Process

After my whirlwind printing frenzy, I shipped out the fat quarters to my swap partners and now I can take a breath!

All the printing was done with dyes thickened with sodium alginate (ground up kelp).

Golden Yellow and Cerulean Blue (Dharma’s dye names)

I described the Mod Podge screen in a previous post, but thought I’d put these photos up again.

One time around with Fire Red. It’s very pinkish.

Second layer with Golden Yellow and the same screen. It looks better after it was heat set and laundered, but I didn’t get a photo of it.

This screen was prepared with strips of freezer paper pressed onto it. As hard as I tried to seal all the edges, there were still places that I knew would bleed.

And they did. But, in my opinion, that’s part of the beauty of hand printing and I like it! I had to do some mixing to get a shade of red I was happy with.

This is where it got really fantastically fun! Enter Kerr Grabowski and her deconstructed screen printing.

Kerr Grabowski Deconstructed Screen Printing

So, I gathered up some stuff from around the house.

A blank screen with the dye on the side before spreading it.

Here, you can see the screen after it’s dried and the objects were removed. Beside it is the first ‘pull’ with a paste made from sodium alginate and water. The paste wets and releases the dye onto the fabric.

After a few pulls with only the paste, the image faded, so I began adding more dye.

I covered four fat quarters with the same screen before the dried dye was finally gone and there was no texture left on the screen.

This one got some layered printing with the same screen and more dye. My personal favorite. This process is so serendipitous!

This one was made by squeezing thickened Dark Brown dye from a plastic bottle.

After it dried, I used Golden Yellow to make the print. Not very much of the brown dye was released, but you can see it a little. It has potential.

Last one! This piece was dyed a few months ago, using soy wax as a resist.

This is the same piece. I stamped it with a different shape and over dyed it with Scarlet, which is a more yellow based red than the Fire Red. I love the colors!

If it hadn’t been for this hand printed fabric swap, I may not have explored some of these techniques, so I’m happy as a clam that I signed up. There is a Flickr group, if you’d like to see all the cool things the others have been printing. I really hope my swap partners like their fabric!  I sent four of these pieces out. Any guesses which ones?

Next on the list are two lap size quilts I’m making for Christmas gifts.  They’re designed in my head, so at least that much is done. I really want to dye all the fabric for one of them, so I’d better get moving!