Printing Play

I decided to have a bit of a play today - not the best of weather but not too cold for me to work outside. I had some Manutex to use up (and still have lots too). I used white fabric as my background to check how my prints were going. I did a couple of my linear woodcuts but found out the hard way that they absorb a lot of the dye and not much gets onto the fabric. This could still be good if I want to do a bit more of a softened effect rather than hard edge. The foam roller after it becomes quite saturated is difficult to work with and the hard rubber rollers don't take up the thickened dye. I have some small fluffy paint follers that are quite firm so they might work better next time. I just had a play with some stamps and the top of a stencil rather than waste the dye after doing some leaves.


I enjoy doing the stencils but by this time I was down to using a foam brush and I didn't find that as good. The flowers were on a foam roller that I inked up and ran the length of the fabric which gave me dark to light as it moved. The animal print stencils tend to start to smudge if I want to do an all over pattern and they are better as a tone on tone with the fabric. I like the leaf stencil and have used it before long long ago.


And then I went over to using some (very old) discharge paste. Sadly it didn't work well but look at what happened with a woodblock that I used. There must have been something dark on the wood that came out when I put the discharge paste on it and printed. The pattern is a little darker in reality and I was pleased when I was able to join it up ( it is a 1/4 block print). I like this as a background piece. Worth doing some more on my plainer dyed fabrics and see if they sell. If you peer closely at the bottom of the cloth you may make out some other patterning which was more discharge paste that didn't work - darn it. I will have to open a fresh bottle and try again.

It was frustrating when things weren't quite going right straight from the beginning. I might have another play in a day or so and improve upon my mistakes. I haven't been wanting to use fabric paints at this stage but rather just work with discharging and using thickened dyes.

Onwards and upwards - there is always more to learn.