Screen Printing, vilene interfacing and acrylic paint (2)

Just a short post today on how to make your acrylic paint design even more interesting when it is printed.

Be warned, if you loved your design as it was, then you might want to paint another one as this is not a reversible process!

All you need to do is, with a pair of small sharp scissors, cut away part of the area that you painted. This will leave a void in the design that the dye will print through. You can see below that I cut away a small piece from both seed heads. You can also see from this photo that the painted design is not affected when the interfacing is washed out.

This is what it looked like when printed. I used a plain piece of white cotton for this.

This is a more geometric design that I made quite some time ago. I put a piece of plain paper underneath so that the cut out areas would show up.

And the silk/cotton blend fabric that I printed with it and subsequently made into a top. The fabric was undyed before being printed.

Screen Printing, vilene interfacing and acrylic paint.

One of the simplest ways to get a design onto vilene interfacing is to paint it with acrylic paint. This creates a resist so that the design is left as a void when printing. I have done geometric designs in the past but, this time, decided to take a look in my sketchbook for something that might be suitable and found some work I had done using nigella seed heads.

Cut a piece of interfacing that will cover the bottom of your screen, again leaving extra for taping to the screen. Make sure that you know the outer limits of the area that will print - you don't want your design to be cut off. For this method, choose a colour of paint that will show up against the interfacing.You don't have to but it will make life a lot easier if you do!

Paint your design onto the interfacing, be generous as you want good coverage. When you have painted the design, turn over the interfacing and you will be able to see where there has not been a good coverage. See the fuzzy edges below? The dye will print through them if they are left like this. 

When the first side is dry, paint the reverse side of the interfacing, making sure that you get a good coverage on all the edges - unless you are aiming for fuzzy of course. The easiest way to check how good the coverage is, is to hold the interfacing up to the light. That will reveal any missed spots. I could se that there were still some areas that needed more paint.

Once you are happy with the coverage, leave the interfacing to dry completely and then heat set the design. Put the interfacing between baking parchment and press well with a hot, dry iron on both sides. Don't use stream for this. Your interfacing will now be ready to use.

Tape it to the bottom of the screen as usual, making sure that your design sits within the area that will print. This is mine ready to print over a previously dyed piece of cotton.

The interfacing will behave in the same way as the one that I did without any design on it so you can use more than one colour and let them blend. I used magenta and chestnut brown to overprint.

Wash your interfacing out in the normal way and save for another time. Because you heat set the acrylic paint it will be permanent.

A short post next time on how to add a little more interest to your design. 

Surface design

I like to work with textiles and textile scraps especially. They inspire me in what to do with them.

Today I want to show you how I used the textile scraps to make cards.

I glued various textile patches, lace, etc. on a textile background and then I added some stitching with sewing machine for a better fit. Then I painted them with acrylic. Once dried, I add some decorative stitches. 

 (1)

(2)

Then I cut rectangular pieces which I have set and glued on cardboard.
From the (1) surface I made these postcards.

 From the second piece (2), I made this...I added some stitches, beads, Angelina fibers, or gauze.

I hope you liked them,

Carmina

http://carminarte.blogspot.ro/ 

Monoprinting

I am glad to have the chance to publish some of my experiences on  The Fireblog. I follow this blog for a long time and I appreciate your works, they inspire me.

Thanks Beth for this opportunity!

My name is Carmina Plosceanu and I live in Bucharest, Romania. Ten years ago I discovered textile art on the internet, but I started working only in 2008, after I joined the Yahoo group called "Peticelul Romanesc" (Romanian Patch) which gathered together some Romanian ladies from Europe, who loved textile art. The Group has completed the work in 2011 and then I enrolled in Milliande Art Commnunity, where I participated in many artistic exchanges and I had much to learn.
I am self-taught, I learned to work by studying of different techniques on the internet. After I experienced various textile art techniques, I started doing something else, textile collages, paper collage, textile dyeing, painting, plastic fusing, surface design, paper or textile beads, tyvek,  monoprinting, etc.

 
Today I want to present some monoprintings. First I tried to do monoprinting with acrylic on a ceramic plate. The things have not really successful, perhaps because I have not chosen the best color consistency.

For this, I supplemented by adding a few lines of drawing and the result is this ...

Then I made myself a gelliplate, a little one...

In this case, things went easier....

  

  

Then I tried to monoprint by using a plastic sheet...hum, could be better, acrylic dries too quickly!!
Finally, I had to add some corrections, color effects, on the monoprinted sheet.

From all this, I was able to draw a conclusion: it is true that, working with gelliplate, things are going better.

Carmina

http://carminarte.blogspot.ro/ 

 

Recycling mistakes, scraps and offcuts

Mags Ramsay here with my last post on using acrylic paints on fabric. I  ran out of time to tell you about my monoprinting experiments but I thought I'd finish up by showing you some projects using  offcuts from acrylic painted fabric and quilts. I love working from scraps-somehow they're more inspiring and liberating than cutting into pristine fabric and I keep a separate basket for all the offcuts when I trim quilts down to size. 

In this case I'd been experimenting with using masking tape shibori stencils on photos of doors to give the effect of woodgrain. I ended up with quite a few offcuts cutting this down from a square to rectangle. Neatening them up and sewing them to other strips using a wide zig zag, the resulting small journal quilt(below) is I think more interesting than the original! 

 I used this technique with strips sometimes only a cm wide to make bookwraps. The advantage of the acrylic paint on the surface of the fabric is that it make the object slightly water resistant - excellent for bags and phone covers too. The sketching bag below that I made from an early disaster  when I applied too much paint .

My second quilt for Cwilt Cymru 'Connection' exhibition 'red remnants' was  by necessity made from offcuts of  the 3 other quilts I'd repurposed from an old red and white quilt - my original idea hadn't worked and with a tight deadline it was pulled together very quickly.

 And there was just enough crumbs left  from the scraps to make a few small pieces as samples and mounted on canvas for sale.

This series of 4 quilts repurposed from an old red and white quilt through painting with acrylics and stitch sum up my progress so far using these techniques. Thanks for joining me , I'm looking forward to the  next challenge. 

Painting shibori ripples with stencils

Mags Ramsay here. In this post I'll be sharing the techniques I developed leading on from the use of torn masking tape stencils used to imitate woodgrain which I talked about here. I'd been doing a lot of indigo arashi shibori dyeing  and wanted to see whether I could get the same ripple effects using paint.

For Contemporary Quilt  Challenge' Horizons' ( 50 x 150cm) my aim was to create the background on the old red quilt I used for 'red flotsam'  to use some of the results of my screenprinting experiments from a few years ago.

 I became quite an expert on ripping 2 inch masking tape into raggy strips! The advantage with masking tape is they can be moved around and adjusted before painting 

Liquitex heavy body acrylics and paddle brushes on stay wet palette. These brushes are excellent for working the paint into the fabric - there's no gesso on this as I wanted the underlying fabric to show through.

 Sample after first lot of  masking tape and painting with blue and red acrylic paints.

2nd lot of making tape applied then 'unbleached titanium' acrylic paint.

 Taped

 Painted

Tape removed

Finished quilt Nautical Dawn -  masses of hand stitching!

Not only did it get selected for the exhibition, it featured on the front cover of the catalogue and then got a Judges choice at the Festival of Quilts this year!

For Cwilt Cymru exhibition on the theme of 'Connection' I deceided to make another version of this, using the same old red and white quilt but introducing more colours and stitching by machine using twin needle. 

 Sample: taped and painted before (above) and with tape removed (below) 

'Red Ripples' ( detail below)