Thickened Dye Fabrics

Today, I want to show you the fabrics I created when my friends and I played with thickened dye. There are a variety of ways to use the thickened dye.  In this first photo, I applied the dye with the edge of a flexible piece of plastic (like a credit card).

This fabric below was pieced and I added the lines on top with the edge of a plastic tool. I wanted to see if the dye color would change in relation to the background color it was on.

These next two pieces were made with a special Martha Stewart tool that Linda had.  It had a bunch of small brushes lined up on the tool.  This first photo shows the bottom of the fabric folded up because the back side looks a little different than the front.

There were lots of different ways to apply the thickened dye to the fabric, but I kind of got stuck on drawing lines using a small bottle I had with a fine tip.  Here you can tell I started drawing from the left to the right.  Not sure how to not get the blob at the beginning of the line.

 Drawing fast scribbles at an angle.

More scribbles in a random curvy motion.  The bottom edge is what the fabric looked like without the scribbles.

Drawing leaf-like shapes.

For this last piece, I drew a bunch of circles.  Then, I scraped over it with that gold-ish color.  Since some of the circle color hadn't quite penetrated the fabric and was sitting on top, I got some smears.  

I like these last two a lot and would like to explore this more.  All the pieces I used were small scraps that I brought just to try things out.  I don't know what I will do with them.  But whatever it is, it will have to be small.

Fabric Dyeing

Before the cooler autumn weather started coming, I was able to get in some fabric dyeing.  I dye fabric in my garage and on the driveway so the temperatures need to be above 70 degrees.

This year I only had about about 10 yards of white fabric to start with.  I did not purchase more. Instead, I pulled out some of the fabrics I know have been sitting on my shelf for some time to over-dye.

Here are some of those old fabrics.

Why did I pull these?  There were several reasons.  I pulled out fabrics that I thought were very similar to another color I already had.  When I started dyeing my own fabric, I created a much more mottled look.  Now, I like to work with more solid color.  So, I pulled out some of the very mottled ones.  Those would need to be over-dyed with a much darker color.  I also pulled colors that I didn't think I would use or didn't appeal to me.  Some colors were just too bright and I wanted to tone them down a bit.  You don't always know exactly what color you get until the end when the fabric is rinsed and dried.  Sometimes I make something I don't like.

Work in progress.

And here are the colors I ended up with.  I think, overall, I am happier with the new colors.

They will get integrated back unto the shelves and, hopefully, get used!  I also had some muslin scraps that I had brought home from the museum left over from covering pedestal tops.  Here is how they turned out, along with a few more over-dyes.

Most of these are smaller pieces and some have holes in them or marks that I will need to work around.  But I am happy to be able to get some use out of the fabric that otherwise would have ended up in the trash can.

Screen Printing on Fabric

Yesterday, I did some screen printing on fabric with my friend Mary.  Previously, I had made a padded cover for my cutting table to print on.  Here it is in it's first use where I tried screen printing ink with a thermofax screen.

I rolled the table out and set up our printing area in the garage.   This time we were using thickened dyes instead of paint or ink.

Here's Mary getting her screen ready.

I have the Screen Printing: Layering Textiles with Color Texture & Imagery book by Claire Benn & Leslie Morgan marked with lots of sticky notes.  And I have done some screen printing on fabric at Linda McLaughlin's studio.  But this was the first time I did it "on my own", so to speak, with a frame screen.  (But I wasn't on my own since Mary was there.) And I admit, I have no idea what I am doing!

We tried different temporary methods of making prints with the screen.  I wouldn't say we were very successful, but we did learn some things.  For example, I don't think I made the dye thick enough.  I used sodium alginate as a thickener.

The first time I tried to use the sodium alginate some years ago it turned into a big blob.  There are no instructions on my package on the amounts to mix.  This time I mixed it according to the instructions I saw on a package in the art store.  It was a little too runny, a syrup-like consistency. So next time I make it, it should be just perfect.

We carried on and tried some different things.  Then, I ended up going back to using my thermofax screen because I was able to get better results with it.  It is also smaller and easier to work with.  Here are a few of the fabrics I printed. I am exploring lines.  I think I will experiment with some mono-printing today since I still have some of the dye leftover.