Fiber Junkies - Printing and other Good Stuff

Come rain or shine, nothing stops the Fiber Junkies....For the last 2 meetings, we've been wanting to do deconstructive screen printing but it's best to have a sunny day so the screens dry quickly. Forecast - rain expected...so we came prepared to do other things. Val who is our wonderful hostess...gets a little nervous when she sees ALL the stuff we bring ! How long do we plan to stay !

We get an early start...coffee, goodies and then playtime...but before that, show and tell. There's always so much to take in...such a creative group! Val showed us some beautiful eco prints she had done on paper...

Mary had her latest, wonderful wall hanging made with some very special batik fabric her son brought her from one of his trips.

Kates latest books created with fabric Kate had made.

We all brought back our fabric pieces from the last meeting...this is one of Denny's...

who is without a doubt....

The "Queen" of layering imagery...She does have a wonderful eye for doing this...all of these are from Denny...

and this one...

and in her spare time, a quilt made from leftover blocks. She placed colored circles throughout the quilt to break up some of the stronger black and white sections.

Gen with her beautiful alcohol ink cards....

And now on to our playing...As luck would have it, the sun did come out but we were prepared for anything. Denny brought her sponge rollers which were so much fun last time.

She also prepared lots of screens for printing..

I loved the roller brushes..

but had the most fun with stencils and thickened dyes...It was a "3 for 1" deal. The stencil was laid down on the fabric, then a blank silk screen on top of that to keep the stencil stable. Thickened dyed was applied with a squeegee.

And the fabric....Don't love it....but then...

A second piece was laid down on the silkscreen which picked up some of the dyes in the process....Using my hands and gently pressing the fabric into the screen, produced......

This....really liked it...

and the third print....the stencil with the excess dye was laid on top (face down) of fabric...

and pressed gently to get this...Really like this!

There always seems to be a favorite "thing" at each meeting and this time it was Denny's tree. It was a little fragile and had to be used underneath a blank silk screen.

The dye was applied to the stencil and then laid face down on the fabric. Next came the blank silk screen to protect the stencil....A squeegee was gently pulled over the top

and the results...

Kate did some deconstructive printing...her colors!

and Denny who uses a lot of masks as a resist...

and Vals beautiful work...a great day and more to come on Eco printing.