Heat transfer processes - day 2

We did foiling and flocking, both on what we'd produced the previous day and on new bits of fabric.

We started by making stencils (cut into newsprint) for screen printing the foil glue, and also used brushes etc for making other marks with the glue. I like the "moons"near the bottom, printed with a bit of round sponge -

The criss-cross marks worked better on a sheer fabric coloured yesterday, with less glue on the spatula used to make them -

Foiling is pressed for 15-20 seconds at 160 degrees (more or less). Flocking - for which there is a sort of transfer paper - uses a different glue and spends 30 seconds  in the press at 180 degrees. Here are Dawn's samples of both techniques -

Left top, foiling (with "skeleton" of foil for re-use later); left bottom, flocking;
centre, flocking through stencil over a sublimation print;
right, foiling through stencil over the "negative" of the print (using the dye paper)

I did do some flocking,  on a bit of fabric from the scrap bin. It feels very dense and much smoother than velvet - and shows what a simple brush stroke can do -

The flock paper can be re-used, but won't be as solid as fresh flock paper.

Strangest object of the day - this scrap of fake fur became solid and plasticky with the foil added. Now if it was real wool (fleece or roving) and gold leaf, that would be something else! -

Moving swiftly on, I got to work on some gathered cloth, found recently -

As found

Foiled - pewter on the fabric, gold on the strings

I'm in the process of loosening the gathers just a little, to separate the solid mass of the foil, and then will seep colour into the fabric from underneath.

Looser foiling, less of it too -

This is a double layer, so something different can be done on the back - I might try printing the circles with the fabric almost stretched out. Just to see what happens. Does it need colour?

I foiled over some thick stitches, on wool, but forgot to take a photo. That was inspired by this detail of Alison Willoughby's "Skirt 41", one of the slides Dawn showed us -

Other work using foiling that Dawn showed (often pix used in her book) was wallpaper by Linda Florence -

Textile hangings by Norma Starszakowna -

Shown at Stroud International Textile Festival 2010  (via)

Womenswear by Jonathan Saunders -

The foiling changes the weight of the sheer fabric (via) 

Next up - phototransfer, and drawing onto transfer paper.

Heat transfer processes on fabric - day 1

Dye sublimation printing transfers disperse dyes from paper to synthetic or mixed-fibres fabric, using a heat press (though an iron sometimes gives satisfactory results). At 180-200 degrees C, the dye is converted from a solid to a vapour and back into a solid as it cools down, at which point it prefers the fabric rather than the paper - and is fixed to the fabric.

This sample made with sublimation paper shows how (flat) objects can be put between the paper and fabric to be used as resists. The colour accents were a surprise - they had been used with a different colour of sublimation paper earlier -

My experiments used pre-coloured and re-coloured scrim in conjunction with the paper -

From between the newsprint, the paper laid onto the fabric emerges ...

... and reveals the printed fabric

Using the dark paper, with its impression, as a negative ...

... with no great results (too dark), but the scrim at top has transferred every detail -

Another version

And another - using the prepared paper is quick and easy

The timing in the heat press is an art, not a science - it can vary according to how intense you want the colour, and is usually between 30 seconds and 2 minutes.

Another method of sublimation is to paint disperse dyes onto paper. Painted over a photocopy, the lines act as a resist, to leave white lines behind. Here are a first and second pressing of the same sheet -

 For this one, I laid sheer fabric over a denser base - the pattern is rather lost on the sheer -

If you print the sublimation paper onto the photocopy, the lines pick up the ink - I'll practice a bit with that next time.

At the end of the day I got so interested in layering things that I forgot to take photos. A little heap of prints was piling up, and we'll be using them over the week to combine with other processes (flock and foil; photo transfer; heat setting).

The tutor is Dawn Dupree - here are some of her "domestics" -

She mentioned other artists who use sublimation printing  during a slideshow -

Susan Eyre

Rebecca Earley started printing shirts with the weeds that grew outside her studio (via)

Wendy Edmonds prints onto fleece

Last week's bookwraps

A couple of odd bods

Four A5-sized wraps made from the same UFO ...

... which needed quilting before being cut up

Three from one - samples of different variegated threads
and of different fancy stitches

Another abandoned bit of piecing that became three bookwraps

The red brigade

Grey power

Another couple of odd bods - conjoined pale samples, and a former journal quilt

Time is running out for my bookwrap-making obsession -- and, I'm pleased to report, the stock of UFOs and samples is running out too. Yet some things remain - for instance, these squares, made of tie silk and intended, long ago, for a lap quilt - there isn't time to make all nine squares into bookwraps, simply because other things are in the queue ahead of them.

As for this next quilt - I was looking forward to cutting it up, and it would have made 8 bookwraps ... but when it came to it, I couldn't do it -

Once that snake was taken off, I remembered the fun of the piecing and quiilting - four vertical strips were pieced randomly, by tossing a coin and pulling a strip out of one or other bag, something like that. some green strips had the red bits added beforehand, and those got used in the quilting as the centre of flowers, and I put in various sorts of flowers - begonias (top right) and fuchsias (bottom left ... but are they fuchsias?) among them -

 One day I'll get out the paints and turn this into ... something else ...

Sandpaper collage

Is there no limit on what can be used to make art? (I rather hope not!)

"Monalalia" by Australian artist Jamin Kluss is described as "sandpaper and glue on wood". It measures 90x120 cm and was part of the Glover Prize exhibition in 2012. 

Postboxes?

Not a postbox, a stamp machine at a train station

Out of date and out of order
(Leigh-on-Sea, Essex)

Letterbox seen in St Leonards, or else Bexhill

Part of an ongoing series ... many other such photos are buried in my photo files.

There's something intriguing about a letter-box ... little houses for thoughts in transit. What is taken out isn't quite what went in.

Around town

Seen downtown -

Satirical magazine acknowledges royal birth

Big vases are all the rage for downtown foyers

Old signage, possibly 19th century

"This horse block was erected by the desire of the Duke of Wellington, 1830"
(outside his club? it's near the top of the Duke of York steps, Waterloo Place)

Marble doormat, Duke Street

Carved either side of the entrance to Rose and Crown Yard, off Pall Mall

Seen in my neighbourhood -

New brooms

A windowful of in-store specials

New in the neighbourhood, the Park Theatre

Finsbury Park railway bridges