Writing on Fabric With Cola Pens

Happy New year! My textile year kicked off properly today when I finally got to add some text to my piece using cola pens. Not that you can read it as text but I am using it as a method of adding...well texture.

I am working on the fabric I showed in this post, so there are already variances in the colour of the cloth.

The two images above show the dye still wet and the one below with it dried but not washed. 

I do have a rough plan of how I will use the text but I will need to be build it up with lots of layers of over printing.

I also did some trials on fabric and tested out the 'no flow' product, which aims to reduce dye bleeding on fabric.

I did a number of tests, using both liquid dye (thin) and thickened dye. This piece of linen has been coated with the no-flow product prior to writing on the fabric.

This piece was untreated and you can see that the text made with the  liquid dye is 'lost', but there is little difference with the thickened dye paste.

I would consider using this product again but fortunately the thickened dyes work without it otherwise it could become quite expensive on the size of work I make and the number of layers I usually include.

You may be wondering why I bother writing text if you cannot read it but I have found it much easier to keep repeating a short phrase than trying to create random marks, that inevitably don't look very random when I do them. 

Trying and testing this new method of working has got my creative juices flowing again and I'm looking forward to breathing new life into a piece of work that I had put aside.  I need to go and think about the next layer of text now.