A Good Day to Dye

As promised, here are some results from my deconstructed screen printing.  I have only two screens (but I'll have more soon!), so this is the result of several days of dyeing.


 Thanks to the magic of photoshop, this has more contrast in the photo than the actual fabric.

 This is one of the first ones that I really like.  I discovered that using slightly thinner dye paste to make the print allowed more of the dye to dissolve onto the fabric.

 This one is pretty meh -- it has a bit more contrast in real life than here, but it's kind of nice texturally.

The background on this looks blue on my monitor, but it's not.  It's really white.  I love the dots.  

And this one looks kinda pinkish.  But it's not.  The colors on this are pretty soft.  I think I need to use more dye in the paste.

I really like this technique -- it's highly addictive.  If the weather would cooperate and warm up, I might get to do more.  I did do the last two inside, but I made a mess of the kitchen and cleaning it up and then cooking dinner wasn't a lot of fun.  So I think I'll try to do this outside (my neighbors probably love the craft table that is set up on the front porch...).  

A Bad Day to Dye...

 I have always wanted to play with screen printing and thickened dyes.  But I didn't have any screens.

But this month, on the ...Fire blog, Beth posted a wonderful tutorial on deconstructed screen printing.  And one of the rules is that we have to try each month's technique.  So I put my DH to work making frames for my screens.

Of course, he wanted to be fancy and make them with hinges (?!) and stuff, but I told him that I wanted them now.  Not later.  So skip the fancy stuff.

 And he complied.  He made two very nice frames and I attached the screen mesh and taped them up.  We had time to make only two, but next weekend, we'll have to make some more.


 I wrapped my portable ironing board in plastic (BTW, Beth's wonderful tutorial is here) and put down a catch cloth, then arranged a bunch of "stuff" on top.  I placed the screen on top of the "stuff" and added the thickened dyes.

 This is a photo of the second screen.  Gorgeous, no?  For some reason I didn't get a pic of the first one.  It was gorgeous as well.  I let them dry overnight (no, I didn't really sleep much... but I had some snow dyes going as well).

 This morning, I got up and got my stuff out of the fridge so it could come up to room temp.  I ran some errands, then got ready to print!

And made a mess.  The snow dyes were so awful, I can't bear to show them (one is happily sitting in a bath of blue dye as I type.  I'm not sure what to do with the other).  My lovely dyed silk screens turned to mud on the fabric.  Bleah!  This is the print from the first screen.

 So I got out some of the rubber bands that I save from the asparagus for shibori-dyeing and put them on the drop cloth, placed the screen on top and put on some more thickened dye.  I set both screens in front of a fan and took my coffee into another room to sulk.

After the screens were dry, I got out the print paste and thinned some with hot water.

I put the fabric on the soft surface and tried again.

And it worked!   I got lovely prints from my new screens!

Apparently my paste was too thick and couldn't push the dye through onto the fabric!  I am happy-dancing all over the place.  They're not perfect and I have to wait for them to batch to see what they're going to finish as, but they're much better.  So I supposed I won't be sleeping much tonight either.  And if I seem a little distracted at work tomorrow....well...