More Prints

I've had so much fun ironing this fabric - you get to see each print up close and personal, details you often miss during the printing process. This piece below was done on some rusted fabric. The rusting is different from my current pieces - smaller and not as bold, but I like the printing on top of it and the transparency of it that allows the subtle rusting to show through.
This was a leaf - almost looks like it was done on paper but it's printed on mercerized cotton.

This next piece was printed on canvas - 7 oz, single weave I get from Pearl. It's artist's canvas used for painting, no gesso on it. It's always been a favorite of mine for quilt backgrounds. It has a coarse texture, lots of body, stitches really well and takes dye beautifully. I did a couple of prints, decided I didn't like it, didn't think the dye penetrated the fabric real well so I put the rest away and moved on to another fabric, but after batching it, I really liked the results and was sorry I didn't do more..

This next set of prints are all from the same screen and will give you a good feel for how the process works. When you squeegee the dye onto the screen that's over the textured plate, the dye works its way around all the nooks and crannies and seems to be thicker in those areas with texture. In the print below, the 3 leaves were the only texture, the surrounding area had nothing underneath but a thin sheet of newspaper. The dye was heaviest in the leaf area and thin on top of the newspaper. As you apply the print paste, it loosens the dye but in heavier dye areas, the dyes are not releasing as quickly. You can see below - the leaf, thickest dye area, is the lightest because least amount of dye was released.

The next print, the leaves are a little more prominent as the dye gets looser in those areas and allows more to print onto the fabric. The background is still printing well as there's still dye left in the screen.

Every set of prints you do, vary in the amount of prints you get out of that particular screen. In this set, long about now, I'm loving the results. The leaves are showing so much detail and the background is still printing some color.

This next is the 4th print and still liking the results - the background is getting lighter as the dye in that area is almost used up.

Now the leaves are starting to lose color because dye is almost gone from that area of the screen. I love the edges on all the pieces. This happens when you use newspaper as a background for underneath the leaf or any other texture. It's so thin causing it to crease and break, giving an interesting edge to the print.

The next print was the last one I did. There's still quite a bit of dye on the screen but didn't think I would like the results after this, so I quit at this point. BUT you can put the screen aside, let it dry out and go back and use it whenever! You can also use it to screen over another print you might not like and sometimes "one not so great" + "another not so great" = a really good and interesting print.

There's so much you can do with this technique, I'm loving the possibilites.

Until Next Time