Thursday, September 07, 2006

silk purse

Here is the sow's ear.

I had dyed some fabric, which came out great except for the green blobs which mysteriously appeared. I seem to have a knack for these things, don't I? So, when I spent the afternoon on the deck yesterday screening with thickened dyes, these were the perfect foils for my experiments. I ripped the fabric into pieces and went to work. Above, the original.

The first pass was with thickened dyes which had dried in the screen. Notice how the green blobs seem to recede in the face of the overprinting. Better? Well, certainly not worse.

first-pass---no-discharge

This is what I call "impromptu screen printing because once you let the dye dry in the screen, you can print on a moment's notice. Kerr Grabowski, who introduced me to the process, calls it 'deconstructed screen printing' --and Leslie Morgan & Claire Benn call a similar process "breakdown printing."

On the second pass, more of the dye came out and I think it is gets yummier and more interesting than the first time 'round.

You can't even see the green blobs. Of course,if you are a conservative person, you might not be happy with the impromptu, unpredictable result. You don't have a lot of control over what happens.

The third time around, I threw some thiox into the mix to see what would happen. This is what happened.

The last time around, I used only discharge past to go through the screen and the color of the fabric changed completely.

Ok, so now you see it all. (Of course, I have spent the last hour trying to upload one of the pictures and getting very frustrated with Blogger -- but it's done). An interesting exercise, from which I learned what I should do differently next time around. If I can remember - LOL.

BTW - the shoulder is better today -- thanks to Missy for advice and to all of you for your empathetic responses. The fingers are back to normal, too. Or what passes for normal around here. Now I need to address myself to some paperwork and the requisite 9:pm cup of tea and the last two biscotti.

3 comments:

Lin said...

Rayna -- glad your shoulder is better! This fabric is yummy and fabulous! LOVE the process! And the addition you used to cover the green made the fabric all the more spectacular!

Judy said...

What fun!!!! I hope we're going to do all of the above in our Campbell classes!
Glad your shoulder is better...and your little fingers too. We want you in tip top shape when you come south Girly Girl!
xo

Liz Plummer said...

Rayna, pardon my dumbness, but is this the same fabric that you are overprinting each time? (ie. are you adding more dye on top of the one in each previous photo or is it a separate piece of cloth each time?). Either way, the results are stunning!

soup weather in June and a little more

DISCLAIMER: Blogger is giving me grief tonight, which you will see by the varying sizes of the type. Ye p, soup weather and it's ...