Working with Grids

At the end of  a previous post is the image I used to create a gridy thermofax screen and I thought I'd use this post to show you the results of some of my experiments with it. 

I used the thermofax to print sheer screen inks onto white cotton. Never easy to see nor easy to photograph but hopefully you get the idea. 



This was quite a small piece of cloth which I scrumpled up into a little pot and poured on yellow and blue procion dye. I wanted to see how the dye would react with the screen inks.

As you can see the grids are still visible and the cloth has quite a high proportion of green where the yellow and blue dye mixed. The dye created a transparent layer of colour on top of the grids and I guess the degree of crumpling determined the extent to which the grids were coloured. There was no trace of the grids on the back of the cloth at all.

I also took a larger piece of fabric and scraped green dye paste on the top with an old credit card. It is more of an appley green than the picture suggests and is just work in progress. What will happen if I over print and then discharge? What would happen if I used more opaque inks? What would happen if I used coloured screen inks? So many ideas, so little time.

I also used the screen to print with discharge paste onto a ropey piece of fabric that had seen the tail end of all sorts of dye. Although it's not going to win any prizes for dyeing, the technique does show some potential, I think.

I have also been printing on some larger pieces of cloth, trying to create interesting cloth which I could potentially stitch into. There's still lots of work to do on that and I'll share some of those with you in another post.