Deconstructed screen printing - the results!

Our experiments with deconstructed screen printing and breakdown printing ended up spreading out over several sessions, as people came and went, and even gave us some homework! Nola still has a screen to print, so there'll be photos from that one soon, too.

Some of the information we had suggested that the first print from the screen might be a bit ordinary, as it takes time to break down the medium on the screen, so Nola did her first pull onto a piece of scrap fabric. The results were much better and more intense than expected.

These are later prints from the same screen, by Nola and Helen. We found it amazing to see how long there continues to be texture on the screen, and how much colour variation is possible by varying the colour of the printing medium, or using clear medium. By the time Nola was printing the third sample above, the dye paint was drying quickly on the screen in the heat, so less of the pattern was being printed.

This third one was later over dyed in the waste bucket from the second printing session. We were rinsing tools and screens in a single bucket of water, which resulted in a fairly strong dye solution at the end. The first time we did this, the dye bucket was, unsurprisingly, brown, but we had good results dyeing a mixture of cloths. As these fabrics hadn't been prepared with soda ash, we added soda ash to the bucket, with good results. The second time we did this, the prepared turquoise dye paint was becoming stringy from the heat, so we tipped it into the waste bucket. The resulting bucket gave us a good turquoise dye solution. Here's the third one after dyeing:

I think the message here is that the most unprepossessing prints can look much better, if you persevere with them!

Nola hates to waste dye so she spritzed the dry screen with water and printed again.

By this stage, we really only had magenta dye paint left, on the screen and to print with. A lot of texture still printed on the fabric, though, and by the end of printing, there was little left on the screen to be rinsed away. By itself, this is nothing to get excited about but, overprinted, it could be quite something.

Here's another series of screens Nola and Helen printed:

This is the primary set of prints.

Again, the dye paint began drying in the screen quickly, because of the temperature, so little of the dye was being released in later prints.

Here is the same piece of fabric, overprinted with another screen in a later session. It looks a lot more interesting!

Once again, the dry screen was spritzed with water and printed onto cream fabric. The water tends to make the dye paint very runny, so it's more like guided dyeing than printing, but echoes of the original printing remain.

Tricia's printing was rather less successful. She used borrowed soda ash, and it seems not to have been as effective as the soda ash the others used. Her prints were intensely coloured like Nola and Bev's, and were batched under the same sort of conditions by the same method, but a lot more colour washed out at the end. None of us used Synthrapol in the rinsing stage.

This is Tricia's first set of prints. As you can see, the dye washed out badly and she lost all her lovely texture. It's so frustrating, because she had some absolutely fabulous patterns and colour combinations after printing!

This is the best of her prints. And to add insult to injury, here is Nola's end print from her screen once she'd finished, onto fabric she'd dyed turquoise in the second session waste bucket.

The remaining patterns from the spritzed screen have actually come out clearer in these prints than the original printing. I guess that reminds us that dyeing always has that surprise factor, and not all the surprises are good!

Bev's prints had no such trouble. She produced lovely complex patterns from her screen.

These prints were done on a very soft, semi-sheer fabric. They'll look fantastic mounted against a backing and stitched.

These prints were done on cotton cloth, like Nola and Tricia's. I like the way she's moved away from the side-by-side structure that we automatically tend to do.

These prints exhausted the screen, with very little dye paint left to wash out. Bev was working on a cooler day than the earlier sessions, and she had less trouble with the screen drying prematurely. Drying screens aren't a huge problem, since the dye in the screens can be released with more of the thickener or, if the screen is almost exhausted,by spritzing with water, but it can be frustrating when you have a wonderful pattern happening!

We haven't seen the results from Maz's screen yet, and Nola has another screen to print. I think we all found it a very interesting process, and something some of us will probably incorporate into our creative practice. We particularly liked the way it produces a whole series of same-but-different images, with wonderful texture and depth.

Double the fun!

The Fibrecircle girls have been busy creating lately, both in the group and elsewhere. Our first October meeting was crammed full of creative energy and two different activities.
Tricia brought show and tell from the dyeing workshop she did at Virginia Farm Woolworks last weekend. She had some fantastic cotton squares, which she thinks will be perfect for a quilt. They really are a short primer of ways to tie fabric for Shibori dyeing.

1. fabric wrapped around a CD
2. twisted from edges with object in middle
3. bobby pins strategically placed
4. twisted in circular motion from the centre, keeping it flat
5. wrapped around another CD, corners fan-folded
6. fan-folded from corners, then bobby pinned and tied in the centre

7. concertina fold and clamped between tongue depressors
8. marbles tied with string
9. stones tied with string
10. scrunched up and tied
11. stitching with tied corners
12. clouding - pole-wrapped and tied 

13. Tied with string in clusters
14. concertina one way and then the other, then tied
15. Large piece showing clouding
16. Pole-wrapped diagonally
17. wrapped length of plastic chain
18. pole-wrapped, scrunched and pushed along the pole

Maz brought along samples from her week-long workshop with Marie-Therese Wisniowski at Fibre Arts and Hunters Hill last week. Marie Therese was teaching a method of transfer printing she calls Multisperse Dye Sublimation. The result is visually complex art textile pieces on man-made fabrics. Maz's samples show some of the possibilities of the technique.

1. Sample of the transfer printing, repeat of the print, light colours first
2. as above
3. multiple layers on delustered satin, using plant material as resist
4. colour sample on synthetic chiffon
5. sample on synthetic lace
6. two pieces – one on ordinary satin – Maz wasn’t happy but Marie-Therese suggested printing again onto organza as an overlay

7. reverse layering – dark to light – on delustered satin
8. Printed using plant materials, moving the plants with each colour to create shadows
9. printing without laying down a background colour first, and moving the objects to create shadows
10. multiple print – paper stencils, some reversed, and line drawing on transfer paper
11. postcard size pieces using different techniques she’d learnt

During the week, Maz won a raffle, and this was the prize – a large piece of printed silk fabric by Els van Baarle.  This is just a section of the fabric, as it's way too big to take the whole.

Isn't it just gorgeous? We all wanted to sneak it into our bags! Helen brought along two bags she’d made since our last time together. This first one uses fabric that we printed last month. She cut the fabrics into strips and wove them together into a piece of fabric. She also made her own braid by stitching over yarn on the machine, and used it to embellish the front.

The other bag used a piece of monoprinted fabric, embellished with appliqué, stitching and beads.

It was also time for the unveiling of our latest challenge works, on the theme, Let’s Go Geometric. Maz’s unfinished Geometric piece is worked on rug canvas with embroidery threads. She’s not sure where it will go next, perhaps a book cover.

Nola’s Geometric piece was also unfinished, but is almost there. She’s making a dice pot for gaming, using fabric she painted earlier and then block printed a couple of weeks ago.

This is the lid, which needs to have a rim added.

These are the sides of the pot, individually stamped with hand-carved stamp motifs.

Bev’s Geometric is also unfinished. It’s inspired by the windows of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, and is made from snippets of fabric trapped between layers of silk organza. You can see her sketchbook with sketches for the work, along with the piece itself. 

Helen is the only one to finish her challenge (no surprises there!). But she surprised us by producing two challenges. The first one is this notebook cover from embroidered rug canvas.

Here's the whole cover.

But she said that she thought we would all expect her to make her challenge from rug canvas, and that wouldn‘t be a challenge, so she decided to do another one. The second one is a concertina book, with pockets containing different geometric patterns.

The side with the pockets..

The other side...

Then it was time to start work.

Carol wasn’t participating in the activities this time, so she was busy preparing craft for her Joeys Scout group. She was making flowers from egg cartons, as samples for the kids to follow.

Our first activity was to prepare screens for some deconstructed screen printing/breakdown printing. In this method, printing screens are used to create a series of similar-bur different prints, unlike traditional serigraphy (screen printing), which aims to produce identical images over multiple prints. Basically, thickened dye is added to the screens in a pattern, and allowed to dry thoroughly. When the screens are printed with the thickening agent or some more thickened dyes, the dry material is slowly softened and dissolved from the screen. Thicker areas of dye paint take longer to break down and act as a resist. The result is usually complex layers of colour.
Before everyone arrived, Nola had prepared some Drimarene K dyes, mixed with urea and DR33, a thickening agent. We were using several different methods to put colour onto the screens. This screen was laid over a texture plate and several pieces of bubble wrap, and printed with a squeegee in the usual screen printing method. The texture of the materials underneath was reproduced on the screen and allowed to dry.

This screen was painted from the back in several layers. The first layer was a wash of turquoise, from when the dye paints were made up. It was allowed to dry overnight, and then further dye paint was added in different thicknesses, using a sponge brush. The thicker areas were imprinted with pieces of bubble wrap and texture plates, which were left on the surface while the screen dried. Some puddles of dye paint were drawn out into spikes with a comb, and small black lines were added with a syringe.

This screen was built up during the morning, by painting on the back. It had dye paint applied thickly and then two pieces of string were laid down in a random pattern, then a small piece of  bubble wrap, a piece of road guard plastic and more bubble wrap. This screen took a long time to dry, because the bubble wrap tended to trap the moisture.

We’ll show you the printing results after our next meeting!
The second activity was laminating fabric. This process transfers an image from newsprint or similar lightweight paper onto a layer of sheer synthetic fabric, using gel medium. First, the image was laid down on the back cloth, and then the organza or similar fabric was taped firmly down on top. Gel medium was added to the surface, fairly thickly but without soaking the paper. The layers were set outside to dry.

Once they are thoroughly dry, they need to be heat set with an iron for about 10 minutes. Then the fabric is placed in a bucket of warm water for about twenty minutes, to soften the paper. The paper is removed by scrubbing with the fingers and then with a dish scourer, leaving the image behind. Some paper residue usually remains, so the images are usually slightly cloudy and mysterious. They show up well overlaid over strongly toned fabric. We’ll show you the results of that next time, too!

September block printing

Our September meetings were much smaller, since several members couldn't attend. The remnants decided to keep on block printing for a little longer.

Nola carved these stamps from large erasers. The flower stamp is based on a sketch she made at an exhibition called "The Art of Islam", back in 2005. The cloud motif was a motif she sketched at an exhibition of Chinese art called "Celestial Silks" in 2004. Both exhibitions were held at the Art Gallery of NSW. So it really pays to keep those sketchbooks!

Here is a test print of the flower stamp, with a pair of stamps she made earlier this year.She talked about them on her blog here.

These are some of the stamps she made then.

She had these stamps out  because she planned to use them as part of her Let's Go Geometric challenge piece.She stamped these images on a piece of pre-painted quilter's muslin.

Tricia was also printing.  She laid down some colour with the roller and then added texture with a round cardboard reel.

The shapes on the left of photo above, and in the one below, were made by printing with toe separators.

These were from stamps that Tricia carved. She was very interested in making stamps that could be used to make a repeat pattern, so these were test prints.

Bev was also printing but no photos were taken. So we need photos, Bev!

Bev brought along a postcard in progress. She wove together strips of fabric, including some with hand prints from stamps. Then she began to stitch on the top. Can't wait to see where this goes!

End of August?

We can't imagine how it got to be August already!

Our second meeting in August was a block printing playday. Everyone but Carol decided to decorate fabric using our extensive collection of wooden print blocks and commercial & hand-made stamps.

Carol was busy doing some card weaving, with yarns she'd dyed with food colouring. Here are the yarns:

and here is the weaving:

I love the fresh colours you get with food dyes!

Everyone else was playing around with our combined wood blocks and stamps, using Permaset printing inks.  We used a variety of methods to put colour onto the blocks, and onto the fabric. One method of inking the blocks was to use a plain overhead transparency sheet (not the coated kind for ink jet printers) as the palette. You lay down some inks at the bottom and then roll them up the sheet a little at a time with the brayer to get a tacky surface, before rolling the brayer across the stamp. You get a good coating for the stamp this way, not too thick and blobby but not skimpy either. It's also quite economical on inks, and means that these fast-drying inks don't dry out too quickly. You can also use the brayer itself as a printing medium, once you've run it across the block surface, as a negative version of the block will be left in the remaining ink on the brayer.

 Another method was to use polystyrene trays as palettes, and coat the stamps with a sponge brush. This works well for smaller stamps but leaves brush marks on the larger blocks. This can give interesting effects, but sometimes it's not what you want. Sponge brushes are also very thirsty for ink, and you can waste a lot. You also need to be more careful that the inks don't dry in the brushes before you can wash them clean.

Here is a print from Helen using one of Nola's Indian wooden print blocks.

Helen stamped this one with gold metallic ink. It's very delicate.

Nola also tried stamping with the metallic ink, on a piece of painted cloth, but she also found it very muted.

The metallic ink would be good to over-stamp a coloured print using the same block, which would add gold highlights to the print.

Maz used two different stamps to make a striped design, but once it was dry, she felt it was too regular for what she wanted. So she stamped over the design with a third stamp.

She did the same with this piece, which was stamped with two blocks.

Maz also spent the first part of the day carving a stamp from a block of balsa. The top print here is her test print. She found the balsa tended to split very easily, which wasn't a problem for the kind of block she was carving, but would be very frustrating if you were trying to carve a specific design.

Tricia was also carving balsa. She was aiming to make a block that repeated.

The left print shows the results:

That worked out well! The second print is another stamp she carved previously, without thinking about repeat effects.  The third is one of Nola's print blocks. But blocks don't always have to line up neatly to create in interesting repeat pattern. When she deliberately off-set the prints, the repeat became stronger and more effective.

This is a print by Bev using one of Nola's wood blocks, in which she's working out the registration, to create an overall pattern. The block gives a great all over pattern and the registration (lining up the block elements for repeat prints) is not too difficult.

This is another of Bev's, using a large stamp that gives an interesting all over pattern if you get the registration right, as she has here.

Tricia was also interested in creating all-over patterns using registration. She continued using Nola's print block:

The colour variation comes from laying down two colours on the transparency sheet, without mixing them, and letting the brayer take up both colours on each pass.

 Here's the finished piece. Doesn't it look great?

This piece was made using a string stamp that Nola made a while ago. She glued string to cardboard using PVA glue and allowed it to try thoroughly. She completely coated the cardboard with PVA and mounted it on a wooden block. It wasn't designed as a repeat block, since the beginning and end of the string don't join if the block is printed side by side. But it gives a surprisingly good repeat effect over a piece of cloth painted with Setacolor paint.

Nola was also practising repeats with her newest print block, which has repeat points on the block edges. Although the repeat wasn't perfect, it worked out pretty well.

Tricia continued playing with repeats. Here's an all over-version of the first block on today's blog entry.

And here's the block Nola was using, printed onto chiffon. These print blocks look great stamped onto sheers.

Not all our printing involved us putting paint onto an object and pressing the object onto fabric. We had a pile of texture plates as well, which we printed onto fabric by laying the textured element underneath the fabric and rolling a paint-covered brayer over the top, to pick up the bumps. You can also add the colour to the plate and then lay the fabric on top, and rub with a brayer or spoon.

On this print, Bev used a block with a strong motif and, once it had dried, used a roller over a texture plate to give the motif a textured background. She felt the motifs on their own looked very stark on the cream background, and she likes to create layers and more complexity.

Here's the same motif with a different texture plate underneath.

Not all our printing was done with specialised stamps. This print was made using a piece of rubber non-slip or impact-absorbing mat, which you might buy from a hardware shop, as a texture plate. As you can see, it also gives an interesting all-over print.

Helen made this print as a monotype from her palette...

We all had a piece of cream homespun as a paint rag, because often paint rags give the best patterns. Here's Helen's:

Here's Bev's:

They are going to be very interesting by the time we finish our upcoming painting activities!

Nola was interested in stamping on fabric that already had marks on it. She had several pieces of fabric that had been drawn on with various media in a "graffiti" session. She stamped over the top of these marks using various stamps.

Then she added colour later, to fill in the background:

Another fabric had this star design in fabric crayon:

She added an all over pattern with a wood block

... and then added colour with a brayer.

This is a third graffiti fabric:

and then with colour added:

This piece was an earlier exercise in using resists when painting fabric. Nola cut 1 1/2in squares of freezer paper and ironed them to the cream fabric. Then she painted the fabric using different shades of blue and purple fabric paints, beginning with the lightest shade. As she painted, some of the squares lifted, and were removed, and the paint also bled underneath the squares, blurring most of the lines. As an exercise in resists, it was fairly ordinary, and the fabric ended up very dark and moody. It was also used to test a small area of foil transfer. In our stamping session, Nola stamped over it with window screen mesh and two small stamps, using Supercover White Permaset ink. The white Supercover is opaque, so it really lightened up the piece and gave it a lot more interest. Nola thinks it may be a journal cover one day soon.

Maz brought along her finished Forest piece. She had kept the felted piece whole and used it to make the cover of a book. The pages are handmade paper.

We also swapped postcards this time.
Here's Bev's postcard:

It has a stamped background, from one of our earlier fabric printing sessions, overlaid with a stitched bird. Simple but so effective!
Carol's postcard has tone on tone blue elements added and hand drawn spirals with a silver pen.

Helen's postcard snippets of yarn and fibre trapped under a sheer layer, and stitched. The leaves were lined with Sinamay, a stiffening often used for hats.

Maz's postcard was felted on the embellishing machine.

Nola's postcard was from an earlier playday, when we used paper serviettes to make small art pieces.

Tricia also brought along her first experiments in free motion stitching, from a recent workshop.

This is a clever technique for the drawing challenged!

In September, we plan to do more block printing...