Back to thickened dye

Printing with thickened dye is something that's really interesting me at present. I think it has a lot of potential for me to combine my love of more formal printmaking with my need to work in textiles, rather than printing on paper. I love the way the hand of the fabric is still so soft, and I love the way you can  build up layers of colour in a fairly controlled way.

Well, that's the theory. My latest screen printing play day with Maz was a lot of fun but none of the results are likely to set the world on fire. I did find it instructive, though, which is the point of the exercise.

My first prints were on paper. OK, I know I just said I prefer fabric but remember that I'm also trying to include some tree prints for my Fibrecircle tree journal every time I do anything. I used the screen I created with wax resist back here and added some tree cutouts I've made from cartridge paper.

The results were a bit dubious, because the background was so busy that the tree silhouette tended to get lost. (The tree shape is also rather weird!)

I printed eight of these, thinking I could do different things with them, so I set a couple aside and put the rest in the to-do pile.

While I was doing paper, I tried a print with my oldest screen. It's was originally made by cutting jagged paper strips with scissors but I liked it so much I gave it a coat of resist so it's actually the reverse of the original screen.

It's quite interesting and I like it, though I have no idea what use it might be!

I used the same green on two samples I printed on the same day , the yellow one and the pale orange one.

Not terribly exciting but it's another layer. More to come...

Then I printed a calico bag that I dyed back in 2013. It was a bit boring...

 ... so I decided to add some printing. The first side was OK, though not exciting...

...but the second side wasn't much good, because the screen dried out a bit much between prints. I always forget it does that.

I think it might be quite interesting with some more layers added. We'll see.

Then I took some quilters' muslin fat quarters that I dyed with Maz last time. They were ones I thought were the least interesting. This one was printed with the oldest screen.

It's OK - quite interesting.

These two were printed with the newest screen. The first is OK but needs more to happen to it.

 This one is rather nice - I do like it.

 

As printing days go, I've had better results but it was fun anyway!