - Emerald Green
    - Golden Yellow
    - Black
   -  Fire Engine Red

Some of it was just the remains of the thickened dye left in my measuring jug after decanting it into plastic bottles ready for the breakdown printing session on Wednesday.





There appears to be some lovely bits of pattern here and there, with no particular reason for them.  I particularly like the parallel lines and their interaction with the crackling.

I used a wooden skewer to mark into the dry flour paste.  I also scrunched the fabric up quite a lot after it had dried, and between applying each layer of colour.

Screens for Breakdown Printing

I have managed to prepare two screens ready for Wednesday ...

This is the first one, which is A4 in size, has various items stuck into the thickened dye paste and is now slowly drying.  The thickened dye paste is black and I am hoping it will give some other lovely variations in colour once it mixes with the thickened dye paste used for printing onto fabric.

I have used the drip and run method on the smaller square screen in three colours: black, emerald and golden yellow.

Gram Flour Resist

Example 1

Earlier this week I got round to mixing up some Procion dye powder with Salt and Soda solution to make a colouring medium to add to the gram flour paste resist pieces I have been trialing ready for our workshop on 30 September.

I used two colours - 'Antique Gold' and 'Brown Rose' - and applied it with a 1" foam brush.

You can see the 'Before' and 'After' results above and below.  The darker colouring is the acrylic paint I had applied earlier which I was not happy with.  The dye does seem to work much better, but I am also going to make a couple more pieces using dye thickened with Manutex to see if it gives a better outcome.

Example 2