Playing with dyes

Last Friday I spent the day at the wonderful studio belonging to Ineke Berlyn.  Ineke showed us how to start with 2 colours of procion dye thickened with Manutex and how mixing these two colours produced a series of other colours.

Then she let us loose on our fabric.  I used calico from Ikea.

I started with Golden Yellow and Cerise.

I did a second series of colours making up a blue/grey and yellowy orange.

On the third cloth I used colours from both colour ranges.  It's a bit messy but will be useful for cutting small bits for embellishments.

I have since washed the cloths that I made.  On the edge of the fabric I had painted each colour so before I washed the cloths I cut those swatches in half to see if there was any difference in colour after the cloth was washed.

The strip on the left is the one that wasn't washed.  On the whole the colours didn't wash out although the original Cerise and Golden Yellow has washed out a bit.  I'm quite glad really as these colours were rather dominant.

In this strip there's hardly any colour difference.

So next time we get together at Ineke's studio I am hoping to make one of these painted fabrics into a textile book.  I am particularly taken with the book that Ineke features in this blog post.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Make It Personal Session 3

On Thursday and Friday I was at The Bramble Patch again doing the third session of Hilary Beattie's class: Make It Personal.

Here are details of Session 1 and Session 2 part 2 and part 1.

This session we concentrated on screen printing.

Firstly we used masking tape to make patterns on the underside of the screen.

I printed through the screen with thickened dye onto white cotton lawn. Later I overdyed the fabric.

I carefully peeled the masking tape off the screen and stuck it into my sketchbook.

And cleaned the screen into my sketchbook.

The next exercise was to cut or tear patterns into paper - I used scrapbook paper which was slightly thicker and lasted longer.

The yellow 'pinwheels' in the background were applied by putting the dye through the screen which had the cut-out on the back.

At the end of Thursday we put a thick layer of dye onto the back of our screens and left them to dry overnight.

I didn't put my dye on particularly thickly so when we reactivated the screen on Friday morning I didn't get many prints off it.  The two prints on the left are on cotton lawn and the one on the right is on Deli paper.

I cut a stencil of my shape and painted white acrylic fabric paint through it.

This is onto paper.

And this is on the backing paper that was on the top of my table and soaking up all the dye and pattern all day.

We also tried putting inktense block colour onto the screen using stencils to get the pattern and discharging that with plain thickened manutex.  The piece on the right was where I drew directly onto the fabric.

I also played in my sketchbooks.

I don't enjoy working in the A3 sketchbook so took this one with me as well.

We used thermofax screens.  I used pearl paint through a screen on this page.

And then added dye ink over the top.

Here's a close up.

This is two different screens using acrylic paint.

And dye ink painted over.

This page was done with thickened dye.

The two days sped past.  Hilary is very generous in sharing her knowledge and we have great fun with her.  On Friday a film crew were present filming Hilary for JustHands-On TV and at one point the camera was pointing at me working.  Will I make the cut or be lying on the cutting room floor - or whatever the digital equivalent is?!?  I'll let you know.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

What If?

So what if I tried using fabric paints and fabric with the shaving foam technique?

That's what I thought as I was using the technique with distress reinkers the other day.

So I tried it.  I used Pebeo Setacolor Fabric paints, my can of really cheap shaving cream and some unwashed white cotton fabric.  And here's what happened.  Lots of photos for you!

Here is the shaving foam with the fabric paint dropped on to it.

I swirled the paints with a stick.

Put the fabric on top of the shaving cream and patted it down gently and pulled up the fabric.

I scraped the shaving foam off the fabric and discovered this!

This was how the shaving foam looked after taking that first print.

So I took another one with a new piece of fabric

Which looked like this.

I added some Magenta and stirred it in.

Took the fabric print.

And scraped off the foam to discover this.

Using Deli paper I took another print off the shaving foam.

And scraped off the foam to find this.

By this time the foam was really a bit yucky so I added some orange which wasn't necessarily a good idea but if you keep asking what if? this is what you get!

 I didn't like what I got and obviously didn't take a photo!

I washed it all away and started again.  This blue is called Indigo on the bottle!

Took the print

And got this

Then I thought .... what if I use a stencil so I put the stencil on the shaving foam and pressed the not nice orange fabric on top and got this.

However when I scraped off the foam I got this shadowy image instead.

I took another print from foam

And this was the result

And then with cartidge paper I took prints through the stencil

It looked like this after scraping off the foam.

And here's another one

I haven't quite decided what do with the fabric and papers but I really enjoyed the process.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice