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.

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.