screen printing

This is work on a whole bigger scale than making atc's:-). I did not only screen print on small pieces of fabric, but also on a big piece of felt which I had bought years ago with the intention of making a coat. I knew that I wanted to decorate the fabric first, but till a couple of weeks ago I had no clue how or with what design. Till I made the templates with the fern leaves and the fiddle heads. I cut out the pattern and screen printed the different leaves and fiddle heads on it before I stitched the parts together.

The coat will probably be not warm enough for winter, but is great for autumn and spring.

atc's

Last week I mainly worked on atc's. Those little things can become addictive :-)). I have signed up for the following swaps at ATC's for All:
green - I used fabric, woven paper, punchinella and felt:
winter - I used paper, fabric, lutrador, buttons, felt, paint, batting, punchinella:

doors - a photo swap. The doors are in Almere, Amsterdam and Minnesota:

postage due - collaged papers and stamps:

autumn trees

Autumn trees is the theme of one of the ATC for all swaps I am participating in. I made these atc's using gift paper printed with fall leaves on which I painted trees using black paint. A little green was added to finish it. One swap completed, 5 other ones still to do :-)

ferns

The last couple of days I continued working on my ferns fabric. The positions of the leaves and sprouts is so close together that I had to wait every time in between for the paint to dry. On this picture you can see the whole piece of fabric (32"x60"):
And on this one you can see a detail of it:

I intend to quilt the background with black thread and out line the shapes of the leaves and sprouts. All templates were made from transparency sheets. Setacolor white opaque and pearl simmer were used as paints. In the background the discharged leaves are still very subtle visible.

screen printing

One way of doing screen prints is to use discharge paste or thiox in stead of paint/dye. On this black piece of fabric (H200 from Whaley) I started with discharge paste. After ironing it, the fern leave only showed up as a pale ghost. I had no idea how old my discharge paste was, so I screen printed again using fresh made thiox paste. Well, the result was the same. This fabric discharges to white using bleach, but it gives very little result with discharge paste or thiox.

I had to change which material to use, cause I still wanted to work with this fabric. This time I used Setacolor white opaque and a white shimmer and again the same fern leaves:

This time no ghost, but a visible print :-). At the moment it looks a bit empty, but more fern leaves will be added. The total size of this piece of fabric is 32"x60".

art journal

My friend Kelly and I have given ourselves a challenge of making two pages a month for an art journal. Her theme is faces, my theme is seed pods. The rule we have with this challenge is that there are no rules! Any material, any technique is allowed. For my first page I used poppy seed pods as inspiration. I had printed these on fabric, but I also made a print in a sketchbook size roughly 8,5"x11". The screen print was a starting point.
Today I added black dots with a brush pen. Point learned: use a normal pen to create dots, with a brush pen, you get lines as well as dots :-). The dots/lines gave me the opportunity to add more details to the seed pods. With the screen print you only see the silhouettes.
Next step was to create a background. For this I used water color. Recently I have bought a pocket field sketch box. It contains 12 assorted half pan colors and a small water brush. And this little cute box is only 4,5"x3,5". This is so much fun to work with. I have never done water colors before, but making this page I had lots of fun. This is the result:

and more screen printing

This week I continued screen printing. This - a bit boring - red handdyed piece of cotton got cheered up by screen printing daisies using different color combination. The daisy was cut out of freezer paper. I used different Setacolors on it, some with shimmer, some transparent. The fabric is half a yard, full width.
This purple/pink sunprint got a layer of 3 different fern leaves. Each leave pattern was cut out of a transparency sheet with an Exacto knife. The sheets were taped to the screens with wide cellotape. The leaves look similar, but are slightly different. This fq was screen printed in different layers. For each layer I used different color combinations of Setacolor transparent paints.

This same design I have used on a black H200 fabric as well. This time with discharge paste instead of paint. I am guessing that my discharge paste was too old because the design showed up only very pale. Almost like a ghost :-). I will mix some fresh thiox and see how the results are than. Expect more pictures in a couple of days.

break down printing and bleaching/over dyeing

Yesterday I taught a workshop break down printing and bleaching/over dyeing. In the morning we prepared the screens for the break down printing and in the afternoon we clamped/wrapped fabric before it went into a bleach bath. After rinsing and anti chlor treatment the bundles of fabric were dyed with procion dyes. Next weekend the 2nd part of the break down printing - the actual printing - will be done. I forgot to take pictures, but luckily there are pictures on the blogs of Corinne, Mia, Hannie en Suze. Check back later, if the pictures are not yet uploaded. If you are interested in this workshop and if you are able to travel to Almere, let me know maybe we can plan something.

screen printing

Screen printing is a technique I have played with before, but in spite of this I signed up for a class by Lyric Kinard with QU. My main reason for this is that it forces me to create some new prints and there will always be a new trick to learn :-). For this print I started with tearing news paper strips which I placed on top of a multi colored piece of fabric.

On these strips I placed my screen and pulled Setacolor transparant paint with a squeegee. I used a blue and green shimmer for this. The fabric was big enough to reposition the screen several times. With the third print two strips of paper had let go and I placed them on the screen again. Only upside down!! I saw this when I had made a fourth print with it. You can see it in the top row. Instead of a non printed strip, there are two printed strips next to each other. When I saw this, I cursed. Did I ruin a pretty fabric??

Fortunately not! When I turned the fabric around I saw that the printing had seeped through to the other side of the fabric. Luckily the two paper strips which were positioned wrong did not have enough paint on them so that had not penetrated through.

The fabric was saved and I could continue working with it. I added several prints using torn paper circles in circles. I don't know yet how I will be using this piece of fabric, but I love it!

atc's

After tackling that big quilt, it was time for some small work :-)) These 4 atc's I made using collaged papers and metal flake. Three of them are for a swap on ATC's for All, one is available for swapping.