Screen Printing Results

Posted on November 14, 2014 by ruthlane under surface design

Our local group met today and we worked on shibori. I’ll post about the shibori session on the Felting and Fiber Studio site in a week or so. But I did get some photos of the favorite pieces from the screen printing party.

Here is Sally with her favorite piece.

And a little better view of the piece. It has some really nice background details that almost look like water or a lake with trees in the background.

Here’s Paula with her screen printed scarf. She nuno felted the center section and is meant to be a head scarf. The screen that she used was one of my fabric lamination screens.

And this is Louise with her screen printed piece. She has it wrapped around a board. She is thinking of adding some stitching and then covering it with a cold wax technique.

Here’s a closer view.

And here’s a little fellow that came to visit me when I was working this morning.

He/she was right outside my window.

Trying to find something tasty out in the cold, cold weather we are having. Hope you have a nice weekend!

Screen Printed Fabric

Posted on October 21, 2014 by ruthlane under fibers, surface design

Here are a few of the fabric pieces that got screen printed at our Screen Printing Party last week. Most of them are mine but one is Sally’s as she left it at my house accidentally.

This piece is Sally’s – it looks kind of blurry – I hope if you click on it to enlarge it looks better. It’s a piece of linen fabric that was previously dyed green. A deconstructed screen print was screened over the top.

Here’s a closer view. I think this would make a nice background.

This piece was previously printed with the green leaves. I screen printed the blue on top of that.

This piece has been printed twice with a blue school glue screen. The bottom layer is the red layer and then I screened green dye on top of that with a different blue glue screen.

This gets the ugliest fabric award. It was originally printed on a “gelli” plate, that’s the red/purple layer. Then I used the green dye and the blue glue screen. I was hoping to improve it a bit but not sure it’s any better. I think I need to over dye the entire thing to tone it down a bit.

Here’s the back of the one above. It is definitely better from the back.

These are my favorites. These four pieces of fabric were screened over torn paper. I just sprinkled some paper scraps from the shredder on top of the fabric and then screened various colors of dye in several layers over the top. The paper forms a resist as you print.

Here’s a little closer view. I’m not sure what I’ll do with these fabric pieces yet but I think this last set would make great notebook covers.

Silk Screening Party

Posted on October 17, 2014 by ruthlane under surface design

My local group met today to do some silk screening. We did deconstructed screen printing, printing through screens made with blue school glue, oatmeal printing and scrap paper printing. We also tried screen printing with a screen prepared with watercolor crayons and then used textile medium to screen through the crayons. These were a bit of a disappointment but all the others worked great. I was so into the screen printing that I forgot to take many photos of the process.

These four photos show the deconstructed screens. The one in the top left corner has bubble wrap under it and I’m screening the thickened dye on to the screen. The other three photos are screens that have already dried. We then screened either clear print paste or another color dye through this and the dried dye breaks down differently with each pull.

After I made the screen there was dye left on the bubble wrap so I used it to print on to some sketch book pages.

These four photos above show are printed from the paper lamination screens that I made last week. I used printing ink on to sketch book pages. The pages with a different background color were already painted or printed previously.

These two pieces were printed with the watercolor crayons and textile medium. The one on the left was previously printed with peppers.

The photos above show printing with the blue school glue screen. You can see the screen itself in the middle of the top row of photos. The pink one on the bottom left was previously printed on a gel plate. I’m not sure it was much improved.

This one was one of Sally’s that had been previously printed with vegetables (red) and then a deconstructed screen in green was done over top. I’ll be interested to see how this one looks when it’s washed.

These are more deconstructed prints, the top row is on paper and the bottom on fabric.

Here is Sally mixing up some more print paste with purple dye. On the right you can see how messy it gets, dye and print paste seem to end up everywhere.

This piece is one of Louise’s. She had rust dyed a piece of watercolor paper. But she thought it needed more. So we added an oatmeal screen print. The really dark green bits are oatmeal that have soaked up the green dye. The oatmeal acts as a resist on the screen and after it dries, you usually peel off all the oatmeal bits to show what is underneath. Louise hasn’t decided whether she’ll keep the oatmeal or take it off. Can’t wait to see how she develops this further.

These last two are more paper screen printed with the oatmeal resist technique. This is raw oatmeal, in case you were wondering. Sally also printed an entire scarf with this method but I didn’t get a photo. I will have to take more photos once everything has been batched and washed. We had a wonderful day and I’m looking forward to next month so I can see how everything turned out. I have a few pieces of fabric that I’ll show you later this week when I get them washed out.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend.

Experimental Screen Printing Session

Posted on February 7, 2014 by ruthlane under surface design

My local group met today (minus two people) and had a mammoth screen printing session with the screens I had prepared last week.

I did take a few photos of scraping the paper off the paper lamination screens. After the screen has dried, you soak it in water and then scrape all the paper off. That leaves the matte medium in the organza and you use this to screen on thickened dye.

Here is the largest paper lamination screen I made. It kind of reminds me of cracking paint on an old wall.

I also made some masks for the deconstructed screens. I cut out the designs with a craft knife.

You can see the ginkgo leaf cut outs that remained after I cut out the leaf screen.

I was so busy helping to screen that I didn’t get any in process photos. This is one of the deconstructed screens printed on a silk scarf. I will try to get better photos of these when they’ve been washed. I took a bunch of photos but very few turned out well. We used thickened Procion dye. Sometimes we just used clear print paste (thickened) to break down the dye already dried in the screens and other times we used thickened dyes through the screen.

The green piece with squiggly lines was printed with the rice baby cereal screen. It gave very interesting prints.

This was another of the deconstructed screen prints.

Here is one printed with the paper lamination screen. I really like the organic look you can get with this screen.

This is a silk scarf printed with the paper lamination screen.

Here’s a square printed with a deconstructed screen.

Here is cotton fabric printed with one of the rice baby cereal screens. It should fit well into my current circles theme. I will take more photos of the fabric after it’s been washed and ironed. Hopefully, I can get some better photos. The screen printing was fun and all the screens worked great. Everyone was pleased with the outcome.

I did get my background fabric dyed for my ice flower piece. It is dark green. The colors are a bit off in the photo.

I also made a vine with organza leaves which I plan to put along one edge. The flower isn’t sewn on but I was trying it out to see if I liked it. I really like the sheer leaves and I’ll be adding those over the entire piece. Now I have to decide how to attach the red/pink piece of fabric to the background fabric. I will probably zigzag stitch it down and perhaps couch a piece of green yarn around the entire edge.

Screen Printing Preparations

Posted on January 31, 2014 by ruthlane under surface design

Next week, my local group is meeting at my house for some experimental screen printing. I spent most of the day today preparing the screens.

I took a look through all my old Quilting Arts magazines for some ideas. One article was about using a mask with deconstructed screen printing. The mask is made from light weight interfacing covered with paint. The photo above shows three pieces of interfacing ready to paint.

I used some left over house latex paint. The point is to cover the interfacing so that when used as a mask, no dye or ink will leak through the mask except the portion that is cut out.

I painted all three pieces and it took quite a lot of paint as it soaks in.

Here’s the back side, you can see the paint came through easily. Now to let it dry. I’ll paint the other side and then cut an opening like a stencil. I am thinking I will cut some leaf shapes.

Next I did some paper lamination screens. This is the process where you glue organza to paper with gel medium. I did three organic patterned screens. I have to let these dry as well and then iron to set and wash off the excess paper.

Next up, I decided to try some rice baby cereal as a resist on the screen. I applied the cereal through a syringe. And then let it dry. Lots of things drying now…

I had a bunch of 6″ embroidery hoops when I ordered them thinking I was getting one and instead got sets of three. I just put organza in the hoop and taped it with duct tape. I added more rice cereal to this. I am hoping that as these screen, the thickened dye will gradually break down the cereal so it will be like the deconstructed screens which change the more prints you make.

I had some left over cereal so I covered this piece of fabric. The plan is to let it dry and then crack the cereal and then add a layer of dark paint over the top. The same idea as using flour paste resist.

Next up, I made some print paste and added dye. Then I put the screens on some type of texture, here it is a packing paper. Then I screened the print paste with dye added. And then I have to again, let dry.

The dry dyes with the texture and then you screen through it with either plain print paste or a different color of thickened dye. The dried dye will break down as you continue to screen through it.

This one has bubble wrap underneath it.

This one I used two colors and the texture is polyester curtains.

So now, I can’t even hardly walk into my studio. Everything is drying all over the floor, table and wherever else there was space. I’m looking forward to seeing how these screens turn out. I’ll show you next week.

I did have some time in the evening this week to make some more organza flowers and organza leaves for my ice flower piece. I haven’t stitched anything down yet because I need to have a backing fabric first. I didn’t have a fabric that worked in the right shade of green. So I did some more snow dyeing today to get a dark green. Then I will order some stretcher bars to frame it on. So eventually, I might get this piece done. What have you been up to this week?

Ruth Lane Art

Experimenting with Arts Endless Possibilities

Tag Archives: deconstructed screen printing