Fiber Junkies and Tiki Mats

Our Fiber Junkies met yesterday; during the summer months, we often meet at Vals who has a wonderful wet studio in her garage. She is such a wonderful hostess, always welcoming us with open arms, tables ready and everything else to make our day a big fun day. We played with one of our favorite techniques - deconstructive screen printing which we always love. We used dyes but this time we also tried a new version using discharge paste.

 Setting up our drying spaces - Mary with her new rescued drying rack for hanging things to dry.

 All the wonderful things we use for texture including in the foreground some Tiki mats.

 I confisgated these mats which were decorations at my nephews wedding - an outside affair with a Tiki theme. He said "Aunt Judy, what do you possibly want with these mats"? Seriously...?...as I started to explain and saw the glazed over look in his eye I said very kindly - forget it, you wouldn't understand.

 After laying down some items for texture, we laid our screen over the top.

 Denny was using lots of circles and disperse dyes which she was printing on paper.

 I had one large screen which I didn't get to  print as I ran out of fabric but will tackle that tomorrow.  I've soaked some more fabric in soda ash ready to go.

 Here is one of Val's - a beauty as always.

 Kate was having tremendous success with her color choices - some blues and a raspberry colored dye.

 My dyes looked quite dark when printed on fabric but I know the colors are much lighter once they are batched and washed, I'm very hopeful for good results.

As mentioned before, we also worked with discharge paste. We placed items under the screen, but instead of using dyes to squeegee, we used a clear print paste mix. When dried, we loosed it with discharge paste instead of print paste which loosen the dyes. Results to follow along with show and tell.