Print, Stitch, Go! with Leah Higgins

The last of the workshops I had booked for this year was Print, Stitch, Go! at Leah Higgin's Urban Studio North. 

Leah suggested we choose 2 colours and work with a dark, medium and light version of each.  I chose Rust Brown and Black.  The Kemtex Black is quite blue.  I worked with Rust Brown last time I was at Leah's and didn't want my fabrics to be as dark this time.  Leah had mixed the dye powder with print paste already.  She suggested I then mixed my dark pot of black as 25% colour with 75% print paste, and the dark pot of rust brown as 50% colour with 50% print paste.  The medium is mixed as 1 part dark to 4 parts print paste, and the light is 1 part medium to 4 parts print paste.

We spent most of the first two days screen printing either with thermofax screens (as below) or with various methods of screen printing.

I used paper dots and bits of paper doily on my screens when I overprinted the fabric above.  I don't like the doily print but the fabrics were being made to cut up so not to worry!

It looked very dark when wet but when it was washed the next day it was much paler.

I printed this fabric with one of Leah's thermofax screens.

Then I made a masking tape screen and overprinted.

This was taken whilst it was still wet.

We only had time to make one breakdown screen and as I loved the arches fabric I made last time I decided I would use that technique.  As my theme for my fabrics was Venice (what a surprise!) I thought this would be sufficiently architectural.

I love what happens when you print it.

I used up the screen on another piece of fabric and then overprinted.

I also tried putting a commercial stencil under my screen and printed with that.

Here's a different stencil printed with the dark colours.  I had mostly been using medium and light on the other fabrics.

I also printed with my own thermofax screens.

Lastly on the second day we exchange dyed fat quarters in plastic bags to match our printed fabrics.  I had 8 pieces so I dyed six of them using the half rust and quarter black colours.

I used half strength magenta with a 'smidge' of black and half strength turquoise with a 'smidge' of black to get some accent colours.

On the middle day of the 5 day workshop we washed out all our fabrics and changed the studio over from a wet space to a dry space.  Then we talked about what we were going to do with our fabrics.

But that's another post!

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice