Dreaming Spirals

Well, today is the last day of January so I will post photos for the Take it Further Challenge.  I have had a fluey bug over the last week and am feeling rather lethargic and sinusy …

I made various interpretations of footprints in clay during my screenprinting sessions.  I may well incorporate one or all of them into a mud/river series, add or subtract more layers using discharge, overdyeing, soy wax (which I haven’t experimented with yet) but at the moment this is where I am with it….

To read how I printed the various pieces of cloth, please see the rest of my blog posts for this month.

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Here are some of the screens I burned using the Gocco machine.   They are all about 5×7 inches roughly in size.     I used thermofax film which I bought from Guenther in Germany.

The resulting prints were a bit blurry overall - I think I need to be less heavy-handed with the dye paste and also have it a bit thicker.  I think the sodium alginate was a bit old because it didn’t thicken as much as I hoped, even adding all the rest of my supplies.    I have also got some Golden screenprinting medium so I’m going to try it with Golden acrylics sometime on top of some of the other printing and dyeing I’ve done.   I really take the point about not having the photos too black because it really soaks through.  Here were some of the photos I used for them, made into a Picasa collage:

Here are some of the resulting fabrics:

This is a print of some reeds which I hope to incorporate into a ‘muddy river’ theme.

The good thing about these screens is that you can do long repeating horizontal images, great for trees and reeds!

This is some of the footprints screen which I overprinted in two colours slightly offset.   (This is the one I saw faces in, earlier in the week).  Plus a bit of the ‘letter’ fabric.

This is a piece of fabric with lots of different prints on.  I found it difficult to keep the screen from dripping from one to the next - next time I will make a wider well with tape.

These are prints of the mud photo which I showed in my deliberations over optimum images for Thermofax screens.

I think this one is the most disappointing.  It is a photo of a nasturtium leaf, which I made into a negative image so you just get the veins, but I made it a bit big for the screen and I think I need to take more of the black away.  Still, it’s all a learning curve! 

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I have a yukky cold at the moment so apologies for any lack of enthusiasm in this post!

I have Jane Dunnewold’s book Improvisational Screenprinting and the CD which she produced specifically about multicoloured interfacing printing.  With this method you paint interfacing with acrylic paint which acts as a resist and cut shapes into it.  You then tape this to the screen and you can then print in different colours at the same time. 

These are the stencils I used.  The first is a footprint for the TIF challenge, the second is based on a photograph of cracked mud in our local river and the third is based on a photograph of the muddy ridges at the sides of the river when the tide sucks the water out.

I cut out circles and wavy designs in this.

I sort of echoed the cracks in the cutouts for this one.

I cut out circles (for the tyres in the mud) and a sort of representation of a shopping trolley (plenty of these stuck in the mud too) in these…

These are the fabrics made from the first screen:

I overlapped the screens - this was quite dark when it was batching and I did wonder if the middle would be just one big blur of paint but it turned out okay.

Here is one of them, on cotton organdie - wonderful overlapped with other fabric….

The second screen came out really well - I like this green fabric I did with it:

This one is on cotton organdie and, again, will be most useful for layering because it is transparent.  It doesn’t come out well in photographs though - it is much deeper in colour than this.

And the last one with the mud/shopping trolley shapes (I think these might need outlining or something!

Here is one of the screens used and washed (they are stained but can be reused):

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I did several types of screen printing last week so I’m going to post pictures on successive days.  First is breakdown printing.

This is what I did on the first day with the following screens:

With this one I pressed various textural objects into it - a polystyrene plate which I had marked into a grid pattern with a pen, some corrugated cardboard, some plastic mesh.  I laid the objects underneath the screen, squeegeed thickened dye through, removed the plate which had already transferred its texture and left it to dry till the next day, when I removed the remaining objects. 

These are the resulting fabrics:

I painted the top left image with some blue dye afterwards.  With a couple of them, I also used an acetate footprint shape as a resist or a stamp as I was looking for footprint shapes for my TIF challenge piece (and have certainly got plenty now!).

Here is a detail. 

The next screen has bubble wrap and the aforementioned acetate shape pressed into the dye.

This is the fabric which resulted:

The next one has rubber bands stuck into the dye:

And the fabric:

And the last is my big screen on which I pressed wisteria leaves and an acetate sheet cut into the shape of a wisteria branch.  I actually traced this from a branch pressed against our bedroom window one morning.  (sorry for the blurry photo but it is the only one I have).

This is some of the fabric. 

I screened a gocco screen of a letter on to another piece (it is a bit blurry because the previous layer was wet … but I quite like it like that).

Ironically, it was the fabric I showed last week which I like best!  This was the dropcloth between the print board and the ‘proper’ fabric and wasn’t treated with soda ash, although some probably came through with the print paste, and to be safe I sprayed it afterwards with some spray soda which I found in the local pharmacy.

Finally for this section, this is a piece which I screened at the end using the acetate leaf shape as a resist (it is overdyed on to some blue fabric).

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…to this blog.   I can hardly believe I’ve been blogging for 3 years now… yes, since 2005.    I was going to post the link to my very first post, but it seems to be a bit disjointed - split into three!  First there is a photo of my Dreaming Spirals wallhanging, the namesake for this blog, then a link to the local stately home from where I derived the inspiration, then the proper introduction.  Here it is, if you want to go and look…

I’ve spent today rinsing and feeding fabric into the washing machine, and by and large it came out as I had hoped.  I haven’t sorted it out properly yet so I will devote the next few entries to telling you what I did, but here are some of my favourites so far….

This is on thin gauze-like fabric and it is darker than it looks here.  I will try and get better photos tomorrow - it has been dark and gloomy all day!

This is silk charmeuse which I dye painted.  A detail.

Some of the breakdown printing.  The footprints are for the TIF challenge. 

This is a gocco screen made from a photo of footprints in mud but I think they look like faces…. didn’t see this until they were all washed out. 

But that is enough of a teaser for now… more later!

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I mixed up far too much dye powder and am determined to use it all up this time, otherwise it will sit in my fridge for 6 months and then languish on a shelf in my workroom for 2 years where the last lot is.  So I have been screenprinting for 2 days and at least one more to go!  All the fabric is piled up between sheets of plastic batching so no finished photos yet, but here are some of the preparations.

The sodium alginate I had was a year or two old as well and I think it had lost its potency because I used twice as much as I expected to, to get it thick enough.  Even then, I don’t think it was thick enough for the gocco screens because they were a bit blurry, though effective nonetheless.   

Here are the screens I prepared on Tuesday for the deconstructed screen printing:

This has rubber bands stuck in the dye. 

This one has a mixture of textures stuck in it (some of them have been taken out).  Corrugated card, mesh and a polystyrene plate with a grid pattern scraped into it were a few of them. 

There was also one with bubble wrap and an acetate cutout of a footprint (progress towards the TIF challenge) in it, and one with leaves which came out too blurry to publish.  This photo is (if I remember right) the dropcloth fabric underneath the real thing produced by the latter, still wet - it is now at the bottom of the pile of batching fabrics!   I added the blue lines to cover up a bit of a mess…  It is touch and go whether this will end up okay because I’m not sure whether it is pure cotton … hence using it as a dropcloth. 

The following picture is a print I took of the dye left on the plastic sheet after I left the ‘rubber band’  screen on it between swipes of the squeegee.  It is on brown paper.

More pictures when the fabrics are batched and washed!…

One thing I think is worth noting here is that I’m not impressed with the transparent duct tape I bought in Wilkinsons and used to cover half of the screens. It is NOT waterproof … suffice to say that as soon as I finish this bout of printing I will be taking off all the tape and retaping them with the silver stuff…. Most of the transparent stuff has come off already:(

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Well, I said I was aiming to have an Etsy shop all set up by January 15th and it is January 15th today…. I have 20 items listed (and several more waiting to be added) so I’m feeling pleased with myself. I will have to set deadlines for everything… You can see a preview of some of them on the ‘Etsy Mini’ on my sidebar to the left or click here to see the whole thing.

For those of you who are wondering what on earth Etsy is, it is like a giant craft fair, or a sort of Ebay for handmade goods. It is based in the US and prices are in US dollars but you can pay by credit card through Paypal even if you don’t have a Paypal account. There are loads of UK sellers - I’m on the UK sellers street team. A list of UK sellers are here. I’m also on another street team which Marion from Artmixter kindly told me about - it is for Boomers, or over 40s! They have a blogring which you can click round from the link lower down the left sidebar (these sidebars are getting seriously crowded!!).

I have been doing lots more towards my screenprinting and have just taken photos but I’ll leave you in suspense till tomorrow for that… Today I have been preparing some screens for deconstructed screen printing.

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Thank you, Sandra and Maggie for nominating me for the bloggers Make My Day Award.  I am so flattered and pleased that you like me enough!  The award goes to blogs which you like reading and so I will attempt to pick out 10 from the long list of blogs I read.    Bloggers whose words and pictures brighten my day, make me think or inspire me.   I have left out a number of very popular blogs or ones which I have seen nominated more than once already such as Sharon’s, who I quote most weeks anyway(!) and Crazy Aunt Purl who makes me laugh…  here is the list. 

1. Sara Lechner’s blog, The Fabric of Meditation.  I love Sara’s work for her haunting and ethereal figures.
2. Dijanne’s blog, The Musings of A Textile Itinerant for her colourful dyed fabric and descriptions of her travels and design processes.  And I love her work.
3. Rayna’s blog, Studio 78 Notes for her inspirational work and descriptions of her workshops.  And the recipes and food pictures!
4. Frances’ blog, Island Threads for her lovely work and descriptions of life in the Hebrides.
5. June and Jer’s blog, Southeastmain, for their wonderful photos each day of their home city and their travels, and June’s work.
6. Lisa’s blog, New Work and Inspiration.  Lisa makes me think about art and being an artist.
7. Nadine’s blog, Knitting with a Poodle, for her poetic words and pictures.
8. Jeanne’s blog, Exploring the Surface, because I love her work!
9. Serena’s blog, Layers of Meaning for her thorough and thoughtful posts.
10. Fiona’s blog, Love Fibre for her beautiful work and descriptions of the course she is doing.

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