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.
