10 January 2012

It was all a dream

I had 6 silk screens set up to deconstruct today, a personal play day. Last night I had a dream. In the dream I was applying thickened dyes to a large piece of burlap. This is the burlap from garden stores, not a fabric store. I then placed a piece of unprepared cotton on top of it. Then I took a piece of fabric that HAD been soda soaked and line dried the same size and put it on the backside of the burlap. Then I took a hard brayer and rolled it all over the fabric trying to get the burlap to leave an impression on both pieces of fabric.
About 8 o'clock this morning, I started to make this dream come true. I put plastic down on my two tables set side by side ( 2 at 30"X72" making it 60"X72"). I started to paint thickened dye onto the burlap with a paint brush.
Then I added the untreated cotton to the dye side of the burlap and the soda soaked fabric to the other (back) side of the burlap and rolled it with a brayer.
Then I flipped the "sandwich" so that the untreated side was facing up and started to spray soda ash water on the untreated side. In my dream both pieces of cotton got dye on them. In real life, not so much. The now wet cotton was starting to look interesting but the soda ash treated piece only had small spots of color. I worked harder but the soda treated dry piece of cotton just never really got much in the way of color. Then I thought, so who cares. Its still interesting and a good first layer of color.
                                                      Untreated but now wet side
                                  Peeking at the treated side. Not as colorful but still nice figuring
                                                            The "sandwich"
I wrapped the sandwich in heavy plastic and batched.


I used a piece of cotton dampened with soda ash water to wipe the dye off the plastic. I also used 2 pieces of scrim to finish the "washing" of the table.
This clean-up rag (always the best thing made during the day) and the clean-up scrim tucked inside the sandwich packet. THEN.......
I did the 6 screens that I had set up. I LOVE, love, love deconstructed screen printing. I will add pics tomorrow when the fabrics are batched, washed and ironed. I get one good picture of a section while wet.
There were many great pulls but the camera wouldn't focus so now we'll all have to wait til tomorrow.

1 comment:

  1. Methinks you've tapped into a well! Getting your dreams to think up and process new ideas...I'm jealous!

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