Today I went up to Andrea's studio to trade smarts. I showed her some blog tricks and she gave me a tutorial in simple silkscreening. She told me about Kerr Grabowski's fabulous DVD,
Adventures in Surface Design, which I have just watched and highly recommend.
Andrea also dyes her own fabrics. I caught her here, proud especially of the snow-dyed! She cuts her strips first, before dyeing, for more interesting textures. Both Andrea and Kerr suggest you can use simple methods to get subtle results...curtain sheers on wood stretchers or embroidery hoops, duct tape, water based paints and transparent base extenders, chalk and cards or squeegees, newsprint and masking tape for stencils, found plastic for texture rubbing. So much to learn, so little time!
P. S. I should add, Andrea uses Pro Chemical dyes she orders from Fall River. For silk screening, she uses PROfab Opague Paints which are water soluble. She has made her own printable fabrics with Bubble Jet 2000, and irons white fabric to freezer paper to run through the printer (makes it slightly smaller than the 8 1/2" x 11" cut freezer paper). For fabrics to dye without prior washing, she orders ready to dye Timeless Treasures Tonga B8700 PFD and Hoffman's 1377 PFD. I added this paragraph for reference!
P.P.S. I just printed directly on plain fabric backed by freezer paper.
So much to do, so little time: the story of my life! But thanks for posting this here, so I can have a permanent place for it for future reference. It sounds as if I just must order that DVD, for sure! This does look like tons of fun! I am very tempted to buy that $99 silk screening kit I saw at Michaels, that would have all the supplies (I am assuming) all there in one place, but I need to read on the box just what it includes. Fun blog post!
ReplyDeleteI have a friend here who is married to the English and Humanities dean at UAFS. She dyes her own fabrics, and they are beautiful - does the same kind of work as Andrea. I bought hand-made scarves from her last Christmas. ss
ReplyDeleteIt all looks magical to me. We look forward to your own work, Linda.
ReplyDeleteNM
Yes, I like you additions here! It does make the process more clear to me. Thanks! I'd love to see the work that SS mentions above, too!
ReplyDeleteAnother wonderful way to create. Wonderful colors.
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