Adventures in Fiber Art

my basement studio-the dungeon

screen charged with dye

the placemat

fresh screens

direct prints

In my last post, I failed to mention that Mrs. Gilman gives credit to Kerr Grabowski for the instruction for deconstructed screen printing. My second attempt was much more fun and fruitful. The consistency of the paste to mix the dye in is very important. I made 8 prints from the screen I charged the other day. No pictures of those yet.
 I used a plastic placemat for the design. I will give the friend who gave it to me first choice of prints. If she wants one that is. Of course the photos are all crazy and I don't know how to get them in the proper order, but here is all the stuff I've done for the last two days. Notice there are NO photos of laundry.
  The place mat was covered in dye after I squeegeed it on to the screen, so I soaked two pieces of fabric with activator, wrang out the excess, and layed them on the placemat and got a couple of direct prints, which look pretty good. The pieces I did today look good too. And I charged another screen with the same dye that has a little yellow added to give it another color. I used different objects for texture. We'll see how that works another day.
   I'm very proud of my screens. I made these three for less than $15. It took me about an hour to build them then I sprayed them with clear enamel paint before adding the screen fabric. I already had the supplies and got to use my miter box and stapler. Then I had to wait for the tape to "cure". Notice (or don't) that I forgot to put tape on the sides of the charged screen above. It's one of my old screens. No one died.