Screenprinting

Sandy asked me to show her how to screenprint (not that I'm an expert, but I've done it once or twice in workshops). So we got out the screens and squeegees and procion dyes and thickener. The fabric was prewashed, soaked in soda ash, and dried.

First technique: tear strips of newsprint, lay them on the fabric, put down your screen, add "ink", and pull. The screen picks up the paper, which acts as a resist. Do it some more, in repeats or overlaps, with the same or other colours (scraping the unwanted colour out of the screen - there will be some interesting colour blending unless you clean the screen completely, which removes the paper as well). My usual starting point is stripes. By lunchtime, my favourite thing was this collage on the drop cloth, made with a partly spent screen and prints of the peeled-off paper strips --
After lunch we tried using cut shapes. Sandy went gung-ho with the overlaps to develop shapes-within-shapes:
I started this with the yellow square-within-a-square, then changed colour often and worked outward, adding corner squares one by one, then subtracting them again to end up with the turquoise square at the bottom.This series of "clearing the screen" prints along the side has potential:
The photos were taken while the ink was wet. The colours fade with drying, and might fade a bit more after rinsing and washing. When you use the dyes, it's important to "batch" -- let the damp fabric sit under plastic for a minimum of 4 hours.