Part 2 Stage 3 (4)

Something bigger

Screen printing is essentially a production process and part of the frustration I've felt is that the time and effort spent in setting up and cleaning is disproportionate to the outcome, however pleasing it may be. Therefore for my larger piece I'm going to try a small print run.

I'm putting together some hampers for Christmas gifts so my idea is that I will print tea towels and include them if they turn out OK.  I bought some tea towel blanks from the Organic Textile Company.  The quality is good and they are less than £2 each.

Each time I try another approach to printing it throws up new challenges and this is no different.  I have to create a design that will be practical with my A3 frame.  It only gives me an A4 print.  I've decided therefore to try reducing the print size to A5 and do a repeat pattern.

This is my plan:

use jagged edge masking tape grid design that gave me good results previously
divide the tea towel into quarters
use an alternate design
do a full size sample.

Like this:

Stage 1 - vertical, colour 1

Stage 2 - horizontal, colour 1

Stage 3 - horizontal, colour 2

Stage 4 - vertical, colour 2

Complete tea towel

That's the plan but there's some maths to do to work out how to make it viable with minimum stages.

I am concerned that working two sections together it could be difficult. My sample will test my measuring.  This is what I think will work taking into account the width of the frame and my design.

Since I've been a bit fixated on colour recently I thought I'd have a try at complementary combinations.  I used my pencil crayons and then tried to match the colour with my dyes.

I've found it hard to mix my fabric dyes because they are so strong.  I tried again and used a cocktail stick to introduce the colour to the binder and whilst not perfect, it was better.  I decided to use the lime green and pink.


Here's the masking tape design I've put on my screen.  You can already see positive/negative shapes.

My design in masking tape

My first pull onto paper

I've printed onto my sample fabric and it's been hard work for little reward.

This is as far as it goes

I have made several mistakes

• my screen is too small for this sort of design.  If I had a screen large enough to make a single large design I would have been more satisfied.
• my motifs are too far apart and therefore unbalanced
• changing from a vertical to horizontal print meant I had to tape on my design too many times for it to be a practical proposition.
• there is too little colour sitting unexcitingly on the pale fabric
• most important, it is too controlled and just doesn't sing.

For all those reasons I'm going back to the drawing board.  I very much enjoyed working with vilene so I'm going to mask off the outside couple of inches of a tea towel and do an all over print.

I felt that I'd practised the technique so I just chose my colours and got on with it.  I selected three colours; lime green (because I had some left), a light purple and red.  I knew I would have to be circumspect with my binder because it's coming to an end.

I  wanted to print four tea towels so I padded out my work table and used my print board as well.

Ready to go - I masked off the edges of the tea towels

It was soon obvious that I didn't have enough binder for four similar tea towels so I decided to do three and any  paint left would be used on the fourth in a more casual way.

I used the lime green first and did two pulls on all three tea towels - I had to be quick because I was worried that the paint would begin to dry and I wouldn't get the blends that were successful last time.

Next I used the purple then the red.  How I would have managed without my husband I've no idea.  It got increasingly messy and it was lovely to have someone around whose hands were clean.

From previous experience I knew the vilene might come adrift when it got saturated so I taped it on belt and braces style.  It stretched a bit but it stood up to 30+  pulls.

After completing the three tea towels I took what paint was left and did whatever I could on the fourth one.  It was predominantly red but with flashes of the other colours.  Not a speck of mud in sight.

Hung out to dry

The colours are much more subtle that I expected but really pretty.  The tea towels are quite hefty linen and much more substantial than the calico I've been using.  At this stage of drying it looks as though the colour is just sitting on the top of the fabric rather than soaking in. When I used lighter weight calico there was lots of blending but here it's more like layering.  I'll have to wait and see what happens when I set the colour and wash them.

This is what I got:

The fourth one - with left over dye.  The green actually looks gold.

Although the colours were the same for 3 of the tea towels they all vary very much.

I've never before liked tea towels!

One thing I've wanted to try is working with fresh leaves placed directly on the fabric.  Something else I've wanted a go at is mixing my unknown dyes with the Selectacine ones I've been using.  I decided to combine the two experiments and got some interesting results.

The colours of my unknown dyes are cerise and turquoise so I'm stuck with them but I chose to introduce some green which meant I used some Selectacine in the turquoise as a last pull.

Trying out my colours

and made a pull using both turquoise and cerise in the well. I then moved the leaves around and made several more pulls.  I got one or two lovely ethereal shapes. It seems stable but whether it will wash out I don't yet know.  In some places the paint is too thick. Because the mix of two sorts of dye seems to have worked my colour range is extended a bit.

These are some of the images that emerged:

When this was ironed and washed some of the definition of the leaves seemed to disappear.