Printing, printing, and more printing

I spent some time in a workshop recently with Catherine Nicolls.  I'd not worked with thickened dye and it was amazing what was produced in the workshop.  Thickened dye is simply concentrated dye added to sodium alginate thickener.  You can read more about it  here.   Dharma Trading also has a good description of sodium alginate thickener.  Here is just a sampling of some of my results.

This one was created using a variety of colours and brushing the dye on with an old credit card.  I like the layering effect that was created by the mixing of the colours.

 This one was also done with an old credit card, but rather than scraping on the two colours, the edge of the credit card was also used to get linear marks.  This is one of my favorites.

We were asked to choose a simple shape, and create a stamp from that shape.  A "2" seemed simple enough and then using two different colours I got "Two for One" or maybe "Double Trouble".

Carrying on with the simple shape, by arranging and mirroring the shape, I used it as a resist for a silk screen. It was surprising what came out of that experiment.  I'm going to explore this some more.

There were many other prints made, and I have yet come up with things to do with all of the samples. The one that was most surprising is the one created with what is referred to as a "breakdown screen".  In this instance thickened dye is applied to your silk screen.  When the thickened dye has dried, you "draw" clear thickened sodium alginate over the screen.  Each draw releases the thickened dye to create print after print, until there is very little left to print.  I had one piece of fabric left, corner was missing, and "went for it".  Here's the result.

One of my friends said it reminded them of licence plates.  Hmmm, what do you think?

First indigo attempt

I recently attended a play day with several of my creative friends.  The day was spent dipping fabric into an indigo vat, and a pot of boiling water with potassium permangenate.  I had prepared my fabric in various ways to create "resists".  Some were tightly stitched, some tightly wrapped with thread, and still others clamped.  I didn't think to take pictures prior to dyeing, but here are some of the results.

This one was pinched in the centre, threaded through a wooden "donut", and then loosely wrapped with string at two different intervals.

This one, dipped into the potassium permangenate, was folded into a triangle of several layers and clamped with wooden "petals".  Some of the wooden petals had previously been used in another dye vat, hence the hints of violet in the patterning.

 This piece was the easiest.  Folded accordion style lengthwise and then folded again crosswise, half of the piece was dipped into potassium permangenate, while the other half was dipped into indigo.

 Ahhh!  this one looked quite comical after prepping.  Pinching the fabric and wrapping the resulting "peak" very tightly with string is what created the circular pattern.  If you click the picture, you should be able to get a closer look and see the imprint of the string in the radial spokes of the circles.

This one was stitched in several rows of running stitch and tightly drawn together and tied off.  It looked like a flattened and squished furnace filter prior to dipping into the indigo.

I even managed to dye some thread.  I learned that if you want an even colouring, you can't twist the thread, but rather have it loosely held together.  Regardless, I liked the variegated look of the threads which will incorporate well when stitched into the fabric.

Overall, for a first attempt, I was thrilled with the results.  Now its off to the studio again to work on another project.

Till the next time, thanks for visiting.